When it comes to cancer, the pharmaceutical industry is no closer to a cure than it was in January of 2017. That's why people are turning to alternative medicines. One such medicine has doctors scratching their heads and others raising their eyebrows: dog dewormer.

The drug in question is fenbendazole, or FZ. It's used in veterinary medicine to treat parasitic worms such as whipworms, hookworms and a tapeworm called pinworm. It's sold under the brand names Safe Guard, Pro Sense and Panacur. But FZ has recently sprung to fame as an anticancer medication thanks to social media.

According to a series of TikTok videos, FZ can kill cancer cells in humans. In one video, a veterinarian named Andrew Jones claims that he pursued treatment with fenbendazole and is now cancer free. The video has been reposted on Facebook and TikTok more than 11,000 times as of February 2023.

While the evidence supporting FZ as a cancer treatment is limited, it has been shown to suppress tumors in mice and other animals. It appears to work by preventing the proper growth of microtubules, which give structure to all living things and are essential for cancer cell survival.

A team of researchers led by a professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, found that fenbendazole was also effective in killing human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumors that had been engrafted into mice. The research showed that the combination of FZ and sorafenib, an established HCC treatment, was more effective than sorafenib alone.dewormer for cancer