#fenbendazole

Transcript:

The bizarre thing about people shouting either "IVERMECTIN IS HORSE DEWORMER" or "THE ELITES ARE HIDING THIS FROM US" is that both of those things are just obviously wrong.

We've looked at Ivermectin for a bunch of potential uses and it seems like there is a small chance that, at very high doses, it might help some people with certain cancers, but if it does help (which is unlikely) it probably won't help much. There's one trial recruiting patients to test it in combination with an immunotherapy drug right now.

The thing about ivermectin is that it isn't well-absorbed by mammals. This makes it very useful as an anti-parasitic because worms absorb it readily. So it poisons parasitic worms but not people.

But it is absorbed a bit and at high enough doses, it has a bunch of other effects on the human body, many of them negative.

Early in the pandemic, there were some studies in individual cells (rather than whole bodies) that showed it might help control the virus. When the "health influencer" space glommed onto that, we actually didn't know for sure whether it would be helpful or not. But because it was cheap and available, some people (lots, actually) really did started dosing themselves with veterinary ivermectin. By the time studies on the efficacy were published (which showed it wasn't at all effective) the damage had been done.

And so we ended up with ivermectin (a drug that real people take for real diseases) becoming a culture war signifier, which is FUCKING STUPID.

Now, Mel Gibson has friends who are in remission from cancer after taking ivermectin (and probably also the treatments recommended by their oncologists, as that is almost always how these stories go). And he and Joe Rogan, during their conversation, seem ASTOUNDED that people in cancer research are ignoring it. They seem to think that every elite knows that, if they so much as GLANCE at ivermectin, they're getting fucking fired.

Except that researchers have done tons of studies on whether ivermectin could possibly be useful in cancer treatment because, if it is, that would be really great! People seem to think that pharmaceutical companies are the only ones who do cancer research but actually they mostly just bring drugs to market. Most cancer research is funded by the government or done by universities.

As much as we've looked, it doesn't seem likely that ivermectin is a good cancer drug because, at the doses where it might have an effect on a cancer, it'll have all kinds of other nasty effects on the human body, like damage to the nervous system and brain.

But, despite that, we're looking, because for some people who are dying, it's worth checking to see if it would be useful in combination with other therapies.

Cancers are very hard to treat because cancer cells are very similar to /our/ cells. Trying to kill a parasite is relatively easy because worms are very different from people. Cancer cells are descended from us, they are human cells gone rogue, so it's hard to attack them without attacking the rest of the body. That's the whole reason why it's so much easier to kill parasites than it is to kill cancer cells.

Fenbendazole is an even weirder thing to get all excited about as an "alternative treatment" because we've studied it for cancer treatment because it acts on the microtubules that control cell replication. That's how a lot of chemotherapy drugs work (including one I took), targeting cells that replicate a lot. So fenbendazole's whole thing is that it might have been a good cancer treatment because it would be another option as a toxic cell-killing chemo drug.

But, because fenbendazole is (again) not very well absorbed by mammals, it is (again) a great drug for killing parasites and not a great drug for treating cancers.

I just…I kinda can't believe we are this incapable of just leaving cancer research to cancer researchers. Ivermectin is a medicine for humans. It's not a panacea. At low doses, it basically does nothing because it isn't easily absorbed by humans and, when it is, it hangs out almost entirely with fatty tissues.

It would be amazing if a cheap, well-understood drug were broadly useful in cancer treatment. Ivermectin just /isn't/.

I have a private theory that fenbendazole and ivermectin are so present in these conversations 100% because they are known to cure real diseases (parasitic infections) and they are easy to purchase extremely cheaply because they are available for animals.

That means people can actually take them, which creates both government warnings to NOT TAKE ANIMAL MEDICINES and many stories of people taking the animal medicines and (mostly) being just fine. That's just a tremendous mix for creating discourse and turning it into a culture war thing.

And look, if people are taking ivermectin WHILE taking the treatments their doctor recommends, that's stupid but unlikely to kill anyone.

Richard Fausset at The New York Times, via Seattle Times (03.31.2025):

Joe Grinsteiner is a gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. In a recent Facebook video, he produced a tube of veterinary-grade ivermectin paste — the kind made for deworming horses. He gave the tube a squeeze. Then he licked a slug of the stuff, and gulped. “Yum,” Grinsteiner said in the Feb. 25 video, one of a number of ivermectin-related posts he has made that have drawn millions of views on Facebook this year. “Actually, that tastes like dead cancer.” Ivermectin, a drug proven to treat certain parasitic diseases, exploded in popularity during the pandemic amid false claims that it could treat or prevent COVID-19. Now — despite a persistent message from federal health officials that its medical benefits are limited — interest in ivermectin is rising again, particularly among American conservatives who are seeing it promoted by right-wing influencers. Grinsteiner, 54, is a President Donald Trump supporter and a country music performer who lives in rural Michigan. He has claimed in his videos that ivermectin cured his skin cancer, as well as his wife’s cervical cancer. In a video last month, he said a woman told him her nonverbal autistic child had become verbal after using ivermectin. In a recent phone interview, Grinsteiner said he takes a daily dose of ivermectin to maintain his general well-being. There is no evidence to support people taking ivermectin to treat cancer or autism. Yet Grinsteiner believes that the medical and political establishments just want to keep average people from discovering the healing powers of a relatively affordable drug. “These guys are absolutely money driven,” he said in one video. “And when I say ‘these guys,’ I’m talking about all those politicians in Washington taking money from the Big Pharma.” Indeed, ivermectin has become a sort of enduring pharmacological MAGA hat: a symbol of resistance to what some in the movement describe as an elitist and corrupt cabal of politicians, scientists and medical experts. Although many of those experts fear that misinformation about ivermectin could lead to overdoses — or prompt people to reject proven treatments for COVID or other ailments — conservative lawmakers in a number of states are promoting legislation that would allow ivermectin to be sold without a prescription, often in the name of medical freedom.

Last week, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law allowing ivermectin to be sold over the counter . Other legislation is pending in at least six other states: Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Texas. In 2022, Tennessee passed a law making it easier to get ivermectin from a pharmacist. Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has in the past embraced the idea that ivermectin can treat COVID, but whether he might seek to integrate the drug into his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda remains unclear. Kennedy did not respond to a request for an interview for this article. But in 2021, he filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration asking officials to de-authorize the COVID vaccine, arguing that ivermectin was safer. The FDA continues to emphasize that it has not authorized or approved ivermectin for treating COVID, noting on its website that “currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19 in humans.” [...] Right-wing media, however, is full of advertisements for the drug; some ads describe it as an essential component of survivalist tool kits. The website Gateway Pundit recently ran a sponsored post from an online company that offers prescription ivermectin for “stockpiling” purposes, with an illustration of a postapocalyptic street scene. Two major figures in the MAGA movement — former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI — have promoted All Family Pharmacy, an online outfit that dispenses ivermectin with “a prescription from our licensed doctors.” “No more fighting the system for the treatments you want,” Bongino said on an episode of his popular podcast, one of his last before starting at the FBI. “Stock up now before the next crisis hits.” [...] “The ivermectin story fits within a very, very long tradition in America of people latching on to nonorthodox therapies based in part on their suspicion that, for profit-maximizing reasons, drug companies and physicians are suppressing truth about them,” Grossman said. Grinsteiner said he was familiar with ivermectin because he runs a small farm and uses it on some of his livestock. Suspicious of the COVID vaccine, he decided to take ivermectin preventively during the pandemic instead. His wife did too. [...] He made his first Facebook video about his experience with ivermectin in January. “It was like, maybe a minute video, and I went to bed,” he said. “And I woke up and my phone was just melting.” Facebook briefly suspended his account, then reinstated it. The company has appended to some of his videos links to a “context” page from fact-checking group Science Feedback. The page notes that ivermectin and another anti-parasitic drug, mebendazole, have shown “promising anticancer effects in in vitro and animal studies. However, preclinical studies cannot reliably predict a drug’s effectiveness against cancer in humans, and drug candidates that show effectiveness in cells and animals often fail in clinical trials.”

Yesterday when I came home I saw that Kuma has chewed off about 50% of his finnage.

I was shocked. I noticed that he was grumpier than usual and thought I needed to remove a bit of plants, which was thought to be today.

But then I saw those red worms coming out of him and of course that is the reason for his weird mood.

Has anybody experience treating fish with Fenbendazole, which I am having at home right now?

I will try to get my hands on Levamisole, but it shouldn't be used on fish with open wounds 😥😥

Help and experience appreciated.

Update: Pic of him right now. He looks so sad but still eats.