Biden Not Suffering from ‘Turbo Cancer’
PLUS: Bogus Election Fraud Claims in Romania; Blogger John Dougan Flagged at Borders for Sharing Name with Kremlin Propagandist John Mark Dougan
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In today’s edition, another false health claim ripped from the headlines: No, Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis is not the result of COVID-19 vaccines. Meantime, Kremlin sources are claiming that Romania’s election of a pro-EU candidate was rigged, without providing any evidence, and RFK Jr. calls pharmaceuticals the third-leading cause of death in the U.S.
And, a name mix-up with well-known Russian propagandist John Mark Dougan causes travel woes for Scottish blogger John Dougan.
Today’s newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.
1. Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis Blamed on COVID Vaccine
By John Gregory
What happened: X accounts are pushing a sadly predictable narrative following former President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis: It had to be caused by COVID-19 vaccines.
Context: Biden’s personal office released a statement at 4 p.m. Eastern Time on May 18, 2025, saying that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
A closer look: Nine minutes later, an anonymous X account with only 750 followers, @CJS_Posts, posted, “Omg they gave him Turbo cancer,” a buzzword used to promote the myth that COVID vaccines cause aggressive cancers.
The claim quickly picked up steam. The most prominent post pushing the myth came from Dr. Craig Wax, a family medicine physician practicing in Mullica Hill, New Jersey. One hour after Biden’s diagnosis was revealed, Wax posted: “I am not his personal physician, and this is purely experience conjecture. Prostate cancer takes years to metastasize to bone unless super aggressive or turbo cancer from immune dysregulation from C19 spike protein, mRNA shots.” The post generated 257,000 views and 360 likes in less than one day. (NewsGuard did not receive a response to a phone message left at Wax’s office seeking comment on his post.)
The claim was also advanced in articles published on USSANews.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 0/100) and ThePeoplesVoice.tv (Trust Score: 0/100), as well as in posts on Facebook and Substack.
Actually: Cancer organizations, including the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, have said that there is no evidence linking COVID-19 vaccines to cancer.
In fact, health experts have repeatedly stated there is no such thing as “turbo cancer.” Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of the pediatric diseases division at the University of California, Davis, told USA Today (Trust Score: 100/100) in December 2023, “‘Turbo cancer' is 'turbo nonsense.'”
Recurring theme: Whenever a famous person has been diagnosed with cancer in recent years, anti-vaxxers have repeated the “turbo cancer” myth in order to blame COVID vaccines.
As NewsGuard has previously reported, the same narrative popped up after Catherine, Princess of Wales’ March 2024, cancer diagnosis and the April 2024 cancer death of O.J. Simpson.
Final note: There was immediate speculation following news of the cancer, which can usually be detected by a standard blood test years before it becomes aggressive, that Biden must have known about the cancer after regular tests but did not publicly reveal the diagnosis, or that he was not tested, as is frequently the practice with patients older than 70. In either case, this is not a “turbo cancer” caused by a COVID vaccine.
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2. After Romania Elects Pro-EU Candidate, Pro-Russian Accounts Claim Election Was Stolen
What happened: Pro-Kremlin and conservative social media users are falsely claiming that Romania’s May 18, 2025, presidential election was rigged in favor of the pro-European Union liberal candidate Nicușor Dan.
Context: Dan, the mayor of the Romanian capital of Bucharest, won the second round of the election with 53.6 percent of the vote, defeating the conservative, pro-Russian candidate George Simion, who captured 46.4 percent of the vote, according to Romania’s election agency.
The result was a reversal of the first round, held on May 6, 2025, when Simion led the multi-candidate field with 41 percent of the vote while Dan came in second with 21 percent.
A closer look: Following the election, nationalist and pro-Russian accounts claimed that the election was rigged and that Simion actually won the vote.
French speaking X user @silvano_trotta stated in a May 18 post: “Before our eyes, the Romanian people are having their elections stolen for the second time with the complicity of their own media and the Western media. They also denounce Russian interference while committing fraud under the authority of the EU and Macron.” The post garnered 54,900 views and 3,500 likes in one day.
The pro-Kremlin Pravda network (Trust Score: 7.5/100) published an article claiming, “The EU managed to push through this massive electoral fraud, led by Macron's France, Moldova, and, of course, the Romanian state,” citing as a quote @daily_romania, an X nationalist Romanian account.
Actually: Romanian authorities and outside election observers say there was no evidence of fraud, and those making the claim have presented no evidence that shows otherwise.
Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Monica Dajbog said in a May 19 statement that the presidential election proceeded under normal circumstances, with “no major incidents.”
International observer Lucie Potůčková of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said in a May 19 press conference that OSCE found that “fundamental freedom of assembly and association were respected” and that “the election day was overall well organized and professionally managed, and despite some procedural inconsistencies we assessed the overall conduct positively.”
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
3. RFK Jr. Pushes Myth that Prescription Drugs are a Top Cause of Death
By John Gregory
What happened: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is falsely claiming that pharmaceutical drugs are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. — disregarding data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that he oversees.
A closer look: Kennedy and other proponents of the claim cited as evidence a 2014 article in the journal Polish Archives of Internal Medicine written by Dr. Peter Gotzsche, a Danish physician who co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization of researchers and health care professionals that summarizes scientific studies to produce reports called Cochrane Reviews.
However, Gotzche was expelled from Cochrane in 2018 for what the organization called “an ongoing, consistent pattern of disruptive and inappropriate behaviours” that “resulted in multiple complaints to the charity [Cochrane] and damaged its credibility within the research community.”
During Kennedy’s Jan. 30, 2025, Senate confirmation hearing, he said, “There’s a recent study by Peter Gotzsche, who is one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, that showed that prescription drugs are now the third-leading cause of death in our country, after cardiac arrest and cancer.”
In a May 8, 2025, interview on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,” he doubled down, declaring, “We are the sickest country in the world and pharmaceutical products are the number three cause of death after cancer and heart attacks.”
Kennedy’s remarks then circulated widely on social media platforms including X and Facebook.
For example, a May 8 post by the anonymous X account @AutismCapital, which has 857,000 followers, included a video clip of Kennedy’s remarks on Fox, generating 457,000 views and 11,000 likes in four days.
Actually: There is no evidence that pharmaceutical drugs are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S.
Mortality statistics from the CDC indicate that between 2018 and 2023 — the most recent data available — the third most common cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer, was accidents, including car crashes, falls, and accidental poisonings.
Pharmaceutical drugs are not listed among the top 15 causes of death.
Gotzsche’s 2014 article did indeed state, “Our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the United States and Europe.” However, the article did not provide any data to support this assertion, and CDC mortality statistics from 2014 listed chronic lower respiratory disease as the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., not prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical drugs were not listed in the top causes of deaths in the 2014 report.
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4. Blogger John Dougan Flagged at Borders Over Shared Name with Russian Propagandist John Mark Dougan — Who Says He’s ‘Sorry’ and Invites Him to Dinner
What happened: A Scottish blogger named John Dougan has found his hitchhiking trip from Scotland to Hong Kong repeatedly disrupted with border agents mistaking him for a former Florida deputy sheriff turned Russian propagandist with the same name — John Mark Dougan — who was named NewsGuard’s 2024 Disinformer of the Year.
The mix-up: On May 15, blogger John Dougan posted a series of frustrated Instagram videos explaining that he had been stopped and questioned at multiple border crossings because he was confused with John Mark Dougan, an ex-Florida cop whose home was raided by the FBI in 2016 and who was charged by Palm Beach County prosecutors in 2018 with wiretapping and extortion. He then fled to Moscow and has emerged as a prolific and high-profile Russian propagandist.
“Being mistaken for someone else and being hauled into all kinds of security rooms at border controls is a nightmare scenario for anyone on any trip,” blogger John Dougan said in an Instagram video. “This is exactly what keeps on happening to me and now I’m seriously worried that it’s going to derail my whole trip.”
To review John Dougan’s videos explaining his plight, you can watch the videos here:
Blogger John Dougan told NewsGuard in a WhatsApp message that he was first stopped at the border about two years ago when he was coming back to the U.K., and his passport stopped working at the electronic gates. Since then, he said he “has been stopped in varying capacities at several borders.” He referenced an incident this week where he was “held up” in Bulgaria, and said that for the most part, he was released by border patrol agents soon after they looked at additional documentation.
“Greece was the most extreme case where I was taken into an interrogation room and asked lots of questions,” Dougan said, adding, “pretty much any Western country that I've tried to enter in the past years, I've had some sort of delay.”
Further connections: The two men don’t just share a name. According to the blogger, they also share a birthday — and briefly interacted nearly 20 years ago on Facebook. Blogger Dougan says John Mark Dougan added him as a friend in the early years of the social media platform because of their shared name and once asked him to record a voicemail message for his legal industry company. John Dougan declined.
Enter the real Dougan: In response to the blogger’s videos, John Mark Dougan posted a message of his own to Instagram. You can watch the video here:
“The guy in this video is very cool, his name is John Dougan. But he’s not John Mark Dougan. That would be me,” propagandist Dougan said in the video. “That is the guy that they keep stopping this poor soul for, and I’m really sorry. But do me a favor. Every border that you get stopped at, let me know which ones it is so I know what countries to avoid.”
He went on to offer help to the other Dougan, including producing personalized messages verifying the blogger’s distinct identity, and he invited him to visit Russia “for steaks and drinks — we will have a good old time.”
As for John Mark Dougan’s invitation to Russia, the blogger said, “He's always been nice to me, but I'm not sure it would help my ability to travel freely if we had an in person relationship in Moscow.” Dougan added that he does not “know much about the situation with John [Mark Dougan]” and his background in spreading Russian disinformation, adding, “I think the less I know, the better.”
For Reality Check Members: Dive deeper with this collection from our archives, available only to premium members: The Dougan Russian Disinformation Depository.
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