My Response to Reports on the 'Dog Drug' (Veterinary Dewormer Fenbendazole) for Cancer

Recently, stories have been circulating among cancer patients about an elderly American, Joe Tippens, who defeated cancer by taking "dog medicine"—the veterinary dewormer fenbendazole (English name: Fenbendazole).

Joe Tippens was an equity partner at a large private equity firm. In 2016 he was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer, the most aggressive type of lung cancer.

Joe Tippens's lung cancer was already advanced when discovered. According to his own account in media interviews, his pet-CT images looked like a lit-up Christmas tree; the cancer had spread throughout his body. Metastases had appeared in his liver, pancreas, bladder, stomach, neck, and bones, and doctors told him he had only three months to live.

Joe Tippens went to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States for help. The doctors there were very pessimistic about his condition and could only tell him to stay strong. Later, Joe Tippens was enrolled by the doctors in a clinical trial; they told him that if the treatment worked, he might live a year.

After receiving such a blow, Joe Tippens made three promises to himself: "First, no matter what short-term challenges I faced, I promised to face them positively; second, to leave the part I could not solve to Providence and not dwell on it; third, every day to make at least one person in the hospital laugh out loud." Tippens wrote on his blog: "'Attitude is everything' has always been my motto, and now I can say, thank God, I kept those three promises."

By chance, on a forum at Oregon State University, Joe Tippens saw a post that read: "If you have cancer or know someone who has cancer, please message me." The poster happened to be a veterinarian he knew, and Joe Tippens immediately called him.

The vet told him that a scientist at Merck Animal Health had discovered in experiments that a dewormer given to dogs could cure cancer. After this scientist was diagnosed with stage-4 brain cancer and told she had less than three months to live, she began, in a "treat a dead horse as a live one" frame of mind, to take this "dog medicine" called fenbendazole (English name: Fenbendazole). Remarkably, after six weeks all her cancer cells had disappeared.

Joe Tippens did not hesitate to decide to start taking fenbendazole, but he was also receiving the experimental treatment arranged by the hospital, and he combined it with other medicines himself. Joe Tippens made public the prescription he had written for himself:

Dog medicine fenbendazole (1g daily for three consecutive days, then stop for 4 days), vitamin E (400–800mg daily, 7 days a week), bioavailable curcumin (600mg daily, 7 days a week, 2 capsules a day), CBD oil (i.e., cannabidiol, 25mg under the tongue daily, 7 days a week).

According to Joe Tippens himself, after three months his pet-CT results showed that all his cancer cells had disappeared. Joe Tippens also showed the media photos of his before-and-after pet-CT scans. The doctors at the MD Anderson Cancer Center also considered him a miracle. In April 2018, doctors at the MD Anderson Cancer Center announced that Joe Tippens's cancer was clinically cured.

Joe Tippens shared his anticancer story with the world through his blog, and the story spread rapidly among fellow patients. Some Chinese people who have long lived in the United States translated some of his blog posts and news reports about him into Chinese, and his story then spread widely in China. A few months ago, some Chinese traditional media such as the Beijing News successively reported on Joe Tippens's anticancer story, and these reports had an explosive impact on cancer patients. As far as I know, many cancer patients are now learning from Joe Tippens's anticancer experience.

Fenbendazole is an anthelmintic compound used to treat hookworms, roundworms, and other intestinal parasites in animals (mainly dogs). In fact, as early as over ten years ago, some scientists were already studying the anticancer effects of this drug.

Since 2008, journals such as the Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, Anticancer Research, and Nature have successively published articles on whether this drug is effective against cancer and on its anticancer mechanism. Judging from these papers, some experiments prove it has some efficacy while others prove it has no therapeutic value. A study in Nature holds that its anticancer mechanism is to kill cancer cells by starving them.

For over ten years now, quite a few patients have been testing the effect of this anticancer drug. According to the Daily Mail, around the world there are approximately

As far as I know, among cancer patients using alternative therapies, hardly anyone takes a single drug on its own. Just as

There are many similar drugs widely rumored among patients to have anticancer effects, such as the diabetes drug metformin and the alcohol-abuse drug disulfiram. In the past, alkaline foods were also thought to help fight cancer, until only last year that was revealed to be a marketing scam. Having spent all these years among cancer patients, I have seen too many similar things, so I generally take a cool, detached view of such reports.

Judging from the patients I now encounter who are taking metformin, disulfiram, and fenbendazole (or patients simultaneously taking several of these "miracle anticancer drugs" that circulate widely among cancer patients), those who truly benefit are extremely few. As for cures, worldwide there are only a handful of cases.

According to materials provided indirectly by the family member of an ovarian cancer patient I know, their loved one, after receiving chemotherapy and taking

With all respect, if the only standard of effectiveness were lowering tumor markers and shrinking the tumor, then in my own hands quite a number of tumor patients achieve this every month. As for the National Cancer Center of Japan

Therefore, personally I do not advise cancer patients and their families to blindly chase after these miracle stories. Unless it is truly the last resort, do not abandon standard Chinese and Western treatment in favor of such a "treat a dead horse as a live one" miracle anticancer formula.

But Joe Tippens's anticancer experience does contain quite a few lessons worth drawing on. His attitude of never giving up, his open-mindedness and optimistic spirit, are all worth other patients learning from.