Cancer pseudoscience and the cultural moment

The word “cancer” strikes a particular kind of fear in people’s hearts and creates a thriving market for cancer scams. If you search “cancer treatments” on Facebook (one of the first prompts that appear if you type “cancer” into the search bar), you’re immediately fed videos on alternative therapies and recommended groups discussing “natural” versus conventional cancer care.

One of the hottest trending alternatives right now are antiparasitic drugs, specifically ivermectin, mebendazole and fenbendazole, usually in connection with a Canadian former doctor named William Makis. A Facebook search for his name returns dozens of pages purporting to be either Makis himself or his associates, all promising that cancer can be eradicated with “repurposed” drugs like ivermectin.

Google Trends shows a worldwide uptick in searches beginning in 2022 for terms like “william makis” and “dr makis ivermectin,” effectively capturing the debut of a new quack cancer therapy into mainstream discourse. The trend got a huge boost from Mel Gibson’s appearance in January 2025 on the Joe Rogan Experience, where he claimed that three of his friends had successfully cured late-stage cancer with ivermectin. Indeed, prescriptions for ivermectin doubled in the U.S. after Gibson’s appearance, according to a JAMA Open study.

The most successful alternative cancer therapies of the past century have all been of their era in some way. The hallmark of the best-known snake oils is their ability to capitalize on contemporaneous social and political tensions despite weak clinical evidence. Once entrenched in the wellness industry, many therapies eventually outlive their original cultural significance but continue to generate profits for their promoters and sellers.

In antiparasitics, a familiar pattern is repeating: an of-the-moment scam poised to dominate the alternative cancer industry for many years to come. Understanding how popular unorthodox therapies rose to prominence in the past can help explain ivermectin’s current path.

Spiritual Science and Vitamin Cures

Mistletoe has thousands of years of history in Europe and Asia, regarded by different societies at various times as a mystical plant to be used as a therapeutic in many ways. Its specific history as an alternative cancer therapy began around 1916 with Rudolf Steiner, who saw in the plant’s semi-parasitic nature a way to draw out the “etheric” excess of cancer cells and strengthen the “human astral body.” Steiner and his close collaborator, physician Ita Wegman, developed his theories into a cancer treatment called “Iscador,” a preparation of fermented mistletoe and dilute metal salts injected under the skin. Mistletoe remains widely used today in parts of Europe, particularly Germany and Switzerland. It’s seen as bolstering the body’s innate defences and is often used as complementary therapy alongside conventional cancer treatment despite a lack of strong evidence.

Iscador’s success was tied to Steiner’s influence as a teacher of “spiritual science” in opposition to what he saw as the overly materialistic science of the mainstream. The late 19th century interest in occultism and unorthodox cures helped spur the growth of Steiner’s anthroposophical movement, out of which came Wegman’s cancer clinics and the boom in mistletoe therapies. Iscador as an alternative cancer treatment reflects its emergence during a time of transition in medicine as well as society-at-large. The feeling that something essential – the soul itself – was being overlooked in the march toward empiricism and modernity formed the basis of alternative health practices like anthroposophical medicine, naturopathy, chiropractic, energy healing and others.

Iscador emerged from a time of increased interest in spiritualism but has held on over the past century and remains a well-known alternative therapy. Another cancer treatment that took off 50 years ago was similarly a product of its time: Laetrile. And it, too, has found a way to stick around and keep generating sales for wellness merchants.

It was a Californian father-son duo both named Ernst T. Krebs who created Laetrile in the 1950s. Krebs Sr., a doctor, supposedly discovered that a chemical called amygdalin (which he derived from apricot seeds) cured cancer in rats; Krebs Jr., who falsely called himself a doctor, modified amygdalin to produce a purportedly safer version he named Laetrile. The drug shot to fame during the rise of wellness culture in the 1970s, despite the fact that it had been studied and found to be ineffective. Worse still, amygdalin and Laetrile were known to cause cyanide poisoning in large doses. Canadian businessman Andrew McNaughton became the chief promoter of Laetrile in the 1960s and 1970s, using his Montreal-based company to help distribute the drug and lobby the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. to approve it. When American health authorities moved to ban Laetrile, McNaughton partnered with clinics in Mexico to manufacture and smuggle the drug across the southern U.S. border.

Laetrile became a flashpoint for the medical freedom movement, most notably when one of its enthusiasts, a physician named John Richardson, lost his medical licence and was arrested and eventually fined for smuggling and selling the drug (which had made him millions of dollars). Richardson, along with many Laetrile supporters, was a member of the John Birch Society, an organization known for libertarian views and opposition to public health measures like water fluoridation.

The battle over Laetrile was a high-profile example of the era’s controversies over patient autonomy, medical authority and alternative therapies. A 1977 New York Times article on Laetrile captured the passionate populist rhetoric of its advocates when speaking at a federal hearing:

With a j‘accuse flair they spoke of the medical drug company‐Government “conspiracy” to hold back a “valid” anticancer substance from the public; they condemned the Establishment for arrogantly denying cancer victims the right to freely choose their mode of treatment.

The 1970s were also a time of increased discussion about cancer, part of a general shift in public and media attention towards chronic disease and preventative health. Laetrile capitalized on a mood of rebellion against medical paternalism and a trend toward seeing the individual as the captain of their own health. Krebs Jr. also adapted his marketing on Laetrile to piggyback onto the vitamin craze, declaring in 1970 that amygdalin was the fictional vitamin B17, which meant that cancer was a form of vitamin deficiency.

Classifying Laetrile as a supplement rather than a drug was also a naked attempt to avoid the higher level of scrutiny medications have to pass before they can be sold. And while Laetrile itself is banned from sale in the U.S. and Canada, Krebs Jr.’s fairy tale about vitamin B17 endures in the apricot seed industry, which sells raw seeds as well as tablets and other preparations of “B17 extract.” In 2019, Health Canada issued a warning about the risk of cyanide poisoning from eating apricot seeds or taking any sort of amygdalin-based treatment for cancer.

Mistletoe and apricot seeds are far from the only alternative cancer therapies from the past hundred years, but they’re notable both for their popularity and durability. They also presage the rise of the newest cancer snake oil, a drug also borne out of a specific era – in this case the political and culture war effects of COVID.

A Pandemic Wonder Drug

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the latest unorthodox cancer trend has COVID origins – the impact of the pandemic likely will reverberate through the wellness industry for many years to come. While most people won’t have even heard of ivermectin prior to 2020, likely everyone following the news over the past several years is aware of anti-vaxxers championing it as a suppressed COVID cure. But how did we make the leap from COVID to cancer?

To know the answer requires learning about William (aka Viliam) Makis. He’s a former radiation oncologist who trained at McGill University and worked from 2010-2015 in Manitoba and Alberta. He was placed on administrative leave by the Alberta Health Service at the end of 2015 while it investigated complaints about his workplace conduct. In 2018, he was formally suspended by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA). That year, he was also declared a vexatious litigant in Alberta after an escalating series of fiery emails, retaliatory complaints and multimillion-dollar lawsuits. He started a Twitter account toward the end of 2018 and began tweeting about government conspiracies to sabotage his cancer research.

By the middle of 2021, Makis began to include COVID denialism and ivermectin in his social media attacks on health officials and governments. Throughout 2022, his social media content increasingly turned toward a new anti-vax trend: #DiedSuddenly, the fixation on blaming every reported death on vaccine side effects. Having regularly posted about cancer conspiracies, it seems natural that Makis would fold them into his COVID conspiracies. Indeed, he started posting frequently about COVID vaccines causing “turbo cancer,” a made-up phrase (though not by him) that implies rapid cancer growth but means nothing in medical terms. In early 2023, Makis started a Substack called COVID Intel and began posting prolifically about cancer, COVID, ivermectin and the grand conspiracy to silence him. The following year, he began selling a “health coaching” service centered around his antiparasitic “protocol” for cancer.

Almost immediately after Gibson gushed about the cancer-curing power of ivermectin and fenbenzadole, Makis tweeted out a clip of the interview and claimed to have personally treated one of Gibson’s friends (it’s still pinned to the top of his X account). Later in the year, he feuded publicly with Scott Adams, who spoke negatively about Makis’s protocol in the months before his death from prostate cancer.

This current era of online aggression rewards those who produce “heterodox” content and generate controversy; to wit, Makis has quickly become a top Substacker, with 143,000 subscribers to the now renamed Makis Health and a coveted purple badge next to his name indicating tens of thousands of paid subscriptions.

The CPSA took Makis to court in 2025 for practicing medicine without a licence, eventually obtaining a permanent injunction against his health coaching business that he promoted online and in podcasts as “the world’s largest ivermectin cancer clinic.” Throughout his COVID-era rise to fame and infamy, he’s maintained a high volume of online output as well as a high level of vitriol for those he sees as conspirators (including yours truly, an “evil” and “unhinged” “Pfizer MD psychopath”). In February 2026, Makis announced that he had been granted a licence to practice medicine in Florida; he’s subsequently posted videos with beachy-looking backgrounds where he promises details to come on a huge new cancer clinic.

Ironically, Makis has said repeatedly that online imposters are scamming cancer patients using his stolen persona; he has also claimed in legal filings that the CPSA has not proven that he controls all the accounts (across multiple platforms) advertising medical services with his name and image. On X (the renamed Twitter), he said recently that he’s found more than 1,700 imposters online; in the past he’s claimed these fake accounts are used for illegal fundraising or cryptocurrency scams. Makis has disavowed all Facebook pages that reference him, and indeed most (possibly all) do seem like fake accounts or AI-slop factories, generating revenue through attracting clicks and comments as part of the zombie internet. It’s now fairly common – but disturbing – to see a (presumably) real person post a question about alternative cancer therapies and have the replies fill up with both humans and bots recommending Makis – including links that go to obvious Makis fakes and commenters warning about myriad Makis imposters.

This complete mess results in untold amounts of money being made through luring the attention and dollars of people who are often at the most vulnerable and painful point in their lives. Whether Makis profits directly from any of these or other social media frauds is irrelevant now that the scam has reached this level; it’s simply a useful grift, a way to monetize COVID disinformation and the image of an embattled doctor and freedom warrior to attract the marks.

It’s possible we’ve just witnessed the birth of the next big thing in cancer pseudoscience, a trend poised to scoop up a large share of the online grift economy while also becoming a mainstay in alternative cancer therapies (like mistletoe and apricot seeds have). If antiparasitics persist in the wellness world, they may shed their COVID origin story eventually and become just another in a long list of cancer remedies they don’t want you to know about, like vitamin C, soursop, black salve, alkaline diet, castor oil, colloidal silver, Reiki and many more.

Time will tell on the strength of ivermectin’s influence, but the drive of snake oil sellers to wring profit from cancer’s misery shows no signs of fading.