Controversial cancer claim
A social post claims a 67‑year‑old Italian man with Stage 4 gastric cancer saw tumor markers fall after 4 months on ivermectin and fenbendazole — CEA dropped 29.2→11.4 and CA125 338→111 — but this is a single testimonial circulating with 227 likes (x.com). It’s an anecdote being shared online; it’s not peer‑reviewed evidence and should be treated as unverified (x.com).
The post was shared by Dr. William Makis, who publishes under the handle MakisMedicine and lists ~139K subscribers on his Substack. (substack.com)) Makis is a co‑author on a paper titled “Targeting the Mitochondrial‑Stem Cell Connection in Cancer Treatment: A Hybrid Orthomolecular Protocol,” published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine on September 19, 2024. (isom.ca)) That Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine article proposes a hybrid protocol that explicitly discusses repurposing ivermectin, mebendazole and fenbendazole as components of an integrative cancer strategy. (isom.ca)) Fenbendazole is marketed for animals and has never been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for human use, according to the American Cancer Society. (cancer.org)) Formal clinical testing of ivermectin in cancer is limited to early‑phase studies; for example, ClinicalTrials.gov lists a Phase I/II trial (NCT05318469) testing ivermectin in combination with balstilimab or pembrolizumab for metastatic triple‑negative breast cancer. (clinicaltrials.gov)) Serum markers such as CEA and CA125 are used as diagnostic and prognostic tools in gastric and other cancers in published studies, but they are not disease‑specific markers. (frontiersin.org)) Both CA125 and CEA can change for non‑malignant reasons—examples documented in the literature include inflammation, liver disease, smoking, pregnancy and benign gynecologic conditions—so isolated marker shifts do not by themselves prove a treatment effect. (mdpi.com)) Major cancer authorities and recent reviews note that anecdotal case reports cannot establish causality, that rigorous randomized trials are lacking, and that self‑medication with veterinary drugs carries safety risks; larger controlled studies are required before repurposed antiparasitics can be judged effective or safe in cancer. (cancer.org))
