No evidence COVID-19 vaccines cause ‘turbo cancer’

A video in which a Canadian doctor claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause so-called “turbo cancer” is not based on facts, according to five experts who spoke to Reuters.

Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician who is currently under investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia for alleged misconduct related to spreading false information about COVID-19 measures and vaccines (here , here), made the claim during an hour-long podcast on Nov. 11 (here).

He claimed that COVID-19 vaccines damage the immune systems of recipients and cause aggressive new cancers, as well as flare-ups in those in remission from the disease. As evidence, Hoffe presented an anecdote about a 61-year-old patient who was diagnosed with cancer of the lungs and spine in October 2022, a year after receiving his second vaccine dose.

“People who had previous cancers, which were in remission, are flaring up since their shots because (of) the damage to their immune system by the COVID shots,” Hoffe said. “But (with) new cancers being diagnosed, the tumours are bigger than ever. They seem to grow very aggressively, spread very aggressively, and be very resistant to treatment, so this is being nicknamed turbo cancer.”

Social media users have since clipped the quote from the interview and reshared it as an 85-second snippet on Facebook (here , here and here), BitChute (here and here) and Twitter (here), where it has been viewed more than 25,000 times.

Hoffe did not respond to a request from Reuters for data to back up his claims.

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS

“There is zero basis for any of the things being claimed here,” Dr. Gigi Gronvall, immunology expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Reuters via email, adding that the narrative is “completely made up and none of it is true”.

Four other experts, Justin Stebbing, editor-in-chief of Nature's cancer journal, Oncogene, and visiting professor of cancer medicine and oncology at Imperial College London; Professor Neil Mabbott, personal chair in immunopathology at the University of Edinburgh; and Medical director of the Royal College of Radiologists Dr Nicky Thorp; and a spokesperson for The Vaccine Knowledge Project, also agreed that there is no evidence of COVID-19 vaccines causing cancer, nor a more aggressive so-called “turbo cancer”.

Prof. Stebbing told Reuters via email: “I’ve never heard the term turbo-cancer, but clearly some cancers are more aggressive than others, regardless of cancer type or age,” while Dr Thorp noted that it “doesn’t seem to be a term used in mainstream, peer-reviewed literature”.

The experts did note an increase in people presenting with late-stage cancers, but said it was more likely a knock-on effect of medical systems shutting down during the pandemic.

Mabbott cited several studies, including a Europe-wide report in The Lancet Oncology, which estimated that, during the first year of the pandemic, around 100 million screenings were missed, 1.5 million fewer patients with cancer were seen by clinicians, 50% did not receive treatment in a timely manner, and up to 1 million may have had undiagnosed cancer (here).

Another study, published in 2021 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and using data from Washington state, reached a similar conclusion (here), while a 2020 report by the MacMillan Cancer Support charity said that 50,000 cancer diagnoses were missed in Britain alone between March and August that year compared to pre-pandemic levels. During the same period, the charity estimated that 30,000 fewer people began their cancer treatment compared to 2019 (here).

A spokesperson from The Vaccine Knowledge Project, referring to a study in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology on detection and management of colorectal cancer in England, said there were “a smaller number of cancer diagnoses during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially due to longer waits to see a doctor”.

“Unfortunately, this may mean that when ‘new’ cases of cancer have been diagnosed, they have been further developed than if they had been diagnosed earlier, meaning they are more difficult to treat,” the spokesperson said.

Reuters has previously addressed claims where COVID-19 vaccines have been falsely linked to weakening the immune system (here), and causing cancer (here and here).

VERDICT

False. Five experts told Reuters that there is no evidence to suggest COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, nor so-called “turbo cancer,” but said a drop in screenings during the pandemic may have led to rise in cancers first detected at their later stages.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.