Actor Woody Harrelson disappointed fans after he slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci, calling him “extraordinarily evil” for signing off on distributing azidothymidine (AZT), an antiretroviral medication used as an early treatment for HIV/AIDS.
Fauci served as the chief medical advisor to former Democratic President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2022 and was also a lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under Republican President Donald Trump's first term during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also made contributions to HIV/AIDS research when he was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the early 1980s.
While the effectiveness of AZT in treating HIV/AIDS and other immunodeficiency diseases was questionable, the drug was never proven to be toxic for patients, which Harrelson rejected.
The Cheers star made baseless claims about the drug on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Harrelson told Rogan, without evidence:
"AZT was known to be a highly toxic, really impracticable drug, and of course, that was the one they picked."
“They started using that again, and I don’t know how many people got killed."
He continued:
“That killed friends of mine. AZT was very toxic and they finally had to yank it."
"Now they use different chemical cocktails but Fauci did some extraordinarily evil sh*t."
Meanwhile, the actor has high hopes for RFK Jr., the known anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist now serving as the Secretary of Health and Human Services under Republican President Donald Trump's administration.
"He's certainly a man on a mission and a man who cares deeply," Harrelson said, adding that RFK Jr. is "heroic" about speaking on topics that "he didn't really need to talk about…even if he's wrong."
Those who lived through the HIV/AIDS epidemic slammed Harrelson's claims and shared their personal experiences.
A user on X (formerly Twitter) who goes by Dr. David Berger wrote:
"I worked on an inpatient AIDS unit in 1994. AZT was all we had. It kept a lot of people alive for a lot longer than they would otherwise have had."
The user condemned Rogan and Harrelson, saying they demonstrated a "willful" and "belligerent ignorance" they could barely comprehend, adding, "It's like they love being stupid. And wrong."
More experts weighed in.
Another user named Dr. Pareto also reiterated that AZT was never marketed as a cure for HIV/AIDS but rather was presented as one of the most effective treatments available at the time that benefitted many lives.
The user wrote:
"AZT was the first of the drugs to treat AIDS. It was never a cure and never offered as one. It blocked the enzyme reverse transcriptase the virus used to produce copies of itself, lowering it's rate of infection but did not block T-cell impairment, and no one ever said it did."
"It was the only treatment available as a standalone drug for some years. It was more effective in some patients than others, just like any drug, and more effective on some strains of HIV than others."
"HIV AZT resistance emerged in a large part from misuse of the drug. Until a two and three drug battery of anti-retroviral drugs were available as a cocktail people continued to die from AIDS coinfections even while taking AZT."
"At one time people died from the lack of drugs to treat AIDS. Fauci led the development of these drugs, and is not responsible for deaths due the virus."
Others shared fact-check findings and threw shade at Harrelson for sounding off on a topic he hasn't researched himself.
Harrelson shared a conspiracy theory about COVID-19 vaccines that raised eyebrows when he hosted SNL in February 2023.
During his opening monologues, he first touched on the fact that the last time he hosted was right before the start of the global pandemic that led to lockdown measures and corresponding mask mandates.
He said he had read a script with a premise involving “all the biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartels’ drugs and keep taking them over and over.”
Here's a clip.
The actor claimed he tossed the script because “who’s going to believe that crazy idea, being forced to do drugs—I do that voluntarily all day long.”
Although he didn't specifically mention the name of the vaccines, he made joking references that seemingly compared vaccine makers to drug cartels, which Elon Musk found hilarious and tweeted at Harrelson, writing, "Good one."
Harrelson also criticized protective mask measures, calling the mandate and enforcers of the rule "absurd" in a 2022 interview with Vanity Fair while he was promoting his film Triangle of Sadness.
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