NY Times hails the idea of repurposed drugs.

As long as you are treating a rare disease and not COVID.

Save this story for when they tell you can’t have HCQ, or IVM, or something else that works but because a psychopathic physician wants you restricted to a big moneymaker, you are not allowed to have it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/well/ai-drug-repurposing.html

In labs around the world, scientists are using A.I. to search among existing medicines for treatments that work for rare diseases. Drug repurposing, as it’s called, is not new, but the use of machine learning is speeding up the process — and could expand the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options.

Thanks to versions of the technology developed by Dr. Fajgenbaum’s team at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, drugs are being quickly repurposed for conditions including rare and aggressive cancers, fatal inflammatory disorders and complex neurological conditions. And often, they’re working.

The handful of success stories so far have led researchers to ask the question: How many other cures are hiding in plain sight?

There is a “treasure trove of medicine that could be used for so many other diseases. We just didn’t have a systematic way of looking at it,” said Donald C. Lo, the former head of therapeutic development at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and a scientific lead at Remedi4All, a group focused on drug repurposing. “It’s essentially almost silly not to try this, because these drugs are already approved. You can already buy them at the pharmacy.”

Many drugs do more than one thing, Dr. Might said. Their additional features sometimes get characterized as side effects. “If you comb through enough drugs, you eventually find the side effect you’re looking for,” he said, “and then that becomes the main effect.”