The Citation They Can't Retract: JAMA's Unintentional Endorsement of Ivermectin-Mebendazole/Febendazole for Cancer
Rockwell et al warned that celebrity podcasting erodes institutional trust. Then they handed the public a peer-reviewed receipt showing the drugs are widely used and under study by NCI.
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Many cancer patients heard about ivermectin and the benzimidazole drug class (mebendazole, febendazole) on Joe Rogan’s interview with Mel Gibson which is now described in JAMA by Rockwell et al.
📊 The Rockwell Effect: A JAMA Study That Proves the Opposite of What It Intended
Michelle Rockwell and colleagues at Virginia Tech/UCLA analyzed 68.4 million patient records from the TriNetX network (67 healthcare organizations) and found that combination ivermectin-benzimidazole prescribing doubled after Mel Gibson’s January 2025 appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience — rising from baseline to a rate ratio of 1.97 overall and 2.63 among cancer patients (99.5% CI).
Key Findings
The demographics tell the story:
White patients drove the increase (RR = 2.61 vs. 1.22 for Black, 0.96 for Asian patients)
The South dominated (RR = 3.12 vs. essentially flat in Northeast at 0.98, Midwest 1.17)
Men outpaced women (RR = 2.11 vs. 1.67)
Working-age adults (18–64) showed the strongest uptake (RR ≈ 2.1–2.2 vs. 1.25 for 65+)
Among cancer patients specifically, the effect was even more pronounced — RR = 3.91 in the South and 3.05 for White patients, with males nearly tripling their use (RR = 2.79). Unfortunately the study did not report on cancer outcomes in these patients.
The Study’s Framing
The authors frame this as a crisis of “health misinformation,” warning that patients “may delay or forgo conventional treatments in favor of unproven therapies, potentially allowing their disease to progress.” In my experience, patients use the combination of ivermectin-mebendazole as an adjunct or in addition to full cancer care including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. The authors presented no evidence of delays or harm to patients.
The Ironic Twist
Here’s what Rockwell et al. apparently missed: their own paper — published in a flagship journal, covered by the Washington Post and KFF Health News, citing the very podcast episode they decry — serves as a multiplier for the phenomenon they claim to oppose. For every oncologist who reads this and tut-tuts about misinformation, there are now thousands of cancer patients and their families who just learned, from JAMA Network Open itself, that ivermectin-mebendazole/fenbendazole combinations are being used widely enough to warrant a 68-million-patient report, that the NCI is actively investigating ivermectin’s anti-cancer properties, and that the effect is concentrated among the very demographic most likely to question institutional authority. You cannot publish a paper documenting massive grassroots adoption of off-label cancer therapies — complete with a dramatic before-and-after graph — without simultaneously advertising those therapies. The Streisand Effect meets the peer-reviewed literature. Rockwell and colleagues have inadvertently produced the most effective promotional document for ivermectin-benzimidazole cancer protocols that Mel Gibson and Joe Rogan could have ever hoped for and specifically, The Wellness Company offering combination ivermectin-mebendazole in a single capsule for prescription use.
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Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Chief Scientific Officer, The Wellness Company
https://www.twc.health/pages/focal-points
Reference
Rockwell MS, Kahn KL, Fendrick AM, Vangala S, Mafi JN. Ivermectin-Benzimidazole Prescribing Following Celebrity Endorsement. JAMA Netw Open. 2026;9(5):e2616780. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.16780