Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis Blamed on COVID Vaccine
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
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.