Mel Gibson on health: what the evidence says · JRE #2254
“I don't believe that there is anything that can afflict mankind that hasn't got a natural cure for it. I think that there has to be. It just makes sense to me.”
What the evidence says
Gibson's broad claim that every disease afflicting mankind has a natural cure is not a scientifically testable or supported proposition; medicine has no cure for many conditions (e.g., most metastatic solid-tumor cancers, ALS, type 1 diabetes) regardless of source. His more specific anecdote, that ivermectin, fenbendazole, and methylene blue cured three friends' stage 4 cancer, is unverifiable and runs counter to current evidence. Fenbendazole and ivermectin have shown antiproliferative effects only in laboratory cell cultures and animal models, at drug concentrations that would be unsafe or unattainable in humans; no peer-reviewed human clinical trials have demonstrated they cure or treat cancer. A published case report documents a lung cancer patient who developed drug-induced liver injury after self-administering fenbendazole based on social-media claims. Oncologists quoted by the American Cancer Society state there is no proven benefit to fenbendazole for cancer and several potential risks, and that ivermectin has not gone through the rigorous clinical trials needed to establish it as safe or effective for treating cancer in people.