News broke over the weekend that President Joe Biden has prostate cancer, kicking off the kind of polarized public reaction that unfolds when this sort of thing happens to a high-profile political figure. There were the Democrats who sent an outpouring of condolences and the Republicans who made crude jokes. But there was also a third reaction that’s become standard whenever a prominent person gets a bad health diagnosis in the post-covid era: Vaxxed?
Shortly after news broke that the 82-year-old former president had cancer, social media lit up with conspiracy theorists insisting his illness had something to do with the covid-19 vaccine. In fact, people seemed fixed on one term which has spread widely among the scientific and medically illiterate. They kept saying Biden must have “turbo cancer.”
Some on social media speculated that perhaps Biden had cancer that went undetected while he was serving as president until Jan. 2025. But Kristi Leigh, a reporter for the far-right news outlet LindellTV, which is owned by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, thought it was a brilliant point when one of her guests brought up the idea that perhaps Biden’s cancer diagnosis wasn’t being hidden while he was in office after all. Maybe Biden just had “turbo cancer.”
“Many of us are quick to assume Biden’s cancer diagnosis was hidden—and rightfully so—since the administration covered up his mental health decline. BUT WHAT IF IT WASN’T?” Leigh wrote on X. “What if this is a turbo cancer related to his ‘rolling up the sleeve’ in the White House?”
It should be noted that the guest on Leigh’s show who made this supposedly intelligent point about turbo cancer was Ben Tapper, a chiropractor from Nebraska who was churning out anti-vaccine propaganda in 2021, according to the Guardian. Chiropractors have been some of the most vocal anti-vaccine advocates in the country since the covid-19 pandemic started in 2020.
Peter A. McCullough, a former cardiologist who promoted unproven treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine at the height of the pandemic, posted a video to Instagram claiming that Biden’s cancer was “turbo cancer.”
“It meets all the definitional criteria for turbo cancer… cancer on overdrive,” McCullough said in the video. McCullough was sued by Baylor University Medical Center in 2021 for claiming an affiliation with the institution while spreading misinformation about covid-19.
Others on social media platforms like Facebook were some of the earliest to post about the conspiracy theory after Biden’s cancer diagnosis was announced. “Joe Biden has been diagnosed with turbo cancer. Exit stage left Joe…” one Facebook user wrote, adding the hashtag #SafeAndEffective in an effort to tie his cancer to the covid-19 vaccine.
What’s turbo cancer? It’s just a name that’s popped up on social media for a fast-progressing cancer but isn’t something recognized by medical science. Biden’s cancer reportedly has a Gleason score of 9, which is a grading system for prostate cancer. A score of 6 is low grade and 10 is high-grade cancer, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
But turbo cancer isn’t a real thing, despite what conspiracy theorists on social media claim. As the AFP notes in its own fact-check of the absurd claims being made on social media right now, an aggressive form of cancer can develop quickly and routine screenings can sometimes miss cancer. But there’s no evidence that covid-19 vaccines cause cancer.
None of that will stop people from claiming that vaccines are unsafe, especially now that antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in charge of agencies like the CDC and FDA as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. News broke Tuesday that the FDA plans to limit access to the covid-19 vaccine to people over the age of 65 and those with underlying health conditions.
FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and FDA vaccine head Vinay Prasad, both prominent figures in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, have argued that covid vaccines aren’t worth the risk. And with this change, it will probably become much harder for the average adult who wants a covid shot each year to get one, as health insurance companies become less likely to cover them for healthy adults.
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