DIGITAL LIFE

The power of fake news: Document mentions antiparasitic drugs such as ivermectin, mebendazole, and fenbendazole for the treatment of any type of cancer

WARNING: There is no evidence of a new “global protocol for cancer treatment” based on antiparasitic drugs such as ivermectin, mebendazole, and fenbendazole...https://maldita.es/malditaciencia/20260112/se-publica-el-primer-protocolo-mundial-para-el-tratamiento-del-cancer-ya-revisado-por-pares-de-ivermectina-mebendazol-y-fenbedazol/

Currently, there is no evidence to suggest that ivermectin, mebendazole, or fenbendazole, three antiparasitic drugs, are effective in treating any type of cancer. In fact, while ivermectin and mebendazole are used in humans to treat infections caused by some parasites, fenbendazole is a veterinary drug and its use in humans is not approved in the European Union.

The document mentioned in the claims that these three drugs would form a new “global protocol for cancer treatment” was published in September 2024 in the journal Orthomolecular Medicine. Despite the peer review process, this journal is not indexed in Medline, the biomedical literature database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. This means that Medline does not consider the publication to meet the quality standards necessary to validate the results of the published work. Quackwatch, a website that alerts users about fraud, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct in the healthcare sector, classifies the journal as "not recommended."

COVID-19 and Chloroquine...Chloroquine was widely promoted as a supposedly effective treatment against COVID-19 by some governments around the world and on all social media (without exception) at the time. In Brazil, for example, the government presided over by Jair Bolsonaro even ordered the manufacture of chloroquine...Private pharmaceutical laboratories and the Army's Chemical Pharmaceutical Laboratory (LQFEx) manufactured chloroquine in Brazil. Production was significantly expanded in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, at the initiative of the federal government, despite the lack of proven efficacy of the drug for the treatment of the disease.

Study that justified the use of chloroquine for COVID-19 is invalidated by the journal that published it...After more than four years of controversy, the study by French infectologist Didier Raoult on the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which justified the indication of this drug against COVID-19, was invalidated by the editor of the scientific journal that published it.

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are drugs used against malaria and are synthetic derivatives of the same substance, called quinine. But the molecules gained notoriety in February 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began, for their possible effectiveness in treating the disease.

The person responsible for promoting the drug was Dr. Didier Raoult, at the time head of the Institute of Infectious Diseases (IHU) at the University Hospital of Marseille, in southern France. The infectious disease specialist – retired since 2021 and recently banned from practicing medicine – never stopped claiming that hydroxychloroquine, combined with an antibiotic, azithromycin, was effective against the infection.

One of the founding studies of this theory, signed by eighteen authors, including Philippe Gautret, former professor at the IHU, and Didier Raoult, was published in March 2020 in the scientific journal International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

Elsevier, the journal's publisher, announced on Tuesday (17/12/24) the retraction of this article after in-depth research, with the support of an "impartial expert acting as an independent consultant on editorial ethics".

The publication questioned the non-compliance with several rules, but also the manipulation or problematic interpretation of results.

"Concerns were raised" about the journal editor's respect for "publication ethics", "the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants, as well as concerns raised by three of the authors regarding the methodology and conclusions," Elsevier explained in a lengthy explanatory note.

The publisher also states that the authors of the study did not argue convincingly in their defense. Over the years, Didier Raoult has made public several studies that showed, according to him, the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but which were later criticized for methodological flaws (very small patient groups, lack of a control group, etc.) or ethical flaws (non-compliance with the rules for research on people, etc.)...https://rfi.my/BFbZ

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