274. REPOST: FENBENDAZOLE CURES MANY CANCERS

Questions Answered, Things to Know, Useful Tips, Important tidbits of information.

NEWSFLASH late 2024: Treating cancer with fenbendazole has been called into question. See this post.

By BEN FEN, OCT 16, 2023. You may subscribe to his fenbendazole substack HERE,

This substack presents case reports of people who have treated their own cancers along with other articles to help understand how fenbendazole works to treat cancer. Previous articles covering other cancers are in the Archives link. This caught Joe Rogan’s interest HERE.

How Safe is Fenbendazole?

Due to the long and successful use of fenbendazole as a veterinary antiparasitic medicine since the late 1950s, a wealth of safety data has been acquired that has stood the test of time. According to Drugs.com, there are no commonly used drugs that interact with fenbendazole. Fenbendazole is so safe for veterinary consumption that it is sold by the 50-lb bag! The image below is from the 2011 film Bernie. The image is striking because seeing the many bags of Safe-Guard is reassuring regarding what must be, and is the extreme safety profile of fenbendazole. In other words, since fenbendazole is dumped into the feed of the animals with very little fretting over the exact dosage received, the standard dose of 222 mg fenbendazole (the amount used to deworm a 10-lb dog) used for cancer treatment is certainly at the lower end of any practical scale of toxicity! Also recall that the nation of India routinely deworms its population twice a year using a fenbendazole analog (albendazole).

How is Fenbendazole Best Administered?

Enhancing the Bioavailability of Fenbendazole with Oleic Acid. Oleic acid is a fatty acid that occurs naturally in various animal and vegetable fats and oils. The most readily available, oleic acid-rich, practical substance is olive oil. Most likely due to its role as an emulsifying agent, Liu et al (2018) found that pairing mebendazole with oleic acid (olive oil) greatly enhances the bioavailability of mebendazole. The magnitude of the effect was substantial, 1.6 to 2.8 times greater serum levels of mebendazole were obtained when co-administering mebendazole with various oils compared to controls. Olive oil was the most effective mebendazole booster. As should be expected, the increased serum levels of mebendazole translated into more effective parasite killing effects in the animals models used as well.

Administration of Fenbendazole

The practical application of interactions of fenbendazole with the substances mentioned above are straight forward. To maximize the likelihood of ingested fenbendazole getting into the blood stream to kill distant cancer cells, helping absorption is wise. Whether you choose to take fenben with a fatty meal, mixed in a tablespoon of olive oil or both, these actions should deliver more bang for your buck with respect to more of the fenbendazole surviving digestive degradation to deliver more cancer killing punch.

Taking fenbendazole is one thing, making sure it is actually absorbed can be a matter of life or death.

Absorption Issues with Fenbendazole

There was recently an instance of a person with small cell lung cancer SCLC who had eradicated 90%+ of his tumors with fenbendazole but then he started to feel pain and diagnostic testing showed the tumors returning. We probed and found that, rather than his wife administering the fenben in yogurt as she did initially, when he started to feel better he self-administered his fenben by mixing it into his morning coffee. His wife was asked to run her finger along the inside of his coffee mug. Fenbendazole residue was coating the mug. He immediately switched to liquid fenben and within a week the pain subsided, and in 6 weeks all the lung tumors were gone. This just happened over the past few months (detailed Case Report to come).

Test/Re-Test, Within-Subject Demonstration that Fenbendazole Eradicates Cancer

Embedded in the discussion of absorption issues above is an important observation regarding fenbendazole and cancer. This particular person with SCLC had his cancer mostly eradicated by fenbendazole (imaging verification) only to have it return (imaging verification) despite continuing to take fenbendazole. At first blush it seemed that fenbendazole was not working. As mentioned above, it was discovered that there was an administration issue preventing fenbendazole from being ingested and once that issue was resolved his pain subsided and that was accompanied by his cancer resolving.

This situation is best described as a happy accident or, scientifically, as an experiment-in-nature. It would obviously be unethical to ask someone with cancer to purposely stop taking fenbendazole “to see what happens”. But that is what happened here by accident. Fenbendazole eradicated almost all of his SCLC, then there was an administration issue with fenbendazole and the SCLC returned. Once the issue was identified and resolved, fenbendazole eradicated the cancer again.

A within-subjects experimental design is among the most powerful in determining whether the agent of interest is really responsible for the observed effect. In essence, in this case of SCLC initially due to the actions of fenbendazole, the cancer was disappearing, then without fenbendazole the cancer returned, and then again under fenbendazole the cancer was eliminated. All in the same person. It appears that fenbendazole’s presence or absence is the critical factor in whether this cancer was present or absent.

A Paper that Apparently Found No Anti-Cancer Effect of Fenbendazole

On occasion we will receive a notice from a reader regarding one particular study that is out there that found no anti-cancer effects from mebendazole. This paper by Mansoori, S., Fryknäs, M., Alvfors, C., Loskog, A., Larsson, R., & Nygren, P. (2021). A phase 2a clinical study on the safety and efficacy of individualized dosed mebendazole in patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer. Scientific reports, 11(1), 8981, reports that mebendazole did not help eradicate cancer in patients with various gastrointestinal cancers. Referencing the absorption discussion above, the first question one has to ask is, given that the target group studied had various GI cancers, could absorption issues have contributed to the failure to find an effect? The answer appears to be YES, as the investigators observed that “Only five patients reached the target serum-mebendazole concentration.” Since there were only 10 patients in the study, and if only five had evidence that the treatment (mebendazole) was actually absorbed, it stands to reason that the study failed to find an effect because of simple absorption issues. That is, if the drug does not enter the circulatory system, it can not be expected to have an effect.

This study should have never been published because of the errors in the design of the study, the low number of subjects and the glaring alternative explanation of the failure to find an effect of the drug: the subjects could not absorb the drug as evidenced by the fact that therapeutic serum levels were not reached in most subjects. But it is published and we should be aware of it.

Does Fenbendazole Cause Liver Damage?

Some have expressed concern that fenbendazole has been linked to liver injury. There is a report documenting the effect of fenbendazole on liver function as measured by the enzymes aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT). A search using Google of “fenbendazole and cancer” returns this case report as the first result: Teppei Yamaguchi, Junichi Shimizu, Yuko Oya, Yoshitsugu Horio, Toyoaki Hida. Drug-Induced Liver Injury in a Patient with Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer after the Self-Administration of Fenbendazole Based on Social Media Information. Case Rep Oncol 1 September 2021; 14 (2): 886–891. https://doi.org/10.1159/000516276

Elevated liver enzymes may actually be a good sign for a cancer patient taking fenbendazole. Those liver enzyme (AST, ALT) values may spike for one or two months as the liver is stressed by the influx of dead cancer cells as it filters and processes the cellular debris from those dead cancer cells. AST and ALT increasing is a sign of hepatic stress (work), not necessarily disease, in the context of fenbendazole use. These liver enzymes usually normalize after the cancer is eradicated by fenbendazole.

FYI, liver enzymes will also fluctuate with other noncancerous sicknesses/recoveries as dead cellular debris enters the bloodstream and is processed by the liver for removal. This is part of a normal physiological process. Temporary liver enzyme fluctuation should be expected to occur as a matter of course when using fenbendazole as fenbendazole kills the cancer cells.

Interpreting Cancer Diagnostic Tests in Context of Fenbendazole

Another issue is the interpretation of metabolic bone scans (PET studies) after eradicating cancer that spread to bone. Oncologists may interpret the hot spots in the bones that show up in the PET scans, the lytic lesions (the holes left in the bones where the cancer was) as indicative of metabolic activity consistent with cancer, when in actuality the activity is related to bone remineralization/remodeling/regrowth in the previously cancer-filled holes. Because the concept of a ‘cure’ such as fenbendazole is foreign to mainstream oncology they may not factor in the possibility of a cure into their thinking. The upshot is that misdiagnoses may be made and potentially harmful overtreatment could be prescribed.

Therefore, it is important for those taking fenbendazole to be aware that post-cancer eradication lytic lesions in bone, that present as hyper-metabolic “hot spots” in PET scans, may not be evidence of the cancer reappearing but rather indicative of healing bone growth in the holes that were previously occupied by the cancer. Those self-treating with fenbendazole should take an active role in understanding how the testing works that is determining whether they have cancer or not, and if treatments, whether they be traditional or non-traditional, are moving the needle in the correct direction.

Fenbendazole for Cancer Prevention

On the one hand there are the risks associated with taking medicine you don't need. And on the other is taking medicine that will prevent something like cancer. The conceptual issue with prevention is the logical issue of proving a negative. That is, if you never get cancer after taking fenben it is impossible to determine that fenben caused you not to get cancer. Having said that, some of the animal studies cited here DEFINITELY prove that fenbendazole PREVENTS cancer. In fact, the initial observation was that prior routine veterinary deworming treatment with fenben prevented the experimental brain tumor grafts from taking root and growing. This is literally the definition of prevention, see Bai et al., (2011) for example. Also recall that the nation of India, which routinely deworms its population twice a year using a fenbendazole analog (albendazole), has one-third the incidence of cancer as does the US.

Regarding a protocol. Some healthy people, with no concerning risk factors do the following: once every 3 months we take 222 mg fenbendazole along with a tablespoon of olive oil for 3 consecutive days. A reasonable preventative protocol could be developed that took into account risk factors and weighed the aggressiveness of fenbendazole administration based on those risk factors. Because the safety profile is so great and the cost of fenbendazole is so low, and the cost of developing cancer is catastrophic, it may be wise to consider some sort of preventative program.

A devil’s advocate might argue that, because it appears for all intents and purposes that fenbendazole can cure cancer, the rationale of preventing something that can be easily eradicated is somewhat of a fool’s errand.

Whether the up-front preventative approach or the after-the-fact curative approach is adopted, it is nonetheless comforting and empowering to have a weapon like fenbendazole in your arsenal.

Time-Course and Half-Life of Fenbendazole (Mebendazole)

Knowing how long a drug is active in the body is useful for a number of reasons, the most important of which is to help guide dosing. In a study measuring the disposition and time-course of mebendazole in the blood of healthy human volunteers, Conti et al., (2009) found that a single 1000 mg dose had an average half-life of 7.4 hours. According to Drugs.com, the half-life of a 500 mg dose of mebendazole varies between 3-6 hours.

Using Conti et al.’s (2009) value of a 7.4 hr half-life in human subjects suggests that if multiple doses per day are used that spreading them out by 7 or so hours might be a reasonable strategy to maintain therapeutic blood levels of fenbendazole.

Covid-19 Shots and Boosters, Cancer and Fenbendazole

The recent phenomenon called “turboCancer” appears to be linked to covid shots and boosters. There are many other Substacks that present convincing evidence linking covid mRNA shots and boosters to the appearance of sudden, very aggressive, often fatal cancers in a variety of subgroups, most troubling in the 25-54 age group. These cancers, along with mRNA shot-induced cardiovascular injuries are reflected in the much higher death rates in most age groups since the pre-Covid-shot era in 2020. These deaths are also reflected in the greatly increased payouts of life insurance companies compared to the pre-Covid mRNA shot time-period (the increased deaths have nothing to do with the covid virus).

This Substack was actually spawned by one of those turboCancer cases. Several of the Case Reports that are presented here are related to covid mRNA shots. Many of the cancer in the Case Reports that are in progress were caused by the mRNA shots according to the person making the report.

So far, in the roughly one year time period that this Substack has been around, the only instances that we’re aware that fenbendazole was not effective (absent failure to take it) was when covid shots or boosters were administered after self-treatment began (and was showing positive results). Those instances described involved three separate cases of pancreatic, esophageal and renal cancer.

If fenbendazole is kryptonite to the cancer cell, it appears that mRNA covid shots are kryptonite to fenbendazole’s effectiveness. Don’t know what the mechanism might be through which these shots interfere with the actions of fenbendazole. Most likely it is not a direct effect of the mRNA shots on the microtubule or glucose utilization action of fenbendazole on the cancer cell but more likely a generalized immune system exhaustion effect, p53 tumor suppression gene disruption or undiagnosed cardiovascular injury, blood clot, or stroke caused by the mRNA shots that masqueraded as a cancer death. Just theories.

If you are self-treating cancer with fenbendazole, avoiding future covid shots and boosters, as if your life depended on it, is something to consider.

Is Fenbendazole Safe for Pregnant or Nursing Mothers?

One warning for the veterinary use of fenbendazole is during pregnancy. Don’t administer to pregnant or nursing animals.

Recall that fenbendazole eradicated cancer stem cells in experimental preparations. According to Guerini et al (2019) “its (fenbendazole/mebendazole) wide range activity could also affect stemness-associated factors shared between CSCs and normal stem cells.” To the extent that normal and malignant stem cells share common mechanisms that may similarly be disrupted by fenbendazole, caution should be exercised when considering the use of fenbendazole during a period of heightened stem cell activity as would be present in pregnancy.

Are There Any Interactions of Fenbendazole with Other Substances and/or Drugs?

Cimetidine: Searching for drug interactions for mebendazole, the human form of fenbendazole, returns a few potentially minor interactions. One interaction noted is with cimetidine “Cimetidine may decrease the hepatic metabolism of mebendazole. Serum levels of mebendazole may be increased. Since plasma levels of mebendazole vary greatly among patients receiving this drug, the clinical significance of this interaction is not well established.”

What is cimetidine? Cimetidine, sold under the brand name Tagamet, among others, is an H2 histamine receptor antagonist (blocker) that inhibits stomach acid production. It is mainly used in the treatment of heartburn and peptic ulcers.

So a heartburn drug may decrease the metabolism of fenbendazole/mebendazole by presumably disrupting stomach acids which has the net effect of increasing the blood levels of the fenbendazole/mebendazole.

Manufacturers of Fenbendazole: Does the Brand Matter?

There are four main brands of fenbendazole that we are familiar with. Panacur-C made in the US by Merck, Safe-Guard Liquid for Goats made by Merck in the US, FenBen Labs or FenLabs made by Canchema in Lithuania and FenBen Tablets from the Happy Healing Store North Carolina (unclear as to where the fenbendazole is manufactured). All are available on Amazon. There are also a slew of Johnny-Come-Lately brands of fenbendazole that have appeared for sale on Amazon since this Substack started. Until Case Reports come in specifically citing those new brands of fenbendazole we can’t comment on their effectiveness. The image below shows photos of the various brands that have been used successfully by readers of this Substack (the image in the upper right is the liquid form of fenbendazole).

We get asked constantly whether there is a difference in effectiveness between the brands. We have not done any analyses on any of the products. However, we can report that all of the products listed above have been identified as instrumental in eradicating various cancers in the various Case Reports presented here. As such that evidence would seem to argue that all the brands are equivalent in function.

However, we specifically don’t recommend, endorse or ding any brand because all that matters is that it works. And so far, they all appear to work. Use whatever you’re comfortable with, we have no evidence that the brand used matters.

Hurry Up…and Wait is an Opportunity to Self-Treat

Now that there is a little more awareness of fenbendazole some are being proactive and self-treating their cancers in the interim period from diagnosis to first scheduled treatment. In many instances this period can span weeks or months making it an ideal opportunity to try something like fenbendazole.

In the last few months there was a 40 yr old man, named Brian, diagnosed with bladder cancer. He noticed some diffuse pain, reddish urine, went in to the doctor and he received a definitive diagnosis of early stage bladder cancer using serum, radiographic and biopsy techniques. Brian’s first radiation session was scheduled about a month later. His wife knew about fenbendazole, he took it (222 mg per day), his urine cleared up and he felt better.

They were convinced that the cancer was gone so they asked for followup diagnostics. After some back and forth, they received updated testing.

The cancer was gone.

At the follow up visit the couple reported to the doctor that they used fenbendazole to eradicate the cancer. The doctor’s response was “No, that can’t be it, we must have misdiagnosed you in the first place.”

Let that response sink in for a minute. The doctor’s response was to deny that Brian ever had cancer. But didn’t Brian show up to get irradiated for a bladder tumor that they had verified the type and location of through corroborating methods? So either Brian was going to receive treatment for a cancer he didn’t have or the initial tests that he had to determine the type and location of his cancer were fraudulent. Either option is not good.

There is a lot to unpack in that report but three of the most important points are these.

1. If given the opportunity to self-treat before any traditional treatments are scheduled it may be wise to use that time period productively like Brian did. Many of the Case Reports here use fenbendazole along with traditional treatments. Brian avoided all traditional treatments by taking advantage of the opportunity to self-treat by virtue of the lag in scheduled appointments commonplace in today’s medicine.

2. The assertion that the initial diagnosis of cancer was incorrect is stunning. This is not the first time this Substack has heard that response from an oncologist. One method to discredit fenbendazole may be to discredit the initial diagnosis. This would seem to be a drastic example of falling on your own sword in an effort to not admit the truth.

3. Just about everyone here will know of the Joe Tippens story. The thumbnail sketch is he had terminal metastatic small cell lung cancer, exhausted all traditional treatments and was given up for dead. A veterinarian friend of his told him about fenben, which he started to take. Coincident with that Joe was enrolled in a clinical trial, along with 1099 others, to test the effects of an experimental drug on SCLC. Of the 1100 people in the study, one survived, that was Joe Tippens. Joe was the only one taking fenben and the rest is history. The relevance of this for the present discussion surrounds the rewriting of history. In a recent Epoch Timesarticle on parasites and health, in a discussion of how parasitic infestation can mimic various illnesses, the author indicated that parasitic infection can be misdiagnosed as cancer citing Joe Tippens’ SCLC case. The implication is that because fenbendazole is an antiparasitic that Joe must have been misdiagnosed, did not have SCLC - despite being diagnosed, treated and enrolled in a Clinical Trial for SCLC.

Don’t know what to make of these two examples of claiming misdiagnoses as the reason why fenbendazole eradicated the “cancer”. But, if there is an effort underway to claim that fenbendazole is not an anticancer agent but is actually eradicating parasites that are misdiagnosed as “cancer,” then wouldn’t it behoove all those diagnosed with cancer to rule out the “parasite hypothesis” by self-treating with fenbendazole before starting an arduous, expensive and low probability of success traditional standard-of-care cancer treatment? Just a thought.

Crackle, Sizzle and Burn

Several people have reported that when they self-administer fenbendazole, they have some interesting sensations. One person, with SCLC that has subsequently resolved with fenbendazole, reported that he could “feel it working because there was a crackle and sizzling sensation” in his chest, where the cancers cells presumably were, when he took fenbendazole. Two separate instances of men with prostate cancer reported an irritation or an inflammation-like sensation in the general region of the prostate when taking fenbendazole.

Another person self-treating for cancer reported a sensation of mild burning/irritation in both deltoid (shoulder) muscles that coincided with the locations of covid mRNA injections after taking fenbendazole.

Whether these sensations are related to the main effects of fenbendazole (cancer eradication) or more in line with what might be better characterized as side effects remains to be determined. All are very interesting, and as time passes hopefully we’ll get more reports like these from attentive readers that will help us understand what fenbendazole is doing.

References

Bai, R. Y., Staedtke, V., Aprhys, C. M., Gallia, G. L., & Riggins, G. J. (2011). Antiparasitic mebendazole shows survival benefit in 2 preclinical models of glioblastoma multiforme. Neuro-oncology, 13(9), 974–982. https://doi.org/10.1093/neuonc/nor077

Chauca Strand, G., Johansson, N., Jakobsson, N. et al. Cancer Drugs Reimbursed with Limited Evidence on Overall Survival and Quality of Life: Do Follow-Up Studies Confirm Patient Benefits? Clinical Drug Investigation (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40261-023-01285-4

Corti, N., Heck, A., Rentsch, K., Zingg, W., Jetter, A., Stieger, B., & Pauli-Magnus, C. (2009). Effect of ritonavir on the pharmacokinetics of the benzimidazoles albendazole and mebendazole: an interaction study in healthy volunteers. European journal of clinical pharmacology, 65(10), 999–1006. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-009-0683-y

Guerini AE, Triggiani L, Maddalo M, Bonù ML, Frassine F, Baiguini A, Alghisi A, Tomasini D, Borghetti P, Pasinetti N, et al. Mebendazole as a Candidate for Drug Repurposing in Oncology: An Extensive Review of Current Literature. Cancers. 2019; 11(9):1284. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers11091284

Liu, C. S., Zhang, H. B., Jiang, B., Yao, J. M., Tao, Y., Xue, J., & Wen, A. D. (2012). Enhanced bioavailability and cysticidal effect of three mebendazole-oil preparations in mice infected with secondary cysts of Echinococcus granulosus. Parasitology research, 111(3), 1205–1211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-012-2954-2

Milner, C. (2023) Parasites: An overlooked and underestimated health threat. Epoch Times, September 9, 2023.

Fenbendazole vs. Mebendazole vs. Albendazole vs. Flubendazole: The benzimidazoles are very similar chemically and they have very similar mechanisms of action with respect to disrupting microtubule function, specifically defined as binding to the colchicine-sensitive site of the beta subunit of helminithic (parasite) tubulin thereby disrupting binding of that beta unit with the alpha unit of tubulin which blocks intracellular transport and glucose absorption (Guerini et al., 2019). If someone asks you how fenbendazole kills the cancer cells, the answer is in italics in the previous sentence.

The class of drugs known as benzimidazoles includes fenbendazole, mebendazole, albendazole and flubendazole. Mebendazole is the form that is approved for human use while fenbendazole is approved for veterinary use. The main difference is the cost. Mebendazole is expensive ~$555 per 100 mg pill, while fenbendazole is inexpensive ~48 cents per 222 mg free powder dose (Williams, 2019). As you may recall, albendazole is the form used to treat intestinal parasites in India and these cost 2 cents per pill. FYI, to illustrate how Americans are screwed by Big Pharma, two pills of mebendazole cost just $4 in the UK, 27 cents per 100 mg pill in India and $555 per 100 mg pill in the US.

While most of the pre-clinical research uses mebendazole, probably because it is the FDA-approved-for-humans form of fenbendazole, virtually all of the self-treating clinical reports involve the use of fenbendazole. Because the preclinical cancer studies use mebendazole (ironically the human form of fenbendazole) and humans self-treat their cancers with fenbendazole (the animal form of mebendazole) it is very reasonable to assume that mebendazole and fenbendazole are functional equivalents with respect to cancer. It would be helpful if future pre-clinical and clinical investigations simply used fenbendazole as a practical matter. For the purposes of this Substack, fenbendazole, mebendazole and albendazole are used interchangably.

Where to get fenbendazole
In our experience and the experiences of those that write in, it appears that the three readily available brands of fenbendazole (Panacur-C, FenBen Labs, Happy Healing Labs) are equally effective. Panacur-C can be obtained locally in pet stores, while they all can be obtained from Amazon.

Yoho addendum about dosing:

The post author said, “The range of doses used in various case reports is 222 mg to 2000 mg fenbendazole per day. No side effects were reported with these doses. The ideal dosing protocol is a frustration that we experience with repurposed drugs. For now, we must rely on educated guesses, trial and error, citizen scientists, and community trials.”

Another comment: “444 mg/day. Joe Tippen’s protocol is an option. HERE is another dosage guide.”

And see fenbendazole.org.

Yoho disclaimer: I claim no copyright; you may quote any of my essays or books in part or whole without restriction or permission if you credit me. My writing is general commentary, and because I am retired, I never give medical advice. Make your own decisions about your health and use the information here at your own risk.