Ivermectin Prescriptions Nearly Doubled After Mel Gibson’s Cancer ‘Cure’ Suggestion On Joe Rogan’s Podcast

When Mel Gibson suggested to tens of millions of Joe Rogan podcast listeners that a pair of anti-parasite drugs could potentially treat cancer, doctors across the country started writing prescriptions for them at a startling rate, even for patients who actually had cancer.

That’s the central finding of a new study published in JAMA Network Open, which tracked prescriptions for ivermectin, a drug most commonly used to treat parasitic infections in humans and animals, combined with a class of related anti-parasite drugs called benzimidazoles, in the months after actor Mel Gibson appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience in January 2025. On that episode, Gibson and others promoted the drug combination as an off-label cancer treatment, meaning regulators have not approved it for that purpose.

The episode was viewed by more than 60 million people across multiple platforms, and the claims spread rapidly across social media and other outlets. Rigorous scientific evidence does not currently support using these drugs to treat cancer, according to the study’s authors.

What followed was a measurable surge in prescriptions that researchers say closely mirrors the audience of the podcast itself: a pattern that raises serious concerns about what happens when celebrity influence collides with life-or-death medical decisions.

What Researchers Found After Mel Gibson’s Joe Rogan Appearance

To figure out how much the podcast actually moved the needle, researchers pulled anonymized electronic health records from a network covering 67 healthcare organizations across the United States, with data on more than 68 million patients.

Researchers looked specifically at cases where a doctor prescribed both ivermectin and a benzimidazole drug, such as fenbendazole or albendazole, on the same day to patients between the ages of 18 and 90. That dual-prescription pattern is the combination Gibson and his fellow guests promoted on the podcast as a cancer remedy. Prescriptions were tracked from January through July 2025 and compared to the same months in 2024, before the celebrity endorsement. Patients with a documented cancer diagnosis within the prior year were also examined as a separate group.

All prescriptions came from outpatient settings, including primary care offices, specialist visits, and emergency departments. Researchers then used a standard statistical method that adjusts for age and sex differences to calculate how much prescribing changed between the two time periods.

The Numbers Behind the Prescribing Surge

Across all patients, the rate of these dual prescriptions nearly doubled in the first seven months of 2025 compared to the same stretch in 2024. Among cancer patients, prescribing rates were more than 2.5 times higher after the celebrity endorsement than during the same period the year before.

Those increases were not spread evenly. Adults between ages 18 and 64 saw steeper jumps than those 65 and older. Male patients saw larger increases than female patients. When broken down by geography, the South stood out sharply: prescriptions there rose at more than double the rate of all other regions combined, both overall and among cancer patients. White patients also saw the most pronounced increases compared to Asian, Black, and other patient groups in the dataset.

The demographic and regional patterns, the authors note, “mirror the audience characteristics of the podcasts and media platforms promoting these regimens, suggesting selective amplification and reach of health misinformation.”

Why Cancer Patients Face the Greatest Risk

Among those affected by this prescribing surge, cancer patients are who the researchers worry about most. People facing a frightening, life-threatening illness are understandably desperate for any option that might help — but that desperation also makes them more vulnerable to claims that haven’t been scientifically tested. Researchers specifically flag the concern that patients may have delayed or skipped proven treatments in favor of these unverified drugs, potentially allowing their disease to worsen in the meantime. Measuring whether that actually happened was outside the scope of this study, but the authors identify it as a critical unanswered question.

Worth noting: the National Cancer Institute has announced plans to study ivermectin as a possible cancer treatment, but that research is still in its early stages. No rigorous clinical trial evidence currently supports using ivermectin or benzimidazole drugs to treat cancer.

Celebrity Health Influence Is Nothing New — But the Stakes Keep Rising

Media moments have changed patient and physician behavior before. Researchers have documented similar effects when celebrities promoted cancer screenings and other medical interventions, sometimes in genuinely helpful ways. When that influence pushes people toward unproven treatments rather than evidence-based ones, the consequences are a different matter entirely.

Researchers conclude by calling for coordinated action from clinicians, health systems, researchers, and policymakers to protect people — particularly those who are most medically vulnerable — from being steered away from proven care by misinformation. As trust in institutions continues to erode, they note, this kind of celebrity-driven health influence gains more and more traction.

A podcast episode that lasted a few hours may have contributed to a sharp increase in prescriptions for unproven cancer treatments flowing through the American medical system. For patients who needed proven treatment, that gap between entertainment and evidence could carry serious consequences.

Disclaimer: This article is based on a peer-reviewed research letter published in JAMA Network Open. The study describes a temporal association between the podcast’s release and changes in prescribing rates; it does not establish direct causation. All statistics cited are sourced directly from the paper. No raw prescription totals were reported by the authors; all figures reflect rate ratios and rates per 1,000 patients.

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