“Turbo cancer” does not exist. Oncologists reject the notion entirely. Aside from the ridiculous name, there is no evidence to support it. Bold claims promoting it as fact, are not merely invalid, but scientifically incompetent. Proponents offer no clear definition, other than insist DNA can be damaged by COVID-19 vaccines, leading to aggressive cancers. As the “died suddenly” trend begins to die out, “turbo cancer” is in top gear.

We’re told residual DNA in vaccines is responsible. Or, the vaccines enter the cell nucleus. Or, it’s not a vaccine – it’s gene therapy. Or, simian virus 40 (SV40) is the cancer-causing agent in mRNA vaccines. This last claim has origins reaching back to the 1950s and 1960s when discovery of SV40 present in oral polio vaccine was responsible for safety concerns and later cancer fear-mongering. Mechanisms of infection were verified as possible but rare, and allegations of a surge in cancers decades later, are unverified. SV40 was one of the first oncogenic viruses discovered. These viruses cause cancers in experimental animals and in some cases humans. However, not in this case. When it comes to COVID-19 vaccines, some mRNA preparations may contain SV40 fragments, which aren’t the same as the virus and are not carcinogenic. In fact there is no evidence of this ever having occurred. The fragments occur because part of SV40’s DNA sequence is used in the beginning of mRNA vaccine development.

As for so-called “turbo cancer” [Wikipedia] the term has its origins at least as far back as November 2020, according to the indefatigable Orac, who identified it in a smarmy comment to a forum post about Moderna’s request for clearance of its mRNA vaccine. By November 2022, use of the term had spiked online. It was being promoted and amplified by a number of anti-vaccine activists on social media. One such group was RFK Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (CHD) which had emerged as a major distributer of COVID disinformation during the pandemic. In January 2023 AFP fact-checked a November 2022 Rumble video produced by CHD, featuring disgraced Canadian doctors Charles Hoffe and Stephen Malthouse. AFP reported that oncologists had informed them the claims were baseless, and added:

“There is no evidence in Canada or globally that vaccination leads to any forms of cancer or that Covid vaccines lead to rapid advancement in cancers,” British Columbia’s Ministry of Health said in a statement emailed January 11. “There is also no evidence to support Covid vaccines leading to harm to the immune system; on the contrary evidence strongly supports that Covid vaccines produce strong, effective immune responses that protect from serious illness from SARS CoV-2.”

Many insist there is a 2024 Japanese paper supporting the claim. It was retracted in short order due to invalid conclusions. Others post made up and verifiable stories. A popular claim is that the spike protein in vaccines, but not COVID itself, interferes with the P53 gene and thus, the crucial P53 protein. This protein ensures cell division and cell death and is also known as the tumour suppressor protein. The same claim is levelled at the P52 and BRCA tumour suppressor systems. David Gorski, co-director of the Michigan Breast Oncology Initiative, addressed the claim:

“To cause cancer, long-term inhibition of P53 activity is required (months to years), which the vaccine can’t do,” he told AFP on January 14 [2023]… The posts also mislead by invoking “turbo-cancer,” he said, as the term is not used by oncologists. “I can’t recall ever having heard the term ‘turbo cancer’ before recently,” Gorski said. “It does not appear in any paper I could find in PubMed. It’s a term made up by anti-vaxxers.” [Source]

In his own December 2022 piece dismantling “turbo cancer” disinformation, Gorski was incredulous at the lack of scientific plausibility. He observed that ionising radiation from nuclear blasts is the most powerful carcinogen known. Doses from blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not elicit leukaemia cancers for two years, whilst solid cancers took ten years to appear. Yet we were witnessing claims that aggressive stage 4 cancers were simply appearing in vaccinated individuals seemingly without warning, or credible scientific explanation. What was known, was the impact of pandemic lockdowns and isolation, on patient treatment compliance (through no fault of their own) and delayed investigation for possible cancers. Consider this abstract conclusion relating to pandemic-caused underdiagnoses of head and neck cancers:

The COVID-19 pandemic led to underdiagnosis of HNC, resulting in shifts to more advanced stage at presentation in certain subgroups. A stage shift can be expected for the 9.5% of tumors not yet diagnosed at the end of 2020. HNC patients diagnosed in 2020 suffered higher than expected mortality.

Also, a rise in cancer incidence rates in younger generations involving certain cancers was evident prior to the pandemic. A 2024 Lancet study follows trends from 1920 to 1990 and has identified an increase in cancers that had previously declined. Environmental and lifestyle changes are suspected to play a role. Obesity-related cancers are prominent whilst sedentary lifestyles, processed foods, alcohol and exposure to chemicals may all be involved. In April 2023 Kashyap Patel, MD, was quoted in the American Journal of Managed Care regarding a link he had identified between COVID-19 and cancer progression in younger adults. The trend began in March 2020, long before COVID-19 vaccines were available, and has increased steadily. It was reported:

With COVID-19 added to the mix, Patel now fears a “perfect storm” of factors will trigger inflammatory responses in some patients, causing cancer to arrive years earlier than normal and making it deadlier once it is diagnosed.

We should also remind ourselves of basic evidence delivered around the world as mRNA vaccines were developed for COVID-19. mRNA cannot enter a cell’s nucleus and thus cannot alter DNA. mRNA fragments degrade quickly post vaccination. So, the “months or years” Gorski observed were needed to disrupt P53 proteins, and therefore cancer suppression, cannot and do not apply. mRNA vaccine ingredients simply do not accumulate in the body. Gorski also cites Edward Nirenberg who points out that the DNA plasmid-based COVID-19 vaccine, ZyCOV-D must be delivered by jet-injector because DNA can’t spontaneously penetrate cells. If DNA does access cell cytoplasm – let’s call it cytoplasmic DNA – it is then degraded by capable enzymes called cytoplasmic deoxyribonucleases: DNase I, DNase II and TREX1. In addition, autophages, which engulf cytoplasmic debris, will also handle DNA. Logic dictates that “turbo cancer” from mRNA vaccines cannot exist.

Yet logic is anathema to the anti-vaccine lobby. When Fox News medical commenter Kelly Powers died of a brain tumour, the turbo cancer crowd leapt into action on social media. The People’s Voice, an online rag famous for lengthy bogus headlines such as British Gov’t Declare “Turbo Cancer Health Crisis” As Thousands of Vaxxed Diagnosed Each Day, insulted Powers’ family and friends with Fully Vaccinated Fox News Doctor Kelly Powers, Who Survived On-Air Heart Attack, Dies From Turbo Cancer. Spoiler alert: Powers’ glioblastoma was diagnosed prior to release of COVID-19 vaccines. The publication is regularly fact-checked to its detriment, such as here, here, here and here.

Aside from conspiracy headlines and misleading voices on social media, there’s no evidence of an increase in sudden, aggressive and lethal cancers. Australia emerged from the pandemic as a highly vaccinated nation. 97% of over 12 year olds had at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose whilst 95.2% had two. As the Australian population ages and the risk of cancer diagnosis increases with age, we should expect more cases. With a growing population, the overall number of cases will also increase. The total number has increased over the last thirty years, whilst the cancer incidence rate (per 100,000) has stabilised since 2009 for men, but increased for women in Australia. See below [Source].

For more information on cancer, the age cohorts impacted, the types of cancers seen and mortality in the USA, drop in on the Global Vaccine Data Network blog and the informative entry, ‘Turbo Cancer’ and mRNA: The myth that defies biology and physics. We’re also reminded that certain vaccines reduce and prevent cancer risk by preventing viral infection (HPV, Hepatitis B), and even treat cancer via personalised immunotherapy.

The most common reason favoured by vaccine conspiracy theorists for the “turbo cancer” myth is the notion that mRNA vaccines are contaminated with excessively high levels of residual DNA. I’ve previously written about this and the position of Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) who regard it as misinformation. It remains a beloved trope of anti-vax legal guru Julian Gillespie, who has recently knocked on the door of Elon Musk’s DOGE. His aim there, is to convince Musk that the FDA fraudulently schemed $16 billion from Trump and the American people by colluding with Pfizer and Moderna over mRNA vaccines. Why? Because it’s “gene therapy”.

Focusing on DNA contamination in mRNA vaccines, sometimes called Plasmid-gate, Gillespie often refers to Kevin McKernan. McKernan’s October 2023 preprint followed his original, which as I’ve mentioned, was labelled an “awful study” by David Gorski. McKernan himself and Jessica Rose were correctly labelled anti-vaxxers by Gorski who also noted their “abuse” of VAERS. The other authors are Dr. David Speicher, Maria Gutschi, and David Wiseman. Along with Julian Fidge’s solicitor, Katie Ashby-Koppens, all authors but Wiseman recently joined Gillespie in a “Citizen Petition requesting the revocation of the [FDA] approvals given to the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 products”. Sound familiar? It’s the US version of the specific aim of every Gillespie-designed anti-COVID vaccine court case in Australia: to revoke TGA approval of the vaccines.

The methodological flaws seen in the publication of McKernan et al have not gone unnoticed. Qubit Fluorometric Quantification (fluorometry) uses fluorescent markers to detect nucleic acids. Apart from detecting DNA the technique also measures RNA, and the presence of mRNA in the vaccines leads to inflated results being reported as solely DNA. So why do we hear so much about the results yielded by this technique? Simply, because using the “gold standard” of Quantitative PCR (qPCR) to measure DNA, revealed DNA levels below FDA guidelines, to McKernan et al. See below [Source].

Comparison of residual DNA content of spike (red) and ori (blue) and the total number of adverse events (orange) reported to VAERS. The FDA and WHO regulatory guideline of 10 ng/dose for residual DNA is shown by a red dotted line. Vials are sorted in descending order by DNA load of plasmid ori. Lower case letters at the end of lot numbers indicate different vials of the same lot. The total number of As was determined per lot and reproduced for each vial in the same lot.

I recommend reading the October 2023 Respectful Insolence analysis of the McKernan, Rose et al paper for specific commentary on total ng levels per dose. Getting to the business end, I’ll quote from it below:

So, from McKernan and Rose’s own data, the vial with the very highest concentration of DNA was one Pfizer vial that had less than one-half the maximum DNA amount recommended by the FDA, while the Moderna vial with the most plasmid DNA contamination had less than one-tenth the maximum recommended by the FDA. In other words, there’s a whole lot of nothing here so far.

Finding results that don’t fit long held conclusions is what led the authors to use Qubit to find “orders of magnitude” more plasmid DNA. Gorski stresses what many have pondered when looking at these results. Surely when two different techniques yield such discrepancies in data, it’s time to question methodology. In fact their Qubit results yield a 600 fold higher than the maximum measured by qPCR in Pfizer vaccines. In Moderna vaccines it is almost 5,500 times greater. Later, Gorski notes their VAERS results are “hilariously bad”. McKernan and Rose had searched VAERS for adverse events (AE) reported for batch numbers matching their vials. After dividing serious AEs by total AEs for each batch, they graphed that figure against the DNA they had measured in vials with the same batch number. This was plotted on Microsoft Excel.

To appreciate a little more nuance about the perils of linking batch numbers to unverified AE reports, do visit my post OpenDAEN: Misleading Australians. The added peril by McKernan and Co. is that they are contending AEs they identified are due to the plasmid DNA they have reported as excessive. It’s essentially a conspiracy theory beefed with flawed science and pushed out as a hit job on mRNA vaccines. It is fear mongering with reckless disdain for the reality that residual DNA is present in vaccines and monitored by regulatory bodies. More so, for the last time, it cannot harm us.

Moving away from dubious claims seeking to blame “turbo cancer” on DNA residue, there are other attempts to blame mRNA vaccines for cancer. Apart from the retracted Japanese paper there has been social media misrepresentation of a Belgian study involving mice, which was published in Frontiers in Oncology in 2023. USA Today provide a summary of the “turbo cancer” disinformation tactic used here. In Australia as I’ve mentioned before, we have a clique of senators who appear to easily adopt all things anti-COVID vaccine. Consider this speech from Senator Malcom Roberts of One Nation, in the Senate Chamber, 1 August 2023, referring to the Pfizer “fakezine”. Before ultimately attacking climate change science as “the cult of doom”, he contended that “COVID science has been smashed”, by running through a list of unproven claims likening the COVID vaccines to disease-causing killer agents. He began of course, with the Belgian mouse study:

An article published in the journal Frontiers in Oncology in May asked if the emergence of malignant lymphoma, commonly called turbo cancer, was an adverse event caused by the COVID vaccine—the COVID injection. Researchers injected 14 mice with saline and 14 with the Pfizer COVID product. All the mice given the saline remained healthy. The mice injected with Pfizer appeared healthy. However, one died suddenly two days after the booster dose was administered. An autopsy revealed: ‘B-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma following the intravenous high-dose MRNA vaccination, at age 14 weeks.’

How many more of these studies showing fatal outcomes from the COVID products are needed before this government accepts our 30,000 excess deaths in the last 12 months are, in part, caused by these injections?

Roberts asks, how many more studies? Let’s begin by asking the authors of this one, who were compelled to respond to the attention their poor mouse was getting. After all, it had a predisposition to lymphomas and received an intravenous (not intramuscular) injection 480 to 600 times higher in proportion to body weight, than human vaccine recipients ever received. In an addendum, the authors write:

In the months following publication, we noticed that our case report has gained significant public attention, particularly on social media platforms. More specifically, our case report has been largely misinterpreted and used as a study providing evidence that mRNA COVID-19 vaccination can trigger a phenomenon which has non-scientifically been referred to as “turbo cancer”. First of all, we wish to unequivocally disassociate ourselves from this term. In our case report, there is not a single reference to a condition called “turbo cancer”, nor do we recognize it as a legitimate medical term.

The authors continue, stressing their exploratory research is unbiased, and not about finding correlation between variables, nor discovering causality. The wee mouse they wrote, was merely part of a larger group in which they were seeking to “replicate a previously described murine model of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis”. Most importantly the authors stressed that they had multiple times highlighted that a causal relationship between COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and the malignancy observed, could not be established. They stressed a pre-existing lymphoma could have existed, and that reduction in body weight over a week prior to administration of the first whopping great dose of the vaccine, meant an existing lymphoma was plausible. They also offer:

In conclusion, the novel COVID-19 vaccines have demonstrated an exceptional benefit-risk ratio in the fight against the pandemic and manifestations of severe adverse reactions following COVID-19 vaccination are rare. Our case report in not any way counters that overwhelming benefit-risk profile. 

Finally, there are repeated attempts to blame COVID-19 vaccines for “excess deaths” in Australia and around the world. Cancer fatalities and “turbo cancer” are peddled by anti-vaccine activists as contributing to the excess deaths. The claim can at least be traced back to an October 2022 refutation by RMIT University in Australia. Last year a study by Saskia Mostert et al, published in the BMJ, was improperly reported in social media and sections of mainstream media as linking excess deaths during the pandemic to COVID-19 vaccines.

The BMJ responded by issuing a statement stressing this link was not made by the authors. Nonetheless, post hoc conclusions could easily be incorrectly made from the the tone of the text which failed to present any causative data to explain excess deaths. Notably, it did not rule out COVID-19 infection. Paul Hunter in The Conversation does an excellent job of addressing the study and reasons for excess deaths.

In conclusion, “turbo cancer” is a bogus term invented by anti-vaccine lobbyists and unrecognised by health professionals. It is widely recognised as a conspiracy theory. Its purpose is to spread fear and mislead the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. The allegation of DNA contamination of mRNA vaccines, advanced by McKernon, Rose, Speicher et al, and championed by Julian Gillespie in Australia, is demonstrably flawed.

The incidence of, and deaths from, cancer following the pandemic are not linked to vaccination. Nonetheless, false claims about excess deaths and “turbo cancer” linked to COVID-19 vaccines, will continue to be incorrectly made.

---

Last Update: 14 March 2025