Fenbendazole as a cure for cancer: case study from the US

FOLLOWING is an article from a 2019 newsletter by Dr David Williams of Healthy Directions LLC, Maryland, USA. We have edited the original article and have added relevant web links where helpful.

If you were diagnosed with metastatic melanoma, were told you had at most three months left to live and no chance of survival, so you should contact hospice…what would you do?

I was with my friend Benton a year ago when he received this exact news. A couple of weeks ago, I
spoke with Joe Tippens, another gentleman who had been diagnosed with incurable, advanced small-
cell lung cancer. Joe was given less than a one percent chance of survival and possibly three months
to live.

With aggressive chemotherapy, radiation, and an experimental drug, doctors might be able to extend that timeframe to a year, at best. Today, Benton is still alive, almost clear of any signs of melanoma and
enjoying life to the fullest. And when I recently spoke with Joe, he had just completed his tenth quarterly
checkup at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he was found to be completely cancer free.

While both of these men underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and experimental immunotherapy,
they also made the brave decision to implement other unapproved therapies—a decision that I have no doubt saved their lives. If you or a loved one are ever faced with such a horrific scenario, knowing exactly
how to use one of these therapies could be the difference between life and death.

Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this cancer-fighting therapy has been known for quite some time
but has been withheld from the public. The secrecy has primarily been for financial reasons, as I’ll
explain later. But more importantly, I want to share the research supporting this therapy, how to
obtain it inexpensively, and exactly how to use it.

No Hope…to Remission
Joe’s story best illustrates what the public is allowed to see, as opposed to what’s often happening
behind the scenes in the business of treating cancer. In the fall of 2016, Joe was leaving the US to start a new job in Zurich, Switzerland. Two days prior to his flight, he was experiencing what he thought was
simple congestion.

He stopped at a neighborhood clinic for a prescription. However, a routine chest X-ray revealed a mass in his left lung the size of a fist. This led to a diagnosis of small-cell lung cancer and within a few days,
the start of intensive chemo and radiation therapy at MD Anderson.

As Joe put it, “The radiation turned my esophagus into fried bacon.” He couldn’t eat or swallow anything.
Rather than agree to a feeding tube, he decided to “live off his fat stores” and use an IV to keep his body
hydrated.

After eight weeks, his weight dropped from 200 lbs to 105. After completing chemo and radiation in January 2017, Joe was scheduled for another PET scan. It revealed the therapies had indeed stopped the growth in his left lung. But it also showed that the cancer had spread to his neck, right lung, stomach, liver, bladder, pancreas, and tail bone. In his words, “The PET scan lit up like a Christmas tree.”

As I mentioned, the odds of curing small-cell lung cancer aren’t good to begin with, and when it has
spread to that many locations, it is considered incurable…less than 1 percent cure rate with an average
life expectancy of three months.

That’s when doctors told Joe they wanted to put him in clinical trial—not one that would save his
life, but one that might extend it by a year or so. He obviously agreed.

Many of these types of cancer studies are not designed to test for a possible cure, but rather to see
if a drug can either improve quality of life during a patient’s last days or possibly extend remaining time.
Typically, these studies are only approved for patients whose cases are considered hopeless and there’s
nothing more that can be done. In Joe’s case, this was one of those studies.

With little hope left, Joe returned home to Oklahoma. Two days later, he contacted his friend, a large
animal veterinarian, who had posted a story online about a scientist working for Merck pharmaceuticals
in the veterinary division. The scientist happened to be testing the effects of their existing products on mice that had various cancers. That’s when she discovered that one of their dog products (a dewormer) was 100 percent effective.

This same scientist had stage 4 brain cancer and, like Joe, was also given three months to live. She started taking the dog dewormer and six weeks later, she was clear of the cancer. On January 15, 2017, without
informing the oncologists at MD Anderson, Joe started taking the same dewormer while continuing on
the experimental drug.

Every quarter since he began this treatment, Joe goes to MD Anderson for a PET scan. May 2017 was three months after having the PET scan that lit up like a Christmas tree, with cancer from “head to tail.” The May scan came back all clear. There was no sign of residual tumors, no recurrent tumors, and no signs of metastasis.

The oncologists were totally mystified. Joe suspected it was the dewormer but decided that it wasn’t
the right time to tell them. At that point he couldn’t be 100 percent certain whether it was the
dewormer working or the clinical trial drug they were giving him. He certainly didn’t want them to take him off the trial drug if it was responsible for clearing the tumors.

The clinical trial ended in September 2017, and he was scheduled for another PET scan. That scan was also all clear, without any sign of cancer. Since the clinical trial had ended and getting kicked off was no longer
a concern, he decided it was time to come clean and tell the oncologists about using the dewormer.

But before telling them, he wanted to know how many people were in the same clinical trial as he was, and how many of them had responded positively to the experimental drug. He was told 1,100 patients were in the same trial and taking the exact same medication as Joe. However, Joe was the only person whose cancer had gone into remission.

It obviously wasn’t a result of the experimental drug. That’s when Joe told them about taking the dewormer. They were shocked. But their reply was even more shocking.

Here is their conversation with Joe, as he relayed it to me: “We’ve known for decades that
the anthelmintic class of drugs could have possible efficacy against cancer. In fact in the 1980s and
1990s there was an anthelmintic drug called Levamisole that was used on colon cancer.”

Joe said, “Doc, if you have known for decades, why hasn’t more research been done on it?” He replied, “Probably because of money. All of these drugs are far off patent and nobody is going to spend
a gazillion dollars to repurpose them for cancer, only to have generic competition the next day.”

Dr Williams then goes on to explain something many of us are well aware of – the business of cancer. We will omit this section of the very long article and get to the guts of the story on fenbendazole.

All About Fenbendazole
The dewormer is called Panacur C. The active ingredient is fenbendazole (FenBen for short).
Fenbendazole belongs to a family of drugs called benzimidazoles, which have been safely utilized
as anthelmintics for roughly six decades.

Anthelmintics are compounds used for the treatment of gastrointestinal parasites like giardia, roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, and pinworms. Merck & Co. commenced the use
of selective anthelmintics around 1961.

They were initially given only to animals, but human use soon followed. Fenbendazole is the anthelmintic typically found in animal products. A sister product to fenbendazole, mebendazole, is typically found in deworming products for humans.

Fenbendazole is administered orally in both large and small animals including dogs, pigs, cats, cattle, horses, rabbits, and fish. When given as directed, it is considered extremely safe.

Although fenbendazole has traditionally been considered an animal anthelmintic, when taken orally it has also been shown to be very well tolerated and safe in humans. While observations in humans are limited, based on the data, a single oral dose up to 2000 mg per person, or 500 mg per person for 10 consecutive days, wasn’t problematic.

There’s even one case where a 67-year-old patient with a very rare and severe parasitic infection of the liver took around 3,000 mg per day of mebendazole continuously for 13 years without toxicity issues. (J Hepatol 1998 Dec;29(6):994–8) In a clinical trial conducted at Johns Hopkins, no reports of toxicity or other problems were seen in patients taking 200 mg of fenbendazole per day.

Over the years, there has been a lot of research that explains exactly how fenbendazole works at destroying parasitic worms as well as cancer cells. So far, there appears to be four different modes of action.

First, around the nucleus of all living cells, there exists a protein-structured microtubule network. These microtubules are involved in cell division, the cell being able to adapt its shape to a changing environment, and the movement of compounds within the cell.

Fenbendazole binds to tublin, a structural protein of these microtubules. This creates a blockage in the tiny tubes and prevents the removal of waste products and the intake of nutrients.

The uptake of glucose, the sole energy source of the parasitic worms, is shut down. Without an
energy supply, the worms are either paralyzed and die, or they are expelled from the body. Cancer cells also require glucose as an energy source. By blocking the microtubular network of cancer cells, fenbendazole helps to shut down their energy supply and destroys them.

Second, fenbendazole further reduces the glucose uptake of cancer cells by downregulating what are called GLUT transporters. These are proteins that deliver glucose molecules one by one across cell membranes.

Third, fenbendazole increases the activity of the body’s natural killer cells in the presence of P53 tumor
suppressor genes.

Fourth, fenbendazole acts as a kinase inhibitor, which helps block the formation of new blood vessels
necessary for tumors to survive. These anticancer properties are not new. They were documented years ago.

I was able to find one of the earliest studies, published in 2002, which detailed these effects. (Clin Cancer Res 2002 Sep;8(9):2963–9)

In 2002, while working at MD Anderson, Dr. Tapas Mukhopadhyay and his colleagues reported that mebendazole elicited a potent antitumor effect on human cancer cell lines both in vitro and in vivo.

In simple terms, mebendazole (for all practical purposes the same drug as fenbendazole) strongly and
profoundly inhibited the growth of lung, breast, ovary, colon, and bone cancer cells in both tissue samples and in live animals. At the same time, it had no negative effect on normal cell growth.

This same study was supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute. It makes you wonder why
they would fund a study like this, get such amazing results, and then not have enough interest to do a
follow-up study or further pursue a drug with such potential.

Later in 2012, Dr. Mukhopadhyay and colleagues, at Panjab University in India, published another study
showing that fenbendazole was a potent compound for inhibiting the growth of cancer cells without doing any harm to or affecting the growth of normal cells.

And in 2018, Dr. Mukhopadhyay and colleagues published yet another study highlighting fenbendazole as a safe and inexpensive anthelmintic drug possessing “efficient anti-proliferative activity” in human cancer cells. (This basically means it inhibits the growth of cancer cells.)

In that same report, Dr. Mukhopadhyay states, “FDA as well as other published pre-clinical data on the toxicological studies performed on animals shows that fenbendazole administered in different species at dosages several times the approved dosage does not cause any adverse effects in animals. Further, our previous study also showed minimal toxicity of fenbendazole in normal human cells.

Considering this information, [fenbendazole] can be an ideal candidate for development as an anti-cancer agent.” (Scientific Reports 2018 Aug 8(1):11926)

MD Anderson isn’t the only facility that has knowledge of fenbendazole. I suspect practically every cancer
center knows about it.

In 2009, researchers at Johns Hopkins evaluated various drugs for treatment of glioblastoma—the most common brain cancer in adults. It is very aggressive, with the average survival 11 to 15 months, and it is considered incurable.

They implanted the cancer cells into the brains of mice, which is the normal procedure in these types
of studies. Before implanting the cells, however, these particular mice were treated for pinworms with
fenbendazole. The brain cancer did
not develop. It never grew.

It’s interesting, when I dug into the details of this study, fenbendazole was rarely mentioned. It was referred to as “an animal version of mebendazole.” Based on the fact that fenbendazole was able to stop glioblastoma, the researchers received funding to conduct phase I studies to test the safety of mebendazole for brain cancer in both adults and children.

It was found to be very safe and extremely well tolerated, but that was expected, considering both
drugs have been used to treat pinworms all over the world, at these same doses, for almost 60 years. And they have always been shown to be safe and well-tolerated by animal and humans alike.

The takeaway here is that we have a very inexpensive, effective, safe, readily available compound that has been shown to both prevent and reverse many forms of cancer.

Researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, and many oncologists and cancer centers have known about
fenbendazole for close to 20 years. When I searched the government-run website on approved clinical trials (clinicaltrials.gov), Johns Hopkins had completed several studies on the safety of mebendazole and was recruiting subjects for additional trials for brain and colon cancers.

Surprisingly, I couldn’t find any human clinical trials on fenbendazole. You can probably
guess why. Fenbendazole is considered an animal product. It was never approved for human use,
it’s sold without a prescription, and its patent has expired so anyone can make it generically. This is
why no one wants to promote it or recommend its use in humans. (Edit follows)

Joe’s Secrets to Successful Treatment
In my discussion with Joe, I asked for his thoughts on mebendazole vs fenbendazole. He was fully aware
and disheartened, to say the least, of the price-gouging situation.

However, from his firsthand experience of using fenbendazole and his discussions with numerous scientists and researchers, he feels fenbendazole is actually a better choice when it comes to treating
cancer.

In fact, even though cancer-free now, he intends to continue taking it for the rest of his life.

Specifically, Joe uses Panacur C made by Merck Animal Health. The package for small dogs (10 lbs) contains three 1-gram packets. Each gram of Panacur C contains 22.2 percent (222 mg) of fenbendazole.

His regimen consists of taking one 1-gram packet of powder (contains 222 mg of fenbendazole)
each day for three days, and then taking four days off and repeating the process. This requires one
package a week.

Although there haven’t been any problems noted at this dosage, the purpose of taking four days off
between doses is to eliminate any possibility of liver or kidney issues. It doesn’t matter when you take
the fenbendazole and it doesn’t need to be taken with meals. You can simply swallow the tasteless
powder, or mix it with food.

A week’s supply (one 3-pack) now (2019) costs around $8. When Joe started it was $4 a package. Since he went public with his results, the price has doubled. You can purchase Panacur C directly from Amazon or other online pet supply companies like 1-800-PetMeds and Chewy.com.

If you know of a compounding pharmacy, they can buy fenbendazole in bulk to save some money. Fenbendazole is also sold as a liquid. Merck sells the liquid under the Safe-Guard label, for goats and beef and dairy cattle. Each milliliter of liquid contains 100 mg of fenbendazole.

Joe’s recommended plan would require a 2.2 milliliter dose, which translates to just less than half a teaspoon. Additionally, fenbendazole is sold online to treat worm infections in tropical fish: 100 percent
fenbendazole is typically used and it comes in either 250 mg packets or the bulk powder.

Regardless of the product, Joe stuck with the dosage of 222 mg based on the research he learned
from Johns Hopkins showing that 200 mg per day was safe and well tolerated. (It’s possible that higher doses may be even more effective and work quicker, but again there
aren’t any definitive studies to base this on.

Dr. Gregory Riggins, one of the doctors researching mebendazole at Johns Hopkins, told HemOnc Today (June 15, 2017) the following: “Mebendazole has a 40-year track record of safe use. We already know it is difficult, if not impossible, to reach toxic levels with mebendazole.”

Until we know more, however, Joe is sticking with his current regimen. While he feels fenbendazole is
undoubtedly what saved his life and defeated his cancer, there are a couple of other parts to his
treatment regimen that he feels helped contribute to his success: Additional nutrients.

Based on his personal research, Joe also started taking three more products, which he uses seven days a week. These items were not used in any of the studies mentioned earlier:

• Vitamin E complex containing tocotrienols and tocopherols, 400–800 mg per day. He recommends Gamma E by Life Extension or Perfect E by Vitamin Discount Center.
• Curcumin (600 mg per day). He uses the product Theracurmin HP by Integrative Therapeutics.
• CBD oil (one to two droppers-full, the equivalent of 25 mg per day taken under the tongue).

Positive attitude

If you ever have the opportunity to meet or speak with Joe, one of the first things you notice is his positive and upbeat attitude. This is also the case with most cancer survivors I’ve met. Benton, my friend I mentioned earlier, exudes the same attitude and humor.

It’s hard to overstress the power and importance of visualization and positive thinking. Joe’s story didn’t end after overcoming cancer. He wanted to share his story with as many people as possible. He started a blog to detail his personal experience in hopes that others could use the information to help defeat their
cancer.

Joe’s testimony about his recovery and treatement regimen can be heard on YouTube. Two years after his recover in 2017 Tippens had gathered some 70 success stories worldwide, medical evidence from which he hopes may qualify for an anecdotal, limited clinical trial.

He has worked with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) in Oklahoma City where a database on patients using fenbendazole was to be compiled.

Following are some of the questions Dr Williams asked Tippens along with his answers.

How long does it take to see results using fenbendazole? At the recommended dosage and schedule, it appears to be anywhere from four weeks to three months. Some people have reported being completely clear of cancer in four weeks. Since Joe was only being checked quarterly, he’s not sure when his cancer cleared.

Can it be used concurrently with chemo and/or radiation? Yes. That’s what Joe did. He hasn’t heard
or seen any reports that it conflicts with conventional therapies.

How many people are taking fenbendazole? Joe personally knows of more than 400 people who have taken or are currently using it.

What are the success and failure rates? When we spoke, he had over 70 documented success stories and there were others that he didn’t document when he first started sharing his experience. The only failures that he is aware of are those who he believes started the therapy too late. These individuals passed away not long after starting fenbendazole, and he feels the cancer was just too far advanced.

What types of cancer does it work on? That list keeps growing, but it seems to work on just about every form of cancer. I urge you to go and read some of the success stories on his blog.

I did ask if he knew of anyone with pancreatic cancer—the deadliest form of this disease—taking it. He didn’t have final results, but he wasn’t aware of any complete cures. There were a couple of cases, however, where fenbendazole seemed to stop its progression to the point that the individuals were able to get back to living normally.

Can fenbendazole be used in children? Currently, he knows of about 10 ongoing cases with children. One 17-year-old had more than 100 tumors from metastatic melanoma and has been completely cleared.

Johns Hopkins is currently testing mebendazole in pediatric brain tumors, but the results may not
be available for two or three years. Personally, Joe would use it on his own children but would adjust
the dosage based on weight.

For example, if the dose for a 150 lb adult is 222 mg, then a 75 lb child would take half that dose.

Has anyone used only fenbendazole without chemo or radiation? Yes. When we spoke, he had about 20 successful (cancer-free) cases of individuals who refused chemo and radiation and their only treatment was fenbendazole.

■ To submit a Mailbox question, suggest an article topic, or make a comment about this month’s
issue, email feedback@drdavidwilliams.com.

■ My Thoughts
Is fenbendazole the cure to cancer? In many cases, yes. We will hopefully know a lot more as the patient database grows. Would I take it or give it to my family? Absolutely. In fact, it’s something I am
seriously contemplating taking prophylactically.

Would I take any additional supplements? First, I wouldn’t hesitate to take fenbendazole totally by itself. However, if I had the means, I’d also throw everything I could at the cancer, including:

• Metatrol or AveULTRA from American Biosciences, which increases natural killer cell activity
  and reduces glucose flow into cancer cells
• Immpower from American Biosciences (active hexose correlated compound, or AHCC) to boost natural killer cell activity
• PectaSol-C Modified Citrus Pectin from ecoNugenics to help block metastasis
• HonoPure from ecoNugenics to reduce cancer cell division and to promote antiangiogenesis
  (stopping the formation of new blood vessels that feed a tumor)
• NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) to boost glutathione and protect the liver
• CBD oil from various sources or, if available, CBD/THC rectal suppository (20mg CBD/30mg
  THC) from Foria
• Milk thistle to protect the liver Standardized curcumin extract
• A multivitamin and probiotic

Legal notice: The approaches described in this newsletter are not offered as cures, prescriptions, diagnoses, or a means of diagnoses to different conditions. The author and publisher assume no responsibility in the correct or incorrect use of this information, and no attempt should be made to use any of this information as a form of treatment without the approval and guidance of your doctor.

Dr. Williams works with Healthy Directions, LLC, to develop his unique formulations that supply many of the hard-to-find nutrients he recommends. Dr. Williams is compensated on the sales of these nutritional supplements and health products, which allows him to continue devoting his life to worldwide research and the development of innovative, effective health solutions.
Alternatives® Author: Dr. David Williams; Editor: Larissa Long