Unproven cancer drugs sold illegally as dewormer and scabies treatment

A stairlift salesman in south Wales walked into a conversation about mobility aids and walked out having pitched cancer drugs to a man with a brain tumour and lung cancer. That encounter, six months before a BBC investigation made it public, set in motion a chain of events that would expose how two veterinary and parasitic medicines—fenbendazole, an animal dewormer, and ivermectin, a scabies treatment—have become the subject of a sprawling, dangerous misinformation campaign targeting people with terminal diagnoses.

The salesman, Jason Sarver, told Rebecca Holder and her father Bob that he could source a treatment unavailable through the NHS, one that could shrink brain tumours. When an undercover BBC reporter contacted him posing as someone with a relative battling cancer, Sarver repeated the pitch and supplied fenbendazole and ivermectin tablets for £100, claiming it would be a two to three-month supply effective against lung cancer and other malignancies. "I do a lot of research, medical papers, white papers," Sarver said in recorded conversations. "I'm not a doctor, I just pass what I hear on." He framed his sales pitch as something he "couldn't help" doing, given how many ill people he encountered through his day job.

The drugs themselves are real medicines with legitimate uses. Ivermectin is a prescription-only drug in the UK, licensed for parasitic infections like scabies. Fenbendazole is an animal dewormer, available without prescription for veterinary use but never approved for human treatment in Britain. Neither has clinical evidence supporting their use against cancer. Yet videos and social media posts promoting them as cancer cures have accumulated thousands, sometimes millions of views. Hollywood actor Mel Gibson claimed on a popular US podcast that the drugs had successfully treated three friends with cancer, lending celebrity weight to claims that have no scientific foundation.

The BBC found the drugs easily obtainable. An undercover reporter purchased them from Sarver. Multiple websites offered delivery to UK addresses. Amazon listed them until the BBC contacted the platform, which then removed the products and said it had "proactive measures" to prevent prohibited items from being sold by third-party merchants. Since 2024, the UK's medicines regulator, the MHRA, has seized 27,500 doses of fenbendazole and 124,000 doses of ivermectin intended for human use, working with Border Force at the border.

The human cost is documented and devastating. Jared Wright's mother, Kelly, was diagnosed with cancer last year. After reading online that ivermectin and fenbendazole cure cancer, she rejected her doctors' advice to pursue conventional treatment. Pills arrived at her house. She took them three times daily. She died shortly after her 63rd birthday in January. "It was a horrible death," her son said. "She was shaking, she couldn't see, she had this glaze over her eyes, she couldn't speak anymore. She had another 20 years or more—she would be alive right now if she had the correct information."

Medical professionals are alarmed. Martin Rolles, a consultant oncologist with 25 years of experience at the South West Wales Cancer Centre, warned that these drugs could interact with proven cancer medications, making treatment either more toxic or less effective. They could cause side effects severe enough to prevent patients from receiving conventional care altogether. "There's certainly some interesting laboratory data," he said of fenbendazole, "but that's not the same as clinical evidence. Therefore it is unsafe." Macmillan Cancer Support reported a growing number of people asking about the medicines despite zero real-world clinical evidence they work. The charity's chief medical officer urged anyone considering them to speak with their clinical team or call Macmillan's helpline.

The misinformation spreads through the most human of channels: personal anecdotes, especially from people someone already knows or trusts. Liz O'Riordan, a three-time cancer survivor and former surgeon who now uses YouTube to answer cancer questions and debunk conspiracy theories, has witnessed the toll. "I see the people where it doesn't work, where they got sick, where they died," she said. She described a landscape where fear of death drives people toward hope, toward the fantasy of being the one person who will make it, and where anecdotes have become the strongest form of evidence in the minds of the desperate. "I just worry it's getting bigger," she said, "and if we don't all take notice and start to do something about it, we're going to be in a very dark place in a couple of years' time." When the BBC asked Sarver why he sold the drugs, he declined to comment.