Confronting a Rising Tide of Cancer Misinformation
Published by
Harvard Medicine
on
In today’s oncology landscape, clinicians must balance the urgency of treating aggressive cancers like small cell lung cancer with the growing influence of medical misinformation that can delay lifesaving care. This article explores how distrust in the healthcare system, financial and social challenges, and the spread of unproven “natural” cures on social media can shape patient decisions, particularly in underserved communities. The author, an oncologist practicing in Tennessee and a senior medical director at Thyme Care, Dr. Samyukta Mullangi, MD, illustrates how building trust, addressing fears, and providing personalized navigation support are now essential complements to evidence-based medicine. In 2025, effective cancer care requires more than clinical expertise — it demands empathy, cultural understanding, and systems designed to guide patients through a complex and often confusing medical journey.
The man sitting across from me in clinic was only 58, but he had been smoking two packs per day since his teenage years and was exposed to potential environmental hazards in his job in construction. He had come into the emergency department with acute chest pain, thinking that he was experiencing a heart attack. Instead, his scans revealed a large mass in the upper lobe of his right lung, with enlarged lymph nodes in his thorax. A biopsy of the lung mass confirmed that he had small cell lung cancer.
In oncology, these clinical situations demand urgency. Small cell lung cancer is an aggressive diagnosis, so it’s critical to move quickly. The next steps in this type of care are to complete staging by ordering more scans, such as a PET scan of his body and an MRI scan of his brain, and to create a treatment plan in collaboration with colleagues from surgery or radiation oncology. Patients with limited stage disease may not need systemic drug therapy, only local control with surgery and/or radiation. Despite the fact that my actual role is to provide systemic drug therapy, I take on the task of quarterbacking their journey to ensure that they make it through without getting lost in a fragmented and complex medical system. The clock matters. Each delay risks the cancer growing beyond the window where curative treatment is possible.
In the midst of that urgency, I was surprised when the patient asked us to pause. He wanted to consider what I was telling him and think over his options. He had seen a video on social media about ivermectin and fenbendazole. These antiparasitic drugs, often used to treat livestock, took off in popularity after the actor Mel Gibson appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and touted the experiences of several friends who were supposedly cured of their stage IV cancer after taking them. My patient shared that multiple members of his church had “come back” from their cancer after trying such alternative treatments. He also wasn’t sure about Big Pharma and its profit-seeking motives. He felt like I was hurrying him. I read in his face a mixture of emotions: fear, confusion, resentment, suspicion.
In that moment, I felt the collision between the way I was trained — on papers, on guidelines, on expert reviews — and the social reality of practicing medicine today. Everything I knew about staging, prognosis, trials, and evidence mattered less than whether I could earn my patient’s trust enough to start treatment on time.