A highly contentious study from Korean researchers has claimed that Covid vaccines may raise the risk of certain cancers, specifically lung, breast, prostate, thyroid, gastric, and colorectal cancers. Published in the journal Biomarker Research, owned by Springer Nature, the study analyzed the health records of over 8.4 million adults between 2021 and 2023. The researchers hypothesized that, a year after vaccination, individuals who received at least one Covid jab faced an increased risk of various cancers, including a 35 percent rise for thyroid cancer, 34 percent for gastric cancer, 53 percent for lung cancer, 68 percent for prostate cancer, 20 percent for breast cancer, and 28 percent for colorectal cancers. They noted the risk appeared greatest for over-65s and suggested that 'cDNA vaccines' and mRNA vaccines were associated with these increased risks, with vaccinated males more vulnerable to gastric and lung cancers and females to thyroid and colorectal cancers. However, the study did not provide an explanation for the claimed mechanism behind this increased risk.

These claims have been widely dismissed by medical experts and scientists, who labeled the study 'superficially alarming' and its conclusions 'hugely overblown'. A critical point raised is the absence of official, widely-available cDNA-based COVID vaccines on the market, which the study referenced. Dr. Benjamin Mazer, an assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University, vehemently refuted the study's implications, stating that 'no carcinogen can induce cancer that quickly' as mutations and cellular replication require significant time. Dr. Mazer emphasized that the study measured 'diagnosis of cancer,' not its development, and pointed to data from the Official Journal of Korean Cancer Association until 2022, which showed no increase in cases among the six cancers flagged by the study, directly contradicting the claim of a near-instant effect.

The broader scientific community maintains there is no credible evidence linking Covid vaccines to cancer. Academics and oncologists have consistently dismissed claims of 'turbo cancers,' asserting that these vaccines do not disrupt tumor suppressors or drive any processes that result in cancer. Cancer Research UK explicitly states there is 'no good evidence' of any such link and highlights that mRNA technology is, in fact, being developed to create new jabs showing promise in preventing lung, ovarian, and other types of cancer. Furthermore, the Office for National Statistics has previously debunked claims that tens of thousands of excess deaths in the UK in 2022-23 were caused by vaccine-related cancer. Contrastingly, a 2022 study by Imperial College London academics suggested that Covid vaccines saved almost 20 million lives in their first year of rollout.

This controversial study emerges amidst ongoing public debate and misinformation regarding Covid vaccines. Reform UK recently distanced itself from Aseem Malhotra, an adviser to US health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, who suggested at a conference that Covid jabs were linked to the cancers of the King and Princess of Wales. Dr. Malhotra, a cardiologist, also claimed that mRNA vaccines could alter genes and that taking the Covid vaccine was more likely to cause harm than the virus itself. These statements drew sharp criticism, with Professor Brian Ferguson of the University of Cambridge calling it 'particularly crass to try to link this pseudoscience to the unfortunate incidents of cancer in the royal family.' Wes Streeting, the health secretary, deemed it 'shockingly irresponsible' for Reform UK to allow such claims at its conference. The publisher, Springer Nature, has also faced scrutiny in the past, having been forced to retract a contentious study in 2023 that wrongly claimed Covid vaccines had killed up to 280,000 people in the US, a paper that was widely adopted by anti-vaccine groups.