Another platinum star post. If everyone subscribed to you (and as many as can do it as paid subscribers), we would all be SO much better informed. Thanks to you and your team for the superb work on this and all else.
Yes, missed cancer diagnoses and delayed treatment is one of the big reasons that lockdowns were a disaster. There were people screaming in 2020 about the health impacts of keeping people away from doctors/hospitals but they were shouted down or censored.
I agree with you that there's no clear evidence that covid-19 vaccines are causing cancers. Unfortunately, we have no good long-term clinical trials that can provide some answers. Covid-19 vaccines may or may not be causing some cancers. We simply don't know because we weren't interested in running proper clinical trials.
Thanks! Many good points that are important to bring clarity.
I'm an immunologist-research scientist who developed COVID in March 2020 with subsequent Long COVID. In digging out of it, I began reading about SARS-CoV-2 virus migration into cells and then to mitochondria where they attached to inner walls of the cisternae and coopt the function of these vital organelles.
Mitochondria are best known for their role in making ATP, the energy molecules that fuel our bodies. Less know is that mitochondria play a vital role as part of the innate immune system. They constantly survey cells to determine the presence of viruses. Additionally mitochondria survey and eliminate cells that are prone to become the roots of cancers.
Several respected scientists and laboratories have demonstrated that when the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects cells that it results in mitochondrial dysfunction in both human tissues and animal models. Dysfunctional mitochondria may not be able to adequately survey for and/or eliminate cells that contain and manifest the results of damaged DNA.
Bottom line, this type of viral infection may predispose some individuals to some types of cancers. Time and the collection of data will reveal if this is the case.
I feel so bad for Kate Middleton and family dealing with this. It is every young parent’s nightmare. I have made a few similar diagnoses in young mothers at this age or younger. As a family doc it is gut wrenching even for me. I can only imagine it personally, and have feared it mightily. That being said, if I were to have a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” reaction, it would be that immune system dysregulation after Covid illness could contribute to slightly higher cancer rates, as the immune system is quite active in surveillance and early destruction of incipient cancers. Such a population wide trend still needs to be proven.
An illustration of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy from a book I’m reading called Plato and a platypus walk into a bar:
A city boy is being led through the swamps of Louisiana by his cousin. “Is it true that an alligator won’t attack you if you carry a flashlight?“ asks the city boy.
His cousin replies, “depends on how fast you carry the flashlight.”
Thank you for this post. I have been seeing this turbo cancer headline all over social media. As someone who was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2021 (appendix -- and thankfully had excellent care including surgery/treatment right when things were quieter in terms of Covid as it was the spring of 2021, and am okay right now thankfully) it is easy to get freaked out whenever cancer is invoked that way. (And I was diagnosed a month after I got my first Covid vaccine but really if it were vaccine related that would be SUPER turbo cancer!) But while the anti-vaxxers will distort just about everything to blame it on "the jab" there are also posts linking a Covid infection with cancer. I know that viruses are implicated in some cancers. It seems to me it is probably too early to know if Covid causes cancer but it is still scary, especially since the world has given up on prevention. Is there anything you can share about Covid infection triggering cancer?
Thanks for covering this. Yes, I agree cancer started to occur much before the Covid pandemic hit. However, there is research that implicate the possibility that Covid in itself is a cancer causing virus.
Jahankhani K, Ahangari F, Adcock IM, et al. Possible cancer-causing capacity of COVID-19: Is SARS-CoV-2 an oncogenic agent? Biochimie 2023;213:130-38. doi:
It’s well known that some viruses can cause cancer: HPV, Epstein Barr, hepatitis virus and more. HPV vaccine prevents cancer. Just an observation that runs counter to the narrative of blaming vaccines vs virus.
I am hoping a future column will address the concerns and fears that covid as a disease process is triggering an increase in cancers, through immune system disregulation and depletion.
The number of people who confuse correlation with causation seems to be increasing rather than decreasing; in my opinion, it is because many people are looking for a simple solution to a complex problem, and are therefore willing to accept the word of anyone who speaks with authority, regardless of qualifications.
As someone who was diagnosed with cancer during the pandemic (July 2020), I will say that I did delay in-person doctor's appointments due to the pandemic - not enough to impact treatment, but enough to be noticeable. Some of this was because in-person appointments were harder to get, both because of pandemic restrictions on capacity and because of concerns about infection - I had a cough that was due to allergies, but had to get a negative COVID test before I could meet with my oncologist the first time. The treatment facility where I received my infusions is a large rectangular room with the nurses' station in the center, and treatment chairs allow 3 walls; half of those chairs were not in use during the pandemic in an attempt to separate patients more widely, which made treatment appointments harder to schedule. Ultimately, the facility where I was treated was absolutely wonderful in maximizing patient care while minimizing risk as much as possible, and I am currently NED (No Evidence of Disease - often called remission).
Still, I'm sure that there is a large segment of the population that didn't get screeners in a reasonable timeframe, when other issues that impact access to medical care were compounded by the pandemic. That issue is still, to an extent, ongoing; when I scheduled my regular screening mammogram, it was a 5-month delay between when I scheduled it and the first non-urgent appointment, in a facility where the usual delay was 1-2 months. I was told that much of that was due to the number of people catching up on screeners missed during the restrictions. Access to medical care is an ongoing issue that needs to continue to be addressed - one that the pandemic threw into greater awareness.
Of course there are multiple causes of cancer in the past 4 years. Delayed cancer screenings are one, the virus could be involved, increase stress, and studies are showing the covid vaccine is likely also involved.
I'm surprised you don't know about the multiple studies linking the covid vaccine to cancer. The immune system is a cascade of processes, and when you turn off or interfere with one part of the immune system, other parts are affected. There have been ways this injection has been found to disregulate the immune system, and limit the immune system's ability to fight cancer (our immune system is what keeps cancer cells in check).
Since moderna and Pfizer studies were shut down after 10 months, there are no long-term studies to show the long-term effects of this shot - this is an undeniable fact.
Unfortunately, Pfizer turned in tens of thousands of side effects to the FDA from their study in the short time it was conducted (search “5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021”, or for the longer report search “Pfizer: R Psur 3 Appendix 2 2 Cumulative And Interval Summary Tabulation Of Serious And Non Serious Adverse Events”).
The mechanisms of these effects are being studied, but the same corporate media that repeated "safe and effective" without completed studies to back that statement up are not telling people about these studies.
Here are some:
1) Literature review, immune dysfunction, cancers, mRNA shot different than natural infection in some important ways. "In this paper, we explore the scientific literature suggesting that vaccination with an mRNA vaccine initiates a set of biological events that are not only different from that induced by infection but are in several ways demonstrably counterproductive to both short- and long-term immune competence and normal cellular function".
3) IgG4 class switching -Dr Jessica Rose on the three ways that a switch to IGG4 antibodies with covid vaccine inhibits destruction of cancer cells (she has links to the studies in her article):
5) “induction of lymphopenia and inflammation, downregulation of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) expression, activation of oncogenic cascades, sequestration of tumor suppressor proteins, dysregulation of the RNA-G quadruplex-protein binding system, alteration of type I interferon responses, unsilencing of retrotransposable elements, etc”
There are so many doctors aware of these studies and talking about increased in cancer rates in their patients. Here are just two who also talked about the mechanisms from the shots:
Dr Orso on uptick in cancer and lots of other side effects because the lipid nanoparticles travel everywhere, and quickly talks about the many ways that studies are showing how this affects cancer:
Thank you. Real science is messy and contrasting opinions are what drives research. In my experience by the time there can be no rational doubt the process being studied has become pretty advanced.
Then there is the challenge of subgroups which can go on to a very long list (age, gender, gender preference, place of residence,. . . . ) Hence the dilemma facing decision makers--wait too long and consequences can be severe; act too soon and endure conspiracy backlash. Glad I am not in that position.
For the sake of giving Katelyn her due, as a responsible scientist who has enough concern for the greater good to share fact based information with the the public, I hope that all responding to her posts will try to "keep the party polite." Rational, productive discussion, featuring different perspectives may be hard to conduct in an era when many people have been led to believe that it's OK to publicly insult and demean anyone who disagrees with them; but what Katelyn is doing putting herself out there, is harder. Once we allow someone who is generously sharing scientific knowledge with others for their benefit to be verbally assaulted and threatened, we are proving ourselves to be no more enlightened than the Inquisitors who burned Giordano Bruno at the stake.
I believe that the human need to find reasons for phenomena that defy explanation is what's driving so many of the loony "conspiracy theories" that have made gullible people afraid of modern medicine in general and vaccinations in particular. It's so much easier to believe that thimerosal is what caused your child's autism, or that the polio vaccine is responsible for your inability to conceive. No different than believing that winter happens because Demeter refuses to replenish the earth during the months that her daughter Persephone is compelled to stay underground with Hades. Finding correlation is easy. Determining causality takes hard work. Thanks, Katelyn, for pointing out the difference with your usual ease and elegance. And data.
Katelyn, I come from a healthcare background and have been following you from your beginning. I agree with many things that you have to say. However, I believe that two things that you said in this piece are a bit misleading.
First, I do not believe that missed cancer diagnoses and these cancers being delayed were a 'kernel' of truth. It IS the truth. Dependent upon the state in which one lived is what determined when one had access to what was viewed as 'non-essential' testing. I live in Illinois and we were one of the last to resume non-essential tests, therefore backing up the demand for months. I ended up going in for my mammogram approximately 6 months late by the time I could get an appointment once things began to open up. Also, when you stated that the 'pandemic caused a delay in cancer screenings', you should have said, the 'pandemic RESPONSE caused a delay in cancer screenings'. Additionally, the response sparked and insane amount of fear in many who continue to have a difficult time recovering. Sometimes I honestly wonder if these people every will be able to recover.
I agree with you that turbo cancer is not a thing. I do not believe that the vaccines are contributing to these cancers. It was ridiculous, political, media-driven and nonsensical; and what contributed to, in my opinion, many of these cancers we are now seeing. All of it is shameful.
Another platinum star post. If everyone subscribed to you (and as many as can do it as paid subscribers), we would all be SO much better informed. Thanks to you and your team for the superb work on this and all else.
Yes, missed cancer diagnoses and delayed treatment is one of the big reasons that lockdowns were a disaster. There were people screaming in 2020 about the health impacts of keeping people away from doctors/hospitals but they were shouted down or censored.
I agree with you that there's no clear evidence that covid-19 vaccines are causing cancers. Unfortunately, we have no good long-term clinical trials that can provide some answers. Covid-19 vaccines may or may not be causing some cancers. We simply don't know because we weren't interested in running proper clinical trials.
Thanks! Many good points that are important to bring clarity.
I'm an immunologist-research scientist who developed COVID in March 2020 with subsequent Long COVID. In digging out of it, I began reading about SARS-CoV-2 virus migration into cells and then to mitochondria where they attached to inner walls of the cisternae and coopt the function of these vital organelles.
Mitochondria are best known for their role in making ATP, the energy molecules that fuel our bodies. Less know is that mitochondria play a vital role as part of the innate immune system. They constantly survey cells to determine the presence of viruses. Additionally mitochondria survey and eliminate cells that are prone to become the roots of cancers.
Several respected scientists and laboratories have demonstrated that when the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects cells that it results in mitochondrial dysfunction in both human tissues and animal models. Dysfunctional mitochondria may not be able to adequately survey for and/or eliminate cells that contain and manifest the results of damaged DNA.
Bottom line, this type of viral infection may predispose some individuals to some types of cancers. Time and the collection of data will reveal if this is the case.
I feel so bad for Kate Middleton and family dealing with this. It is every young parent’s nightmare. I have made a few similar diagnoses in young mothers at this age or younger. As a family doc it is gut wrenching even for me. I can only imagine it personally, and have feared it mightily. That being said, if I were to have a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” reaction, it would be that immune system dysregulation after Covid illness could contribute to slightly higher cancer rates, as the immune system is quite active in surveillance and early destruction of incipient cancers. Such a population wide trend still needs to be proven.
An illustration of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy from a book I’m reading called Plato and a platypus walk into a bar:
A city boy is being led through the swamps of Louisiana by his cousin. “Is it true that an alligator won’t attack you if you carry a flashlight?“ asks the city boy.
His cousin replies, “depends on how fast you carry the flashlight.”
Thank you for this post. I have been seeing this turbo cancer headline all over social media. As someone who was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2021 (appendix -- and thankfully had excellent care including surgery/treatment right when things were quieter in terms of Covid as it was the spring of 2021, and am okay right now thankfully) it is easy to get freaked out whenever cancer is invoked that way. (And I was diagnosed a month after I got my first Covid vaccine but really if it were vaccine related that would be SUPER turbo cancer!) But while the anti-vaxxers will distort just about everything to blame it on "the jab" there are also posts linking a Covid infection with cancer. I know that viruses are implicated in some cancers. It seems to me it is probably too early to know if Covid causes cancer but it is still scary, especially since the world has given up on prevention. Is there anything you can share about Covid infection triggering cancer?
Thanks for covering this. Yes, I agree cancer started to occur much before the Covid pandemic hit. However, there is research that implicate the possibility that Covid in itself is a cancer causing virus.
Jahankhani K, Ahangari F, Adcock IM, et al. Possible cancer-causing capacity of COVID-19: Is SARS-CoV-2 an oncogenic agent? Biochimie 2023;213:130-38. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biochi.2023.05.014
Gómez-Carballa A, Martinón-Torres F, Salas A.
Is SARS-CoV-2 an oncogenic virus?
Journal of Infection 2022;85(5):573-607. doi: 10.1016/j.jinf.2022.08.005
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9361571/
Other research is also available- https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Genetic. There are also tabs that go into immune dysfunction, secondary bacterial, viral and fungal infections.
I really think we need to follow New Zealand's example and call for a deep assessment for Long Covid which evaluates Covid contributing to cancer. https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/long-covid-aotearoa-nz-risk-assessment-and-preventive-action-urgently-needed. If anyone has any power to bring it to the heads of government please help!
It’s well known that some viruses can cause cancer: HPV, Epstein Barr, hepatitis virus and more. HPV vaccine prevents cancer. Just an observation that runs counter to the narrative of blaming vaccines vs virus.
I am hoping a future column will address the concerns and fears that covid as a disease process is triggering an increase in cancers, through immune system disregulation and depletion.
The number of people who confuse correlation with causation seems to be increasing rather than decreasing; in my opinion, it is because many people are looking for a simple solution to a complex problem, and are therefore willing to accept the word of anyone who speaks with authority, regardless of qualifications.
As someone who was diagnosed with cancer during the pandemic (July 2020), I will say that I did delay in-person doctor's appointments due to the pandemic - not enough to impact treatment, but enough to be noticeable. Some of this was because in-person appointments were harder to get, both because of pandemic restrictions on capacity and because of concerns about infection - I had a cough that was due to allergies, but had to get a negative COVID test before I could meet with my oncologist the first time. The treatment facility where I received my infusions is a large rectangular room with the nurses' station in the center, and treatment chairs allow 3 walls; half of those chairs were not in use during the pandemic in an attempt to separate patients more widely, which made treatment appointments harder to schedule. Ultimately, the facility where I was treated was absolutely wonderful in maximizing patient care while minimizing risk as much as possible, and I am currently NED (No Evidence of Disease - often called remission).
Still, I'm sure that there is a large segment of the population that didn't get screeners in a reasonable timeframe, when other issues that impact access to medical care were compounded by the pandemic. That issue is still, to an extent, ongoing; when I scheduled my regular screening mammogram, it was a 5-month delay between when I scheduled it and the first non-urgent appointment, in a facility where the usual delay was 1-2 months. I was told that much of that was due to the number of people catching up on screeners missed during the restrictions. Access to medical care is an ongoing issue that needs to continue to be addressed - one that the pandemic threw into greater awareness.
Superb commentary (as usual).
Of course there are multiple causes of cancer in the past 4 years. Delayed cancer screenings are one, the virus could be involved, increase stress, and studies are showing the covid vaccine is likely also involved.
I'm surprised you don't know about the multiple studies linking the covid vaccine to cancer. The immune system is a cascade of processes, and when you turn off or interfere with one part of the immune system, other parts are affected. There have been ways this injection has been found to disregulate the immune system, and limit the immune system's ability to fight cancer (our immune system is what keeps cancer cells in check).
Since moderna and Pfizer studies were shut down after 10 months, there are no long-term studies to show the long-term effects of this shot - this is an undeniable fact.
Unfortunately, Pfizer turned in tens of thousands of side effects to the FDA from their study in the short time it was conducted (search “5.3.6 CUMULATIVE ANALYSIS OF POST-AUTHORIZATION ADVERSE EVENT REPORTS OF PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) RECEIVED THROUGH 28-FEB-2021”, or for the longer report search “Pfizer: R Psur 3 Appendix 2 2 Cumulative And Interval Summary Tabulation Of Serious And Non Serious Adverse Events”).
The mechanisms of these effects are being studied, but the same corporate media that repeated "safe and effective" without completed studies to back that statement up are not telling people about these studies.
Here are some:
1) Literature review, immune dysfunction, cancers, mRNA shot different than natural infection in some important ways. "In this paper, we explore the scientific literature suggesting that vaccination with an mRNA vaccine initiates a set of biological events that are not only different from that induced by infection but are in several ways demonstrably counterproductive to both short- and long-term immune competence and normal cellular function".
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X
2) “Increased PD-L1 surface expression on peripheral blood granulocytes and monocytes after vaccination with SARS-CoV2 mRNA or vector vaccine”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36245120/
Here's a good substack on the above study:
https://www.arkmedic.info/p/philadelphia-2023
3) IgG4 class switching -Dr Jessica Rose on the three ways that a switch to IGG4 antibodies with covid vaccine inhibits destruction of cancer cells (she has links to the studies in her article):
https://jessicar.substack.com/p/igg4-and-cancer-a-mechanism-of-action
4) Alteration in killer t cell ratios: Geogf links to studies in the substack.
https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/cd4cd8-ratio-is-altered-by-endotoxin
5) “induction of lymphopenia and inflammation, downregulation of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) expression, activation of oncogenic cascades, sequestration of tumor suppressor proteins, dysregulation of the RNA-G quadruplex-protein binding system, alteration of type I interferon responses, unsilencing of retrotransposable elements, etc”
https://www.cureus.com/articles/209584-sars-cov-2-vaccination-and-the-multi-hit-hypothesis-of-oncogenesis#!/
There are so many doctors aware of these studies and talking about increased in cancer rates in their patients. Here are just two who also talked about the mechanisms from the shots:
Dr Orso on uptick in cancer and lots of other side effects because the lipid nanoparticles travel everywhere, and quickly talks about the many ways that studies are showing how this affects cancer:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/iJb9m7dVDbra/
Dr Roach 5 min clip, great explanation about why, how turbo cancers are occurring
https://rumble.com/v3hhore-top-doctor-explains-why-turbo-cancer-rates-are-likely-to-get-even-worse.html
Thank you. Real science is messy and contrasting opinions are what drives research. In my experience by the time there can be no rational doubt the process being studied has become pretty advanced.
Then there is the challenge of subgroups which can go on to a very long list (age, gender, gender preference, place of residence,. . . . ) Hence the dilemma facing decision makers--wait too long and consequences can be severe; act too soon and endure conspiracy backlash. Glad I am not in that position.
For the sake of giving Katelyn her due, as a responsible scientist who has enough concern for the greater good to share fact based information with the the public, I hope that all responding to her posts will try to "keep the party polite." Rational, productive discussion, featuring different perspectives may be hard to conduct in an era when many people have been led to believe that it's OK to publicly insult and demean anyone who disagrees with them; but what Katelyn is doing putting herself out there, is harder. Once we allow someone who is generously sharing scientific knowledge with others for their benefit to be verbally assaulted and threatened, we are proving ourselves to be no more enlightened than the Inquisitors who burned Giordano Bruno at the stake.
I believe that the human need to find reasons for phenomena that defy explanation is what's driving so many of the loony "conspiracy theories" that have made gullible people afraid of modern medicine in general and vaccinations in particular. It's so much easier to believe that thimerosal is what caused your child's autism, or that the polio vaccine is responsible for your inability to conceive. No different than believing that winter happens because Demeter refuses to replenish the earth during the months that her daughter Persephone is compelled to stay underground with Hades. Finding correlation is easy. Determining causality takes hard work. Thanks, Katelyn, for pointing out the difference with your usual ease and elegance. And data.
Katelyn, I come from a healthcare background and have been following you from your beginning. I agree with many things that you have to say. However, I believe that two things that you said in this piece are a bit misleading.
First, I do not believe that missed cancer diagnoses and these cancers being delayed were a 'kernel' of truth. It IS the truth. Dependent upon the state in which one lived is what determined when one had access to what was viewed as 'non-essential' testing. I live in Illinois and we were one of the last to resume non-essential tests, therefore backing up the demand for months. I ended up going in for my mammogram approximately 6 months late by the time I could get an appointment once things began to open up. Also, when you stated that the 'pandemic caused a delay in cancer screenings', you should have said, the 'pandemic RESPONSE caused a delay in cancer screenings'. Additionally, the response sparked and insane amount of fear in many who continue to have a difficult time recovering. Sometimes I honestly wonder if these people every will be able to recover.
I agree with you that turbo cancer is not a thing. I do not believe that the vaccines are contributing to these cancers. It was ridiculous, political, media-driven and nonsensical; and what contributed to, in my opinion, many of these cancers we are now seeing. All of it is shameful.
It is ok to speak the truth.
Thank you for your continued efforts to help keep us informed ‼️‼️. Your information is invaluable ‼️