HOUSTON — A late-stage lung cancer diagnosis with three months to live was a death sentence Joe Tippens wasn’t willing to accept. The Edmond, Oklahoma, man contacted MD Anderson and hopped on a plane for Houston. He was told chemo and radiation could shrink his tumor but there was no cure.

But he wasn’t done fighting. He began taking a regimen that included a dog dewormer called fenbendazole. The fenbendazole, sold under the brand Panacur C, is a veterinary medicine used for intestinal parasites in dogs and cats.

Despite the skepticism of many, Tippens’ unconventional approach has proved effective. Since starting his protocol — which includes the dewormer plus CBD oil, curcumin (tumeric), and vitamin E — his latest PET scan shows that he is cancer free.

This is not the first time fenbendazole, which is also sold under the brands Safe Guard and Pro Sense, has been touted as an effective treatment for cancer. Anecdotal accounts have gone viral on social media, including Facebook and TikTok posts by a veterinarian who claimed the medicine had cured his own lung cancer.

The fenbendazole is similar to the human medicine mebendazole, which Johns Hopkins and other prestigious medical centers are studying as an effective anticancer therapy. Both medicines work by cutting off the supply of nutrition to parasitic worms. They do so by blocking the worms’ inner cell structure and collapseing their tubulin, which is both the skeleton for the parasite’s gut and a highway for transporting food. The drug’s effects on worms have been replicated in cancer cells, which may be why mebendazole is thought to work against some types of cancer. dewormer for cancer