I was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, and I’m being treated at an excellent oncology center with other patients. I hear other patients and their families frequently talking about their treatment, and more than once, ivermectin has come as some sort of miracle cure. I hold my tongue but think, ‘how can someone be sitting here receiving cutting-edge treatment, including personalized medicine like immunotherapy or gene therapy, then go and give all the credit to a horse dewormer?’ It would be like driving 100 miles and giving credit to your shoes.
We have short memories: Ivermectin entered the alternative human health space during the COVID pandemic. That a veterinary drug for horses works as a miracle cure for a virus and cancer (a mutation-based illness of your own cells, not related to a virus) shouldn’t make sense to anyone. To be fair, as a field biologist who often works in tropical freshwaters, I’ve been prescribed human-grade ivermectin for nematode parasites (which I never got, so I never needed the drug). But that isn’t the version most people take as an alternative treatment, as it requires a prescription – whereas the veterinary version can be picked up more readily. The human version may be safer, but just as useless as a cancer treatment.
Similarly, people correlate COVID vaccines with illness trends. In a recent post in a Colon Cancer Facebook group I belong to, someone asked, ‘Why do you think the rates of colon cancer are going up?’ More than one person remarked that it was due to COVID vaccines (notably not the disease itself, but the cure that billions of people took). I wanted to reply, but didn’t because I’ve found it rather difficult, perhaps impossible, to change someone’s mind using social media. But I should have written, “Interesting hypothesis - would data showing a country where vaccinations were given to a large majority of the population, but colon cancer rates didn’t go up, convince you that your hypothesis may be wrong?’ I don’t know if it would have worked, but perhaps the comment would open a window for them to think about ultra-processed foods and other factors specific to the counties where cancer rates are rising. I do know that if I linked to peer-reviewed papers, they would likely be ignored, as often these folks want to, ‘do their own research’ (i.e., use Google/AI searches to find things they agree with).
Scientists have been studying ivermectin and its actual efficacy as a treatment for COVID and cancer (mostly due to the cult interest it has taken on); it can do more harm than good. But I’ll let you look up papers on your own (just make sure you look at clinical human trials, not just small studies on petri dishes) and if you use Google at least use GoogleScholar.
Scientific research is complicated and messy; medicines take a long time to be approved and validated through human trials. Frustration with these processes can prompt people to seek alternatives, and desperation can lead to mistrust of the system. But the system is there for a reason; crediting ivermectin does a disservice to people actually doing research on these diseases, and to the health care professionals doing everything they can to save you. We are being saved by mRNA vaccines, gene therapy, immunotherapy, and yes, even chemotherapy (as a cancer patient myself, I often wondered if chemo was worth the pain); if you want to forgo these for alternatives, that is your choice. If you take the alternatives with the recommended medicines prescribed to you, remember not to credit your footwear instead of your automobile for that smooth ride.