It does appear that anti-cancer effects have been discovered in research in both Fenbendazole [0][1][2], the treatment that he used, as well as related anti-helmintics like Flubendazole [3], specifically when paired with certain vitamins like Vitamin E rather than when administered alone.
Flubendazole’s particularly interesting as it’s already FDA-approved for human use.
This story is very poorly organized. The structure is especially bad for scientific subjects because crucial details can be obfuscated.
Take this one for example, which appears well into the article:
> Part of Tippens’ treatment regimen was CBD.
Nowhere does the article describe in one place exactly what the treatment regimen was.
Was it just CBD + fenbendazole or other components? When did the CBD begin? Even the nature of the trial (?) that Tippens was part of (or not) during his cure is cloudy.
Tocotrienol and Tocopherol forms (all 8) of Vitamin E (400-800mg per day, 7 days a week).
A product called Gamma E by Life Extension or Perfect E are both great.
Bio-Available Curcumin (600mg per day, 2 pills per day 7 days a week).
A product called Theracurmin HP by Integrative Therapeutics is bioavailable., and
CBD oil (1-2 droppers-ful [equal to 25mg per day] under the tongue, 7 days a week) oil
Panacur C (fenbendazole) (1 GRAM PER DAY FOR 3 CONSECUTIVE DAYS) per week.
Take 4 days off and repeat each week.
Each gram of Panacur C has approximately 222 mg of fenbendazole,
Not to oversimplify the complexities of cancer or anything, but for some reason, Peter Hintjens’ (creator of zeromq) suspicions about the primary cause of his own cancer came to mind after reading this [1].
”As for not getting cancer… the probable cause in my case was a parasite called a liver fluke, which attaches to the bile duct and produces carcinogens. Nature is nice like that. The parasite comes from farmed fresh-water fish. The cancer I had is a major cause of death in SE Asia. I think it was cheap sushi that almost killed me.”
Adding this of my list of things to ask my doctor about next time I'm there. I've spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, and a smaller amount of time in Africa and India. I'll spare the details, but in addition to having already been treated for lymphoma (which I have no reason to believe was parasitic in origin), I've got various intestinal and other chronic symptoms that have no obvious cause (and aren't debilitating enough to warrant a massive array of tests). Mostly I'm just curious. I've absolutely eaten enormous amounts of questionable meat and fish, and poorly-washed produce.
Thanks for your comment! I've been living in SE Asia for a few years, but I don't think I've eaten any raw freshwater fish. I eat a lot of sushi, but that's always saltwater fish. Anyway, I'll make sure I get checked for liver flukes.
Looks like it. The hypothesis is not completely far out, the benzimidazoles interfere with microtubule assembly, and some chemotherapeutic agents in clinical practice (taxol, the vinca alcaloids) do the same.
The strange thing is that the affinity of benzimidazole anthelmintics to mammalian tubulin is much lower than to roundworm tubulins, but as we say, more research is needed.
I once saw a case on a conspiracy forum of a guy who claimed that taking worming tablets had cured his cancer. It wasn't a clear case to me, as he'd also been taking traditional chemo. His doctors apparently told him that the worm tablets he was taking were harmless and he could go on taking them, but the doctor didn't think it had any effect on his cancer.
The real issue I have with this sort of reporting is that the plural of anecdote is not data. If 1% of people with a given kind of cancer will survive, and some percentage of them take alternative medicines, then a smaller, but nonzero, percentage of people will believe they were cured by taking just about anything.
Controlled, double blind, randomized trials are the only way we can know whether these anecdotes have anything to them.
Agree with the studies, but the singular of data is not "cure" or "safe". A substance that is shown to be beneficial in general may not be beneficial for you, and may even be harmful for you.
I have a family member who cannot take various common medicines, not because of the active ingredient (which they need) but because of the inactive ones which are generally considered safe.
Conversely, it is possible for a substance which is not shown to have a general effect in a study to have an effect specifically for a person or small group of people. Discounting this and hiding behind "evidence based medicine" is not helpful.
> Controlled, double blind, randomized trials are the only way we can know whether these anecdotes have anything to them.
The problem is they're too damn expensive. There is a huge number of people willing to put almost anything in their body in the hope it might help (animal remedies, herbs, homeopathic remedies, etc).
If we could harness these people into cheap double-blind trials, we could advance science much quicker and cheaper. I'm thinking something along the lines of "you tell us what pseudoscience remedy you want, and we'll return either it or a placebo with 50/50 chance, and then you self-report the results to us".
[Speculation] This is interesting to me because Crohn’s Disease (and Inflammatory Bowel Disease in general) is known to respond to certain antibiotics such as Metronidazole and Ciprofloxacin [1]. Maybe a analogous action is at play here.
Not sure if I understood correctly. Metronidazol helps to keep inflammation at bay ? Im asking because I was taking this antibiotic and Ive seen huge change in my skin inflammation, joint pains and bowel pains.
Fwiw: The article actually suggests that Psoriasis, (and IMHO, by extension, potentially autoimmune disease in general), are associated with liver dysfunction, driven by bowel disease.
The research and resulting protocol is inspired by an earlier Hungarian study in 2003 [1] that was able to seemingly cure psoriasis in 79% of its 500 test subjects. We don't know for sure; but 2 years later, 58% were still in complete remission. To be clear, that's a completely unheard-of result in psoriasis research.
All current, "mainstream" forms of treatment for psoriasis only treat the symptoms, not the cause. Even the newest, most advanced immune-suppressing biologics are merely stupid off buttons for the signaling misfiring that causes the superficial symptoms; meanwhile, psoriasis sufferers have much-higher-than-average incidences of cancer, liver disease, heart disease, IBD and so on. Treatments only keep the skin/joint symptoms at bay, and require the patient to continue taking the drugs, which tend to stop working after a while.
Pretty excited about this direction in psoriasis research.
Fwiw, I've found infrared induced hyperthermia to be extremely useful, but it's gruelling, time consuming and has a very short period of effect. I've been performing it most days for ~12 months.
"...nine cycles of whole-body hyperthermia (target body core temperature, 38.5 degrees C; duration, 50 min)... caused a significant reduction of all cytokines by 40-50%"
We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact web@tulsaworld.com or call 918-581-8300.
I'm pretty sure this is a wrong use of the spirit of HTTP code 451. It is meant for censorship by external forces like governments. If you block people from legislations that don’t allow invasive tracking by default, it’s you doing the censorship, for economic gain no less.
After an Edmond man claimed a dewormer medication meant for dogs cured him of small-cell lung cancer, some cancer researchers now want to learn more about the mysterious drug that is piquing patient interest.
Joe Tippens was only given three months to live. But doctors later enrolled him in a clinical trial they hoped could give him more time.
Tippens said he received a tip from a veterinarian who suggested he try a dog dewormer drug called fenbendazole, which was believed to display cancer-fighting properties, according to cell studies.
In his blog, Tippens wrote that after receiving his fourth cancer-free diagnosis at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston last April, the results indicated that his cancer was gone after two years of treatment.
Dr. Stephen Prescott, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation president, said Tippens’ story interested him after speaking to a scientist at Johns Hopkins University who conducted a case study where scientists implanted immune-deficient mice with human tumors.
While the experiment was still in progress, a veterinarian at Johns Hopkins University put the mice on the same deworming medications that Tippens used.
After examining the results, scientists found that the implanted tumors would not grow, he said.
“They were trying to make cancer in mice and unbeknownst to them, something that the veterinarian in the facility had done prevented that,” Prescott said.
Shortly after, Prescott said he met Tippens through mutual friends.
While director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, Prescott said he “would hear stories all the time about new approaches to cancer medical treatments,” but remained skeptical.
However, Prescott said he and a team Tippens is putting together will collaborate to explore alternative care methods.
“It would be a wonderful thing if we discovered that there is this compound that has broad activity with dramatic responses like with Mr. Tippens, what a great thing that would be,” he said.
Prescott said they plan to spend six to 12 months researching the medical records of cancer patients.
In their study, they will consider specifics such as the treatment they received, how they reacted and how long they were given to live.
By studying Tippens’ case further, Prescott said they could provide more truth to the dog dewormer medicinal impact.
One problem made evident by some anticancer medications is that over time they become ineffective, he said.
It is the reason why patients today are seeking other treatments.
Most anticancer drugs attack a specific target on or in the cancer cell, he explained.
“What often happens is that it works initially and then quits working,” Prescott said.
“And the reason is the cancer has continued to change and have additional mutations, so what was the initial targets no longer respond to the drug.”
Part of Tippens’ treatment regimen was CBD.
Chip Paul, the founder of Owasso-based GnuPharma, a company that specializes in developing natural products, said he is unsure how influential CBD alone was on Tippens’ cancer cells.
“If he was just taking cannabidiol, it is doubtful that it affected his cancer because it does not have the right actives in it to be able to signal that,” Paul said.
Prescott said as the clinical trial develops, he hopes that it will eventually lead to answers regarding Tippens’ shocking recovery.
“I do really applaud Mr. Tippens for his forthrightness and aggressive stance for something he believes has helped him and can help us as a people,” Prescott said.
“He has done more than any patient has done in that regard.”
Does this kind of action actually absolve them of GDPR responsibilities?
If an EU citizen/resident/etc accessed the site from a country that’s not blocked, or via VPN, are they unable to ask for their information or have it scrubbed?
What if a person later becomes an EU citizen?
What if they are a dual citizen?
I don’t understand how these geo blockers are able to make anyone compliant.
> Does this kind of action actually absolve them of GDPR responsibilities?
All the rest of our laws travel with jurisdictions, not with individuals' citizenship status. The GDPR doesn't really have any standing to impose obligations on companies that refuse to do business inside EU jurisdictions. We won't know until it's tested in court, but demonstrating a best effort to keep your product out of EU jurisdiction seems like a pretty good first defense.
The GDPR might assert that they're bound, but an Oklahoma-based business with no business presence or assets inside the EU isn't bound by EU law. This is pretty much the foundation of national sovereignty.
How would an EU enforcer actually enforce the GDPR in this case? Unless there's been a violation of a trade agreement, any attempt to apply EU law to a US-based company operating on US soil is going to be utterly impotent.
Geo location for IPs is a very inexact science so they almost certainly are processing EU citizens' data. Hell I can access it with a VPN while sat in the EU so yep, they are liable if they store anything about me (apparently IP addresses are considered PII in terms of GDPR too)
No idea how they'd enforce it - various murky-references to "international law" are floating around. I guess these sort of things are covered in trade treaties etc like with patents and copyright etc.
I understand what the GDPR _says_, but I'm saying that there's a vast difference between "what it asserts it can enforce" and "what can actually be enforced". A law that can't be enforced doesn't mean much.
Governments enforce their laws with the threat of depriving you of your assets or personal liberty. In order to do that, they have to first have the power (via unchallenged jurisdiction) to deprive you of assets or liberty. In this case, unless the EU can get the US to enforce EU law on US soil, or to extradite offenders to the EU, the GDPR has no teeth.
"COKE ROT Cocaine can ROT your skin and genitals – as drug is cut with dangerous cattle de-wormer, experts warn"
the interesting thing is in the article it says cocaine can be cut with Levamisole, which:
was used to treat arthritis and bowel cancer in the past, but it was banned for use by humans in 2000....Now, it's only supposed to be used in veterinary medicine to kill parasitic worms.
I wonder if cocaine users have lower incidences of certain kinds of cancers? Would be an interesting thing to look for in large epidemiological studies.
Joe Tippens was only given three months to live. But doctors later enrolled him in a clinical trial they hoped could give him more time.
Tippens said he received a tip from a veterinarian who suggested he try a dog dewormer drug called fenbendazole, which was believed to display cancer-fighting properties, according to cell studies.
In his blog, Tippens wrote that after receiving his fourth cancer-free diagnosis at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston last April, the results indicated that his cancer was gone after two years of treatment.
Dr. Stephen Prescott, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation president, said Tippens’ story interested him after speaking to a scientist at Johns Hopkins University who conducted a case study where scientists implanted immune-deficient mice with human tumors.
While the experiment was still in progress, a veterinarian at Johns Hopkins University put the mice on the same deworming medications that Tippens used.
After examining the results, scientists found that the implanted tumors would not grow, he said.
“They were trying to make cancer in mice and unbeknownst to them, something that the veterinarian in the facility had done prevented that,” Prescott said.
Shortly after, Prescott said he met Tippens through mutual friends.
While director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, Prescott said he “would hear stories all the time about new approaches to cancer medical treatments,” but remained skeptical.
However, Prescott said he and a team Tippens is putting together will collaborate to explore alternative care methods.
“It would be a wonderful thing if we discovered that there is this compound that has broad activity with dramatic responses like with Mr. Tippens, what a great thing that would be,” he said.
Prescott said they plan to spend six to 12 months researching the medical records of cancer patients.
In their study, they will consider specifics such as the treatment they received, how they reacted and how long they were given to live.
By studying Tippens’ case further, Prescott said they could provide more truth to the dog dewormer medicinal impact.
One problem made evident by some anticancer medications is that over time they become ineffective, he said.
It is the reason why patients today are seeking other treatments.
Most anticancer drugs attack a specific target on or in the cancer cell, he explained.
“What often happens is that it works initially and then quits working,” Prescott said.
“And the reason is the cancer has continued to change and have additional mutations, so what was the initial targets no longer respond to the drug.”
Part of Tippens’ treatment regimen was CBD.
Chip Paul, the founder of Owasso-based GnuPharma, a company that specializes in developing natural products, said he is unsure how influential CBD alone was on Tippens’ cancer cells.
“If he was just taking cannabidiol, it is doubtful that it affected his cancer because it does not have the right actives in it to be able to signal that,” Paul said.
Prescott said as the clinical trial develops, he hopes that it will eventually lead to answers regarding Tippens’ shocking recovery.
“I do really applaud Mr. Tippens for his forthrightness and aggressive stance for something he believes has helped him and can help us as a people,” Prescott said.
“He has done more than any patient has done in that regard.”
This is one of the many viable options US companies have for dealing with EU traffic.
GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement, especially for complex software comprised of thousands of microservices that handle customer data. And imagine working in an industry where data retention is legally mandated by other jurisdictions...
I'm not saying GDPR is bad (I'm all in favor!), but the costs can be quite large to implement to the letter of the law (GDPR export requirements, etc)
I think all of Europe's wacky internet laws are bad. Literally nobody except maybe Richard Stallman was pining for websites to need cookie popups and need affirmative consent to log their IP address.
There’s no part of the GDPR that requires the current mess or where the current mess should help anyone, that is if I’m not totally wrong.
In fact it is so far from the letter and spirit of the law that I find it odd that any company with a significant internet presence, that should have access to competent lawyers can misinterpret it so badly.
Then again, European companies burn themselves in USA all the time on basic stuff too; a UX designer I worked with described how they lost a lawsuit against a bloke after he had broken into a site, opened the machine, jammed something into the door sensor and started operating the machine, all while being influenced by drugs. The first part of the story ended when he got his hand jammed in some kind of shredder unit.
The second part of that story ends when their American legal team finds out there is no sticker that tells people not to put their hand into the machine and tells them they’ll likely lose in court and convinces them to settle.
After that nobody forgot about the stickers.
But to most Europeans I think it sounds outrageously stupid that you can break into a site, operate a machine after deliberately jamming the safety mechanism and still get a settlement because there was no sticker to tell him not to put his hand in the shredder.
So, for Americans, here is how I understand the GDPR law:
Except in special circumstances (criminal justice etc) you are not allowed to store customer data except as needed to run the actual service for your customers (and that doesn’t include monetizing by ads or spyware).
You can ask a customer for permission to store data, but the default is no, and - AFAIK - you are not allowed to penalize someone for not accepting.
The only grey area I see is where you default to not storing info and inform the customer that they can opt in to more personalized and possibly more meaningful ads.
See? Nothing there about popups. They should default to off, so meaningless in the first place, something no one seems to get. Or they get it but are deliberately doing it anyway, pretending not to get it like last time.
If someone else has a better understanding of GDPR, feel free to roast my understanding, - or add details to it. [I know there is a lot more.)
Also, FWIW, here is what I think is a good example of data collection done correctly under GDPR, the customer has a clear choice, the benefits are obviously linked to the data collected and the default is no: https://erik.itland.no/observation-gdpr-and-privacy-done-rig...
You've got a good understanding, but there are a few other pieces:
- An EU citizen can ask to be expunged (aka "right to be forgotten") from your system, and you must delete all records you have on the person. It can't be anonymized or soft deleted - it must be entirely scrubbed of PII or destroyed.
- An EU citizen can invoke "data export" and ask for any and all information you maintain on them. Anything you store that is foreign keyed to them is fair game. You must provide it all in a format they can download and read. JSON dumps of all the records is probably sufficient.
IANAL, and I'm pretty sure I haven't covered everything. It's a pretty broad law.
> GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement, especially for complex software comprised of thousands of microservices that handle customer data. And imagine working in an industry where data retention is legally mandated by other jurisdictions...
I only know of the broad strokes of GDPR, but wouldn't the costs be mostly mitigated if one just decided to not collect data? I thought the cost was really only borne if an entity decided to collect and retain data.
To be very honest even if you keep the logs it is extremely unlikely just logging, even with full IPs is a "material" violation of GDPR unless your static page/file is extremely specific
(You can also expire or fully anonymize the logs before keeping them)
> GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement...
Bullshit. It's trivial to implement. Don't store my personal data. Done.
It may be extremely expensive to store and process my personal data and remain GDPR compliant, if you insist on doing that. And admittedly it may be expensive to store and process others' personal data while excluding EU citizens from that mechanism. But the blanket statement "GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement" is on its own extremely misleading in this context.
> And imagine working in an industry where data retention is legally mandated by other jurisdictions...
Perhaps, but this is not relevant to a news organisation publishing a general article online from the USA, where (AFAIK) there is no such data retention requirement in any jurisdiction within the USA.
It is not trivial for publishers who have years of adding advertising and analytics tools to their website to come up with a strategy for peeling these back or checking compliance. If I had a blog, it would be easy for me to check and decide what to remove or modify. But being part of an organization means that most of the shit on a publisher’s network is a manager’s baby project and is going to require meetings, ego stroking, and if you suggest a change then revenue drops, you will be prime suspect. Not to mention months of managers saying — “well we used to have this really great analytics platform that helped me steer this company but now I can’t do my job because so and so deactivated X”. For many of the tools you might have a contract with a company to provide service. They have people specifically hired to be persuasive calling your leadership to try to keep the relationship going, so they will fight to keep you as a customer. I think the interesting thing is that you can’t pass the buck, you are ultimately responsible for providing compliance, not just choosing tools that claim compliance.
> It is not trivial for publishers who have years of adding advertising, advertisement and analytics tools to their website to come up with a strategy for peeling these back or checking compliance.
Correct. I did cover this when I said, in the post you are replying to: "...admittedly it may be expensive to store and process others' personal data while excluding EU citizens from that mechanism"
> Bullshit. It's trivial to implement. Don't store my personal data. Done.
Tell that to the dozens of engineers that spent months on GDPR compliance at my company.
I personally spent two weeks making sure my systems had both export and deletion capability. These systems were engineered for soft delete data retention and maintaining change logs across writes. In several different databases. And offline data warehouses. And feeds consumed by downstream systems.
> But the blanket statement "GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement" is on its own extremely misleading in this context.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Every system out there handling personal information needs to be re-engineered. Soft deletes, change logs, feeds, plumbing between microservices, data validation logic, primary keys and foreign keys with PII, on and on... it all needs to be changed to handle new APIs: delete and export. That requires a lot of work to do correctly and capture all of the surface area.
> Perhaps, but this is not relevant to a news organisation publishing a general article online from the USA
Maybe they can't afford to change things? Sure, they might be collecting too much information in order to sell ads, but they have to decide if the EU traffic is worth rebuilding what they already have in place.
Don't take a gut value judgement about GDPR being the right thing to do and equate it to being inexpensive. It is not.
News outlets have relied on advertising to make their content accessible and still profitable since the 1830s[0]. It would be in immense industry shift to change from and advertising based model.
The GDPR also holds you liable for your outsourced work, which means that any ad network that serves a single malicious ad violating GDPR could make you violate the law. It’s a tough conflict.
The GDPR does not prevent you from serving ads. The ads being served in the 1830s, for example, would not have been in violation of the GDPR had it been in force at the time.
> News outlets have relied on advertising to make their content accessible and still profitable since the 1830s[0]. It would be in immense industry shift to change from and advertising based model.
But the immense shift has already been happening, just the other way, -away from a somewhat acceptable kind of contextual advertising model ("put my ad next to the recipes pages") to the current dragnet surveillance behavioural advertising model.
What is needed isn't much more than going back to 2009 or when it was Google bought Doubleclick, when the separation between shady spyware, passive ads and content was somewhat clear.
Of course this would be expensive, in the same way that getting your buildings fire safe would be expensive after you've relied on lack of inspections to rake in rents for years from cheap housing.
Meta: HN could need a feature to "flag" when someone is abusing downvotes like on parent comment. I can always send a mail as I sometimes do, but I guess a way to flag for general moderator attention would improve reporting of such abuses.
The comment is trivially easy to prove right, points out an important detail and is still downvoted.
Probably not a popular position here on HN but I'm becoming more and more intrigued by the power of a placebo. Furthermore, it's possible we are often undermining a placebo's power but telling ourselves it's science and only science that can save us - even tho', trust is, the placebo effect is very real.
I'm not sure why it wouldn't be a popular position. There are countless scientific studies demonstrating the efficacy of placebo. The human mind is a powerful thing.
I don't think it's because you're saying placebo is powerful. It's because you're anecdotally suggesting that there's some group of people who think that placebo has no place in science, and then you're connecting that hypothetical group of people to the HN community.
The predictability is a good thing I think. If you fart in an elevator, people will predictably be disgusted. It's about social expectations.
". It's because you're anecdotally suggesting that there's some group of people who think that placebo has no place in science, "
I'm suggesting that __science__ has suggested (to some people) that - despite the science - the placebo has no place in solutions/cures. That science is the only hope.
Not only does that subvert placebos, it's self-fulfilling for science. The problem is, science's success rate still comes up shorts.
Who exactly are the "people" when you say "to some people?"
Specifically what science has suggested that placebo has no place in solutions/cures?
Cures for what?
Despite what science?
What success rate still comes short?
Short of what? Success with respect to what?
Everything you're saying is completely anecdotal and somewhat difficult to follow, unfortunately.
There's nothing wrong with being anecdotal, just acknowledge it and recognize that it's pretty flimsy for any kind of argument, especially generalizations. I often make comments saying "Anecdotally..." And then I provide opinions which are frequently shown to be inaccurate. Nobody downvotes me because I'm not trying to sell my opinions as facts or common sense.
If you don't want to be dismissed then provide specific evidence or research.
Flubendazole’s particularly interesting as it’s already FDA-approved for human use.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687140/ [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30158-6 [2]:https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/03/406321/deworming-pill-may-... [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25811972/