On Joe Rogan’s podcast… What treatments did Mel Gibson claim cured his friends of cancer?

Mark
Written By Mark

Actor Mel Gibson told podcast host Joe Rogan that 3 of his friends were cured of stage 4 cancer after taking two drugs. What are they? How credible is Gibson’s claim?

The two drugs that Gisbon spoke about are “Ivermectin” and “Fenbendazole,” according to a report in Newsweek. Rogan also mentioned the drug “Methylene Blue”.

Ivermectin is a drug approved by the World Health Organization and is usually taken to treat “river blindness, intestinal infections from nematodes, and other types of worm infections,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

Fenbendazole is an anthelmintic, which the Mayo Clinic says is “also used to treat infections caused by worms.”

In an episode of the popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience”, Gibson said that his friends with late-stage cancer took these drugs in combination with other treatments and now show no signs of the disease “at all.”

When contacted by Newsweek by email, Gibson declined to comment.

As they discussed their shared distrust of official medical advice, Gibson told Rogan, “I don’t believe there’s anything that can happen to humanity that there isn’t a natural cure for. I think there has to be, it just makes sense to me. Now, I can’t prove it.” “That, but I just think there has to be something that addresses things.”

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“I have three friends,” Gibson said, offering Rogan a “good story.” All three of them had stage 4 cancer. Now, all three of them don’t have cancer at all, and they’ve been through some serious stuff.

When Rogan asked, “What did they eat?” Gibson responded by saying that they “had some…of what I heard they had.”

“Ivermectin? Fenbendazole?” Rogan asked, while Gibson nodded.

“There are studies on this now where people have proven this,” Rogan said, before Gibson interrupted him to mention “methylene blue.”

“Yes, methylene blue, which is a textile dye,” Rogan said. “It was a textile dye. Now they’ve found that it has profound effects on mitochondria.” “This thing works, man,” Gibson said.

According to the Mayo Clinic, methylene blue is injected into patients to treat methemoglobinemia, a condition that “occurs when blood cannot deliver oxygen to where it is needed in the body.”

There are ongoing clinical trials for its use as a mouthwash “for pain relief in patients with oral mucositis associated with cancer and/or cancer treatments.”

Do ivermectin and fenbendazole treat cancer?

Excerpts from Gibson’s interview went viral on social media, garnering millions of views on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X.

The claim that fenbendazole treats or cures cancer has been circulating on the Internet since at least 2019. For its part, ivermectin gained great public fame during the (Covid-19) pandemic after some groups falsely promoted it as a treatment for Covid-19, according to a report published by the Science Feedback website.

The spread of Gibson’s interview prompted the Canadian Cancer Society to comment on the “An alternative treatment could have serious health effects, such as the spread or worsening of cancer.”

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In fact, there is no scientific evidence to support the use of ivermectin or fenbendazole to treat cancer. Although both drugs have shown promising effects in cells and laboratory animals, these results do not prove that they are safe and effective for treating cancer in humans.

Ivermectin and fenbendazole have shown anti-cancer effects in laboratory experiments, but evidence in humans is lacking. Ivermectin and fenbendazole are two antiparasitic drugs that were initially developed for veterinary medicine. Both have shown anti-cancer effects in cells and laboratory animals, so research into their potential use as cancer treatments is ongoing.

Ivermectin is included in the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines for its effectiveness against several parasitic diseases in humans, including river blindness (onchocerciasis), nematode diarrhea, hookworms, and other diseases caused by soil-transmitted helminths. It is also used to treat scabies.

Ivermectin disrupts the normal functioning of the parasites’ muscular and nervous systems, causing paralysis and death. Researchers have found that ivermectin can also disrupt signaling pathways involved in the proliferation of many types of cancer cells grown in the laboratory. In mice, ivermectin enhanced the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs against ovarian and breast cancer.

Based on these results, clinical trials in humans were initiated to evaluate whether the anticancer effects of ivermectin hold true in humans. In 2023, researchers at City of Hope Cancer Center began a clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of ivermectin combined with the immunotherapy drug Baltilimab in reducing tumor growth and spread in people with aggressive breast cancer. At the time of writing, the trial was in the process of providing volunteers.

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Fenbendazole is a broad-spectrum anthelmintic used in animals, including dogs, cats, horses, and cattle. Unlike ivermectin, fenbendazole has not been approved for human use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The mechanism of action of fenbendazole is different from the mechanism of action of ivermectin. Fenbendazole interferes with the formation of microtubules, a component of the cytoskeleton that provides structural support to cells and is essential for their activity and growth. By disrupting microtubules, fenbendazole inhibits parasite cell division and energy metabolism, causing their death.

Cancer cells divide much more quickly than healthy cells. Therefore, they are also more dependent on the formation of new microtubules, making them particularly vulnerable to the effects of fenbendazole.

A study conducted in 2018, and published in the journal Scientific Reports, noted that fenbendazole promotes the death of cancer cells, which reduces tumor growth in cells grown in the laboratory, and in mice fenbendazole also showed, when taken with vitamin A, D, and E supplements. , K, and vitamin B have anti-cancer effects in mice with lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

Other antiparasitic drugs, which belong to the same family as fenbendazole, can also inhibit tumor growth in breast cancer cells grown in the laboratory and in mice with pancreatic cancer. However, fenbendazole and other drugs of the same family are poorly soluble in water, and this limits their use for cancer treatment, which often involves delivering the drug intravenously within a saline solution.

While the results obtained in cellular and animal studies merit further investigation, they do not prove that ivermectin and fenbendazole are safe and effective cancer treatments for humans.

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Laboratory experiments (on animals) are an essential first step in the search for new treatments. However, humans are much more complex than cells growing in laboratory dishes. Also, the way our bodies work is different from common laboratory animals like rodents.

As a result of these differences, drugs that are promising in cells and animal models often do not work in humans. A 2024 study published in the journal PLoS Biology found that only 5% of new treatments tested on animals receive regulatory approval for human use.

For this reason, clinical trials (in humans) are required before any treatment can be recommended to people. In the case of cancer, a 2019 analysis estimated that only 3.4% of drug candidates tested succeed in clinical trials. Neither ivermectin nor fenbendazole have been tested as cancer drugs, so their potential benefits and side effects in people with cancer are unknown.

Methylene blue

Methylene blue is a dye that was first developed to stain and inactivate certain microbes. It was also one of the first chemotherapeutic drugs tested in humans, having been used to treat malaria, in 1891. It has been replaced by alternative methods, but is still used in staining preparations in histopathology today.

One well-established use of methylene blue is as a stain for blood samples, which differentially targets immature blood cells and can therefore be used to demonstrate age-related red blood cell formation and lysis.

Although there are currently studies on it, there is no scientific evidence that methylene blue can be used to treat cancer in humans.

In conclusion, the claim that antiparasitic drugs such as ivermectin and fenbendazole cure cancer in humans is not supported. Currently, ivermectin is only approved for use in humans to treat parasitic infections, and fenbendazole is approved for veterinary use only.

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Miracle cancer “cures” are deceptive and potentially dangerous

We have to point out that many products claiming to prevent or treat cancer have spread widely on social media. Some patients turn to such products in the hope that they will be more effective or have fewer side effects than traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

Any medical treatment, including cancer treatments, must undergo rigorous clinical trials to prove safety and effectiveness. Online treatments generally lack such scientific proof and provide little or no evidence as to whether they are safe and beneficial for people with cancer. These unproven treatments can harm people in several ways.

Self-treatment with medications can also be dangerous, because all medications come with side effects. The fact that a drug is approved to treat a disease only means that its benefits in treating that particular disease outweigh the risks of side effects. This does not mean that the medicine will automatically be effective in treating other medical conditions. Furthermore, some medications can cause harm when they are not used as intended.

For example, ivermectin can cause serious interactions with other drugs, such as blood-thinning drugs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, poison control centers in the United States have seen an increase in calls due to ivermectin overdose, which is sometimes caused by concentrated veterinary formulations intended for large animals. Symptoms range from a mild rash, headache, nausea, and vomiting to severe toxicity involving seizures, coma, and respiratory failure.

In the case of drugs that have not been approved for use in humans, such as fenbendazole, there are often no studies on their effects on people. Therefore, their ability to cause side effects, toxicity, and interactions with other drugs in humans is unknown.

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Even products that are not harmful in themselves may cause indirect harm, as some patients may delay effective medical treatment or replace it with unproven treatments. Delayed treatment can cause the cancer to spread or get worse, reducing a person’s chances of survival.

Researchers at Yale University School of Medicine in the US found that people who use these complementary and alternative cancer treatments, in addition to or instead of conventional treatment respectively, are more likely to refuse medical treatments recommended by oncologists. This is associated with a higher risk of death compared to people receiving only clinically proven treatments.

It’s also important to remember that “there is no single cure for cancer,” as the American Cancer Society explains. Instead, doctors usually combine different strategies to customize treatment for each patient.

The persistent myth that pharmaceutical companies hide “cancer cures” because they are not profitable is contradicted by the ongoing development of new treatments. Current treatment options – including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and hormone therapy – are safe and effective in preventing cancer from growing and spreading.

But even when treatment is successful, there is no guarantee that the cancer will never come back. This is why oncologists generally use the concept of remission, which means that the cancer is under control and causing no symptoms, rather than “cured.”

Therefore, products that claim to “cure” cancer are, in the best-case scenario, deceptive. We call on people to stay away from these unsafe and unproven products.