Scaring people with a fictional illness: Turbo cancer

You may have come across a post like this one morning while browsing social media: “In turbo cancer cases, tumors are larger, spread more aggressively and are resistant to treatment.”

Cancer is a serious enough disease on its own, but when you add an adjective like “turbo”, which connotes speed and loss of control, anxiety inevitably increases.

So what’s the truth?

Where did these “turbo cancer” claims come from?

In fact, the term “turbo cancer” does not have a very long history. It emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, at a time when anti-vaccination sentiment was running high on social media.

In a period when information pollution was already rampant on social media and people were confused about what to believe, we came across this: “turbo cancer” stories full of sensationalist statements were shared on many pages; the claims not only spread from ear to ear, but also from keyboard to keyboard, and so on… By the time the pandemic was under control, certain accounts had already become experts on “rapidly increasing turbo cancer cases”.

It is noteworthy that the circles that spread this especially overlap with the groups that produced anti-science and anti-vaccine content during the pandemic.

The oft-cited Canadian doctor Charles Hoffe, for example, is not exactly a trustworthy physician. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia opened an investigation against Dr. Hoffe in 2022 for spreading false information about Covid-19 precautions and vaccines, which was closed in 2025.

Another name mentioned in the turbo cancer allegations is Dr. William Makis, who had previously claimed, without any evidence, that 80 Canadian doctors had died from Covid-19 vaccines, which turned out to be untrue .

There is no such thing as turbo cancer

Let’s say up front: There is no medical definition of turbo cancer. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10 ) does not record such a disease, and in scientific databases such as PubMed, the term only appears in disinformation discussions; in other words, oncologists do not make such a diagnosis.

On the other hand, large-scale cancer registries such as the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) have not observed a new “turbo” type of cancer, which has seen a sudden increase in recent years.

In fact, it is thought that many people delayed cancer screening and treatment due to disruptions in health services during the pandemic. As a result, some cancers that could have been detected earlier were diagnosed at later stages, creating the impression that cancers were “growing faster” or “more aggressive”.

Rumors are based on personal stories

If you look at the rapidly spreading claims on social media, you can see that almost all posts about turbo cancer cases are anecdotal, that is, based on personal stories. Someone’s uncle got turbo cancer after receiving the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine, someone’s neighbor’s buddy went from being perfectly healthy to collapsing with cancer in a short period of time, so it was definitely “turbo” cancer…

Often, it is inevitable that personal experiences will at some point merge into exaggerated generalizations. For example, on social media, a person can share a few cases of fast-moving cancer in their immediate environment and this is quickly perceived by the masses as a “one-size-fits-all” situation.

As the name implies, personal stories are personal. Remember, everyone’s body is different. Even people with the same type of cancer have a unique body and health history. So just because something good or bad happened to someone you know doesn’t mean it will happen to you in the same way. Of course, personal opinions and stories can be based on facts. But it is important to keep in mind that they have the potential to mislead the other person, intentionally or unintentionally.

Scientific facts can be shown to be true or false by evidence; they are usually based on empirical data and knowledge. And scientific data shows that turbo cancer does not exist.

Scaring with a disease that does not exist

Cancer is a serious disease that claims the lives of nearly 10 million people worldwide every year. While people have to face this disease, fabricated concepts such as “turbo cancer” spread on social media make things even more difficult.

Imagine, the anxiety and uncertainty you experience when you learn that someone close to you has cancer is severe enough, and then you are surrounded by claims such as “everything is moving faster now, a new strain has emerged”. However, such narratives are fueled not by scientific facts, but by well-intentioned or malicious personal observations and sensationalized posts.

A study conducted during the pandemic showed that in moments of anxiety and fear, people tend to accept “pseudo-deep” statements – claims that don’t actually say anything but sound meaningful – as true. The researchers call this “bullshit receptivity”. That is, fear makes us more receptive to illogical but embellished statements.

Remember the early days of the pandemic. Our phones were constantly flooded with notifications: “share urgently”, “everyone should know about this”. In the rush and uncertainty, many people were tempted to consume and share information immediately, rather than questioning it. It is precisely in this environment that claims such as “turbo cancer” spread more easily.

Such misinformation not only dashes the hopes of patients, but also undermines public trust in health authorities. Even more dangerously, fabricated “solutions” to a non-existent disease can open the door to the market for fake treatments.

This is why it is so important to explain that concepts like “turbo cancer” have no scientific basis and to direct people to reliable, evidence-based sources. Because cancer is already a serious enough disease; no one deserves to be frightened by a disease that does not exist.