An Odd Cure for Incurable Cancer

An inexpensive drug has cured thousands from "incurable" cancers. Mainstream cancer researchers admit it has proven efficacy against cancer but refuse to use it. Here's how it was discovered.

I love finding crazy stories that no one would ever believe if they weren’t so well documented.

Two weeks ago we covered Mikhaila Peterson who was dying of the most severe autoimmune disease her doctors had ever seen and how she cured herself on an all-meat diet and now lives a normal life. (This study might explain why.)

Last week I told the story of Sue’s schizophrenia which had progressed to the point where she stared blankly at a wall all day long. A Harvard psychiatrist healed her through the ketogenic diet alone.

There will come a day soon when I will run out of crazy stories to tell, but that day is not today. This story might top all so far.

A Most Unlikely Cancer Cure

A researcher at Merck Animal Health (the vet arm of Merck) was conducting research on mice by injecting them with different kinds of cancer cells that caused them to develop cancer. However, she was dismayed to find that her mice developed intestinal parasites. She didn’t want to lose the research she was in the middle of, so she treated all the mice with Merck’s dog dewormer fenbendazole (FenBen). Not only did the intestinal parasites in the mice go away—so did ALL the different cancers.

Not long after this discovery, she was told out of the blue that she had stage IV glioblastoma—an inoperable cancer wrapped around her brain stem—and that her cancer was incurable. She was given 3 months to live and told to call hospice. Recalling what had just happened to the mice, she thought, What do I have to lose? So she took FenBen.

Six weeks later she was cancer free—and from an “incurable” kind of cancer!

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer, and the 5-year survival rate is 6%. Oncologists categorize it as incurable because there are no known drugs to eradicate the glioblastoma cancer cells.

This story didn’t gain much publicity but another vet heard about it: Dr. David Sturgeon. He wanted to spread the news but was unsure how. So he decided to write the following on his alma mater’s alumni message board at OMU: “If you have cancer or know someone who does, give me a shout.”

In 2017, a man named Joe Tippens read Dr. Sturgeon’s message. Joe had been diagnosed with small cell lung cancer months before and had just been through chemo and radiation. On his last day of radiation, he received a PET scan that showed the following: the cancer was gone from his left lung, but the rest of his body lit up like a Christmas tree. He writes:

“The cancer had spread to my neck, my right lung, my stomach, my liver, my bladder, my pancreas and my tail bone. Dozens of tumors.”

Joe’s oncologist told him the truth: statistically, he had less than a 1% chance of survival, and his probable life expectancy was 3 months.

However, the oncologist said he could put Joe on a clinical trial for a drug called Keytruda. This drug costs six figures and has a slew of side effects, but it could possibly extend his life a little beyond the 3 months. Joe agreed to the trial.

The Strangest Call of Joe’s Life

Within one day of receiving the news that his cancer had spread everywhere, Joe read the message on the OMU message board and called Dr. Sturgeon. Dr. Sturgeon told Joe the odd story about the Merck researcher’s incurable cancer disappearing after using the dog dewormer Fenbendazole. Joe thought, “What do I have to lose?” He began taking FenBen but didn’t tell anyone.

Three months later, Joe went in for a follow-up PET scan, and there were no signs of cancer anywhere in his body.

At his 6-month PET scan, he was still clear of cancer and the clinical trial had ended.

Before Joe revealed to his oncologist his big secret, he asked about the results of the other patients on the clinical trial for Keytruda. His oncologist responded:

“Joe, we can’t explain it, but you are a sole data outlier right now.”

Of the 1100 participants in the trial, Joe was the only one cured.

Joe then told the oncologist about taking FenBen.

His oncologist responded:

“You little [stinker]. I knew there was something up with you…..and….I’ve had some weird days here at MD Anderson, but this one probably tops them all.”

I’ll let Joe tell the rest of the story:

[My oncologist’s] next sentence almost floored me. He said, “You know, we’ve known for decades that these anthelmintic class of drugs (meaning to destroy parasites in the intestines) could have possible efficacy against cancer, and in fact in the 80’s and 90’s there was a drug called Levamisole that was used on colon cancer and it is an anthelmintic drug.”

I said, “Doc, if you have known for decades why hasn’t more work been done on it?” His answer was honest. He said, “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.”

The one drawback of FenBen is that its patent ran out years ago so it can’t make anyone money. Therefore, Big Cancer, a $500 billion industry, has no reason to promote it. In fact, this simple cure has the potential to devastate the profits of the entire cancer industry.

If you take my stories from just the last three weeks where people were cured of mental health problems, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and now cancer, and you put it all together, this has the potential to not just cripple Big Pharma but bankrupt the entire industry built up around it, which is 20% of the US GDP.

I haven’t even had a chance yet to touch on the coverup surrounding heart disease and one of Big Pharma’s most profitable drugs ever, statins.

It’d be easy at this point to defend Big Cancer and say that they do want to help people, they just want to help people and make money too. What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with making money in general, and the laborer is worthy of his wages, of course. But the problem here is that for some types of cancers, for both Joe and the vet with the glioblastoma, and for many people on Joe’s clinical trial, FenBen was the only cure.

But back to Joe, because we’re not done with his story yet. Although the Internet is full of stories of people who cured their cancer in non-conventional ways, and I don’t doubt the validity of the stories, it’s hard to know whether completely random cures will translate across different kinds of cancer. But FenBen seems different.

Joe Tippens started a blog and you can read his full story of recovery here. After spreading the word, he received dozens of calls and emails about what he did. At one point in this process, he gave the following statistic: Of the 60 people he was in contact with who had tried FenBen for their cancer, 57 of them had cured their cancer. These people represented many different types of cancer. Of the three who had passed away, all 3 had died within 3 weeks of contacting Joe, so their cases may have been too advanced.

Why We Haven’t Heard More about FenBen

Robert Malone (co-inventor of mRNA vaccines) wrote the following in his Substack yesterday (2-20-23) about repurposing drugs:

While at the Brownstone Institute retreat near Hartford, CT this weekend, I heard Dr. Paul Marik speak on repurposed drugs. Of course, this has been one of my passions since the Ebola outbreak of 2014, with the realization that a safe and effective vaccine could not be developed fast enough for any newly emergent highly infectious disease or infectious bio-threat event. Unfortunately, there is no interest in using repurposed drugs by our government or pharma for other disease indications such as cancer. This is despite the fact that computerized modeling, which is very sophisticated, suggests that there are many drugs for which the already licensed drug’s safety profile is well known, that would work well for varying types of cancers. Again, no profit motive, no interest. No research dollars or support. A dead end.

Dr. Malhotra, who’s a BBC go-to doc about cardiology questions, says something interesting in this interview: How Big Pharma Captured Evidence-Based Medicine. He says that one difficulty he has with getting people to understand the truth about Big Pharma is that the everyday person, no matter how much he loves or needs money, would never withhold the information about a possible cure from a dying person because the treatment did not profit them personally. It’s hard to believe anyone would be that cruel.

What kind of evil institution would ignore a potential cure simply because it would cause huge profit losses for them? Well, perhaps the company found guilty of the biggest healthcare fraud in world history. They just might be capable of overlooking or actively suppressing info about cures that could potentially devastate their Big Cancer profits.

Here’s a quote from the Department of Justice website from 2009:

“American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc. (hereinafter together "Pfizer") have agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products, the Justice Department announced today.” Linked here.

Unfortunately, the cancer miracle FenBen will likely never be FDA-approved for human consumption since the cost of a clinical trial is high and no one can benefit financially from the drug.

What Some Researchers Knew All Along about FenBen

In 2018, a year after Joe’s recovery, he received the following email from cancer researcher Tapas Mukhopadhyay:

Hi Joe,

Thanks for sharing your remarkable story with us. It is indeed a source of greatest joy for any researcher when his/her work is able to contribute in alleviating someone’s suffering to the slightest extent.

Our earlier work in 2002 on Mebendazole (an anthelmintic drug for pinworm infection approved for use in humans) revealed its potential application as an anti-cancer agent while I was working at the department of Thoracic Surgery in MD Anderson Cancer Center.

(1,2) In our present report and our previous work (3), we provided sufficient pre-clinical data on the anti-cancer effect of fenbendazole (FZ) using mouse models. It is very encouraging for us to know its significant effect on a patient diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. For how long did you take fenbendazole? Did you experience any side effects? Are you still taking FZ or any other drug? We strongly believe that anthelmintic drugs can effectively inhibit the tumor cell growth which has a long safety track record. In our preclinical studies we have shown that it is as effective as cisplatin and related chemotherapeutic drugs with least toxicity to the host. Please keep in touch and let us know if you have any new information. Thank you once again for your efforts in bringing awareness about the anti-cancer effect of FZ through your blog.

Wishing you a long disease free healthy life!

Regards,

Tapas Mukhopadhyay

Interesting. Several researchers knew about the potential of this type of drug.

Getting the Attention of Researchers

As the news of Joe’s recovery rapidly spread on his blog, he began working with some researchers to come up with what he calls, The Joe Tippens Protocol, which includes some supplements that support FenBen’s effectiveness. For links to the supplements, click here. (Joe has no ads on his very informal site and receives no money for any links and owns no stock in any of the companies.)

Soon people began emailing and calling Joe with their success stories.

Joe says in this video that the number of patients he personally knows of who have cured their cancer by taking FenBen is now in the thousands.

Joe began collecting these stories and has many listed here. He was so busy helping individual people that he didn’t have time to make a high-tech website. It’s a little hard to navigate, but it’s worth the effort. Here’s another website that has also been collecting FenBen success stories, and some patients post before and after scans.

The scans below are from Nicole Grove McWilliams, who had stage 4 Adenocarcinoma of the lungs. Her oncologist told her it was incurable. She took FenBen:

In September 2018, Scott Davis was diagnosed with inoperable carcinoma colon cancer. He was told his cancer was incurable but was offered palliative chemotherapy for end-of-life pain management and given 12-18 months to live. He began taking FenBen in addition to having palliative chemo. His cancer remained stable for the next 12 months. In his words: “I finally got the PET scan results I’d dreamed of: no active cancer, February 2020. CT scan in August 2020 continued to show improvement and only shows scar tissue where the inoperable tumor once was.” 

This Substack Fenbendazole Can Cure Cancer is dedicated to collecting FenBen success stories.

As more researchers heard about Joe’s story, some began auditing the numerous success stories and writing up case reports. Stanford University published this case report on FenBen’s success in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in Feb 2021.

The journal Nature is one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world. In August 2018, Nature published this article titled: “Fenbendazole acts as a moderate microtubule destabilizing agent and causes cancer cell death by modulating multiple cellular pathways.” One of the authors is Tapas Mukhopadhyay, the researcher who heard Joe’s story and emailed him. Since Nature is an international journal that publishes “only the finest peer-reviewed research,”¹ this was quite a confirmation for scientists to establish FenBen’s cancer-fighting pathway. It also means that now people all over the world have heard about its effectiveness.

How It Works

The Nature article, as well as numerous other studies on PubMed, outline 3 main pathways by which FenBen attacks cancer cells:

• FenBen destabilizes the cancer cell’s microtubules, which are key components in a cell’s cytoskeleton. When the microtubules are compromised, this inhibits cancer cell division, movement, and transportation of materials in and out of the cell.

• FenBen interferes with the cancer cell’s uptake of glucose. Because cancer cells grow so rapidly, they need copious amounts of sugar. This is why fasting and a zero-carb diet can enhance other treatments.

• FenBen induces apoptosis (programmed cell death) through the activation of P53. A healthy cell is programmed to divide only a specified amount of times and then die. This programmed cell death, called apoptosis, is turned off in cancer cells causing them to multiply indefinitely. FenBen reactivates apoptosis in cancer cells by activating the programmed-cell-death gene called P53.

Last month, Joe did a Q & A session with an integrative doctor, Dr. Deanna Windham, and researchers Adam Payne and Josh Bellieu. This interview sheds some more light on how to use the protocol.

One thing they state frequently throughout this video is the importance of working with an integrative oncologist, an oncologist who has the same degrees as any other oncologist, but “integrative” simply means that he’s willing to consider non-standard treatments in addition to standard chemo treatments.

One such oncologist is Dr. Nick Chen with Seattle Integrative Cancer Center.

Some of the people Joe’s been in contact with have opted to take only the FenBen but most do the full protocol. Many do the Tippens protocol in addition to standard chemo treatments. All agree there’s no reason one can’t do standard chemo in addition to his protocol. The only thing to consider is if the side effects and potential damage of the chemo and/or radiation will be substantial.

Joe Six Years Later

Joe thought he’d never live to see his grandchildren.

It’s now been six years since his initial diagnosis, but he remains free of all signs of cancer. He continues to get PET scans every 6 months, and he takes FenBen three times a week as a prophylactic.

Since it has very few side effects, he can’t see any harm in this. (The only side effect that people report is discomfort from the mass die-off of cancer cells which can cause diarrhea, headaches, and flu-like symptoms.)

There is also a Facebook page where those with cancer can talk about the protocol. He posts 5-7 success stories each week.

A local news channel covered Joe’s story in this 3-minute video:

Ivermectin: Another Possible Cure?

You’ll remember above that researchers have known for years that a class of drugs called anthelmintic (anti-parasitic) showed efficacy against cancer.

Ivermectin is also an anthelmintic drug and has been approved for use in humans since 1996. In 2015, it won the Nobel Prize in medicine for curing malaria in humans. Merck & Co. has sent over four billion doses of Ivermectin overseas to cure malaria, river blindness, and other diseases in humans all over the world.

Just as with FenBen, the pathways by which Ivermectin disrupts cancer are well documented:

• Can trigger “Immunogenic Cancer Cell Death”. This is a form of cancer cell death that “wakes up” the immune system and therefore initiates an immune response. As a result, it has been proposed that Ivermectin could be a great combination with forms of immunotherapy such as checkpoint inhibitors. (Ref.)

• Downregulates glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) (Ref.)

• Potentiates activity of anti–androgen receptor and anti-EGFR drugs (Ref.)

• Inhibits cancer stem‑like cells (CSC) (Ref.)

• Inhibits angiogenesis (Ref.)

• Inhibition of metastasis (Ref.)

• WNT pathway inhibitor (Ref.1)

• Increased reactive oxygen species generation that was functionally important for ivermectin-induced cell death (Ref.)

• Microtubule inhibitor (Ref.)

• Multi-Drug Resistance Pumps inhibitor (Ref.)

• At a higher dose, Ivermectin can inactivate the protein kinase PAK1 and blocks the PAK1 dependent growth – PAK1 is critical for cytoskeleton reorganization and nuclear signaling. PAK-1 kinase is required for the growth of more than 70% of human cancers (Ref.) This activity is similar to Caffeic Acid from Propolis. ²

Also like FenBen, Ivermectin has shown effectiveness against many different types of cancer such as colon, breast (including triple-negative breast cancer), prostate, stomach, ovarian, cervical, leukemia, renal cell carcinoma, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, chronic myeloid leukemia, Gemcitabine-resistant Cholangiocarcinoma, glioblastoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, and even pancreatic cancer. (I only read through the first 15 pages of results out of 30 on PubMed so there may be more.)

And by the way, in this study, Ivermectin showed no toxicity in humans at 10 times the maximum FDA-approved dosage. Like FenBen, there are few side effects.

So why isn’t it widely used against cancer? One simple reason: although it’s been FDA-approved for use in humans since 1996, the FDA has not approved it specifically for cancer use. To do so, there would need to be a clinical trial. There will likely be no clinical trial because no one stands to profit.

An integrative oncologist can still prescribe Ivermectin for cancer (this is called off-label use and is legal), but mainstream cancer clinics do not use it.

This story makes me feel helpless because it’s a reminder that I’m only one person and you, reader, are only one person. Who are we against the forces that run the world? I guess we can always do what that vet Dr. Sturgeon did. We can tell one person.

Click here to read part 2 about cancer (scroll to middle of post for that section) where I further examine some case studies where FenBen cured cancer published in the journal Clinical Oncology, a reputable, peer-reviewed journal. I also go in-depth explaining the mechanisms behind how FenBen attacks cancer that the journal article outlines. They are written in “medical speak” to a certain extent and I unpack the meaning for the common person. Here’s a teaser:

Altogether, our findings show microtubule disruption, p53 stabilization, and interference with glucose metabolism as collective underlying mechanisms of FZ induced preferential elimination of cancer cells both in vitro [in a petri dish] and in vivo [in a living organism].³

Health Highlight: Reversing Fatty Liver Disease

This tweet made me laugh:

Roxi went to her doctor in January of 2019 complaining of a pain under her rib. Her doctor ordered an ultrasound and found that Roxi had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition that is becoming increasingly common from increased sugar and ultra-processed food consumption. Roxi’s blood glucose level and A1c also showed that she was prediabetic. Roxi’s doc wanted to put her on medications for both fatty liver and diabetes but Roxi said she wanted a chance to try to heal her conditions naturally first. Roxi went home and began fasting.

Roxi started fasting 16:8 (fasting for 16 hours and eating within 8 hours) but quickly progressed to 22:2 and stayed there. Although she was doing quite a bit of fasting, she was disappointed to find she was losing only about 1 lb per month. She wondered if all that fasting was even working.

However, 10 months after she began fasting, she went in for a follow-up ultrasound and found that she had no signs of fatty liver! Not only that, her A1C went from a 6.1 to a 4.7, far below the prediabetic range, and all without medication. (A1C measures average blood glucose for the last three months by measuring the glycation of sugar molecules to proteins. 5.7 and above is prediabetic.)

Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made, and when we give them a chance to heal, they know what to prioritize. The fat surrounding Roxi’s liver didn’t weigh much, but it was vitally important that her body clear it out before she could lose other weight. All those months of fasting when she thought she wasn’t seeing many results, her body was clearing away the most deadly fat first.

Roxi continued fasting and ended up losing 32 lbs total and went from a size 22W to a size 10.

Roxi’s advice for new IFers: “Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Where has comfort gotten you to this point? Don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable at first. Embrace it!”

I really enjoyed hearing Roxi tell her entire story below. Don’t have Spotify? Click here.

Fasting Motivation: There Are Two of You

Have you ever noticed there are two of you: the one who desperately wants to lose weight to get healthy, and the one who doesn't give a rip about health and just wants to eat all the things. The one who wants to get healthy needs to learn how to trick the one who wants to eat like there's no tomorrow.

This truth is why Intermittent Fasting (IF) can be so wildly successful for so many people. You get to live out both of these personalities.

We've all had the experience of locking up that crazy, over-eater person for a period of time while following some calorie-restricted diet. The problem is that sooner or later, she escapes; when she does, it's like a Cookie Monster version of the Incredible Hulk. The one of us who wants to get healthy cowers under a desk while Cookie Monster Hulk undoes all the hard work of our previous months.

Enter the miracle of IF. Now, we get to switch between these two conflicting desires during different parts of the day (or for alternate day fasters, every other day.) And because our overeater self is only cooped up for only short periods of time, when she emerges after a day of fasting, she's only a tad pent-up, angry, and ready to go on a bender.

After I’ve been fasting for a good length of time, I eventually become hangry and cranky, and I sometimes think: "That's it! I've had it with this depriving myself business. I just want to eat all the things." Then I say to my overeater-self, "That's fine. No problem. In just a bit you get to eat as much as you want as long as you start with protein and veggies, and avoid sugar and highly processed carbs." I'm hungry enough that I'm willing to make any bargain. We shake.

Next day, I eat all the high-protein things and enjoy them like the best food I've ever tasted. I hardly miss the carbs. By the end of the day, I'm pleasantly full and quite happy. My crazy, over-eater self is now tamed and mild. In fact, she's lazily snoozing away, not soon to be roused. My wanting-to-be-healthy self can then declare tomorrow another fast day, and the other self doesn't even notice until it's tomorrow evening, when she is told that when she wakes up, she can eat all she wants (within a certain list of foods.) And so the cycle continues.

Here’s what happened when I learned how to trick that overbearing cookie monster:

First picture taken July 20, 2022 just before I started ADF on August 1st.

Second picture taken 2 weeks ago. Eight inches (and 40lbs) gone from my waist.

Until next week, don’t give up on your body. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and you may be astonished at the changes that eventually follow.

Don’t forget to fast well, feast well, and pass on the Joe Tippen’s story,

Leslie Taylor

If you’re just joining us, click here for my Quick Start Fasting Guide.

Click here to learn about how fasting boosts the immune system.

P. S. Why Talk about Cancer on a Fasting Substack?

I wanted to write a Substack on fasting since it’s something free and simple that we can do every day to take back our health from the barrage of ultra processed addictive foods and wean from our dependence on expensive medications and the bloated healthcare system. But I’m realizing that there’s so much more to uncover about health than just fasting. At some point, I may consider changing the name of this Substack to something along the lines of LiveWell. However, I always want fasting to be a major focus because I strongly believe that most people need quite a bit of encouragement and information to be successful. Agenda-focused nutrition messaging isn’t going away anytime soon, so if we’re to take back our health, we need to be constantly counteracting the food industry’s profit-centered marketing.

However, I also want to tackle all the health corruption and uncover all the unbelievable cures I can possibly find whether or not they have any bearing on fasting. That is because I fully believe in the human body’s incredible ability to heal itself without medication (or very little medication like FenBen) when given the chance. I know every last thing is not curable—of course. But what if most things are curable without medications?I have to find all I can and spread the word.

The truth is, I’m still figuring out the scope of this Substack and I don’t want to be boxed in. So bear with me as I feel out this project from a number of different angles. I’m experimenting with different sections of the newsletter so that people can skip to the part they find the most helpful. I’ll be running more polls in the future. So hold tight; I’m not entirely sure where this project is headed but I sure am excited!

[This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not designed as a substitute for medical advice. Talk to your doctor before beginning any dietary changes, especially if you are on medications for diabetes. Fasting while taking certain medications such as Metformin and especially insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugars. If your doctor does not support fasting, search for a physician who will support your fasting journey. Fasting is not recommended for those pregnant, breastfeeding, or for children and teens still growing and developing. For those with diabetes, personal fasting coaches are available through TheFastingMethod.com. I receive no compensation or ad revenue for anything in this newsletter including links to books, videos, websites, coaching services, podcasts, or supplements.]

1. https://www.nature.com/nature/journal-information

2. https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/ivermectin-in-oncology/

3. https://www.scitechnol.com/peer-review/fenbendazole-enhancing-antitumor-effect-a-case-series-2Kms.php?article_id=14307&fbclid=IwAR0tYpTZb4fp2_AO8e_WGWM5mcqv-RNfI-5SID9OWDcRiwHyHmQBKsjeSKk