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As cancer rates soar in younger people, experts seek answers

Published

10 months ago

13 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By John-Michael Dumais, The Defender

Two recent reports by the American Cancer Society reveal alarming increases in numerous cancers among millennials and Gen Z in the U.S. While mainstream medical experts debate causes, some doctors told The Defender mRNA vaccines may be to blame for the recent emergence of aggressive cancers that often don’t respond to conventional treatments.

Cancer rates among younger generations are rising at an alarming pace, with medical professionals reporting unprecedented increases in aggressive cancers over the past few years.

A study published in the August edition of The Lancet Public Health revealed that through 2019, the incidence rates for 17 of 34 cancer types were increasing in progressively younger people in the U.S., ABC News reported on July 31.

Lead author Ahmedin Jemal, DVM, Ph.D., from the American Cancer Society (ACS) told The Washington Post that if current trends in cancer and mortality rates among Gen X and millennials continue, it “may halt or even reverse the progress that we have made in reducing cancer mortality over the past several decades.”

More recent data from the ACS’ “Cancer statistics, 2024” report — with data on cancer incidence through 2020 and mortality through 2021 — showed the trend continuing.

As of 2021, among adults under 50, colorectal cancer has become the leading cause of cancer death in men and the second-leading cause in women, despite ranking fourth for both sexes in the late 1990s.

Some researchers point to lifestyle, poverty and environmental factors as potential causes for the uptick in cancers, while others suggest the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines may be to blame for the rise in “turbo cancers.”

Meanwhile, Pfizer in December 2023 spent $43 billion for Seagan, a “cancer care” biotech company with only $2.2 billion in sales. Seagan’s already-approved drugs include those for bladder cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma.

The cancer trend has also caught the attention of health organizations worldwide, including the World Health Organization, which in February predicted a 77% rise in new cancer cases — from 20 million cases in 2022 to over 35 million cases by 2050.

Which cancers are on the rise?

The Lancet study revealed disturbing trends in cancer rates for people born between 1920 and 1990, finding that through 2019, incidence rates for 17 of 34 cancer types analyzed were increasing in progressively younger birth cohorts.

For some cancers, the incidence rate was approximately 1 to 3 times higher in the 1990 birth cohort (people in their late 20s at the time of the study) compared to the 1955 birth cohort (people in their mid-60s at the time of the study).

Particularly concerning were the increases in cancers of the small intestine (256% higher), kidney and renal pelvis (192% higher), and pancreas in both males and females (161% higher). For women, liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancer rates also saw a significant uptick (105% higher).

In younger cohorts, cancer incidence also increased for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, uterine corpus (endometrial) cancer, colorectal cancer, non-cardia gastric (stomach) cancer, gallbladder and other biliary cancer, ovarian cancer, and testicular cancer, anal cancer and Kaposi sarcoma in males.

For those around 30 years old, cancer rates increased an average of 12% across all cancer types.

The study also noted that mortality rates mirrored incidence trends for several cancers, including liver cancer in females, uterine corpus, gallbladder and other biliary, testicular and colorectal cancers. This suggests that the increase in incidence is substantial enough to outweigh improvements in cancer survival rates.

The findings from the ACS’ cancer statistics report, which contains data through 2021, provide additional context to the rising cancer rates in younger generations, particularly for colorectal cancer in both sexes and breast, cervical, uterine and liver cancers in women.

The Ethical Skeptic, a well-regarded statistician on the social platform X, posted more recent cancer mortality data. The following graph, based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s  WONDER online databases, shows excess mortality from malignant neoplasms (spreading tumors) “elevated 29% and still rising” for ages 0-54 through week 22 of 2024:

More recent ‘turbo cancers’

Dr. William Makis, a Canadian board-certified nuclear medicine radiologist and oncologist, reported in an interview on the “America Out Loud PULSE” podcast on July 6 that he has seen “just an explosion of extremely aggressive cancers in very young individuals” since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Cancers Makis identified that are particularly affecting younger populations include breast cancer, colon cancer, bile duct cancer, pancreatic cancer, leukemia and lymphoma.

Makis emphasized that these cancers are presenting at advanced stages (3 or 4), are behaving “very aggressively” and are often resistant to conventional treatments. He referred to these as “turbo cancers” due to their rapid growth and spread.

Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a renowned oncologist and professor at St. George’s, University of London, has reported rapidly progressing cancers in patients receiving COVID-19 mRNA booster shots, although he did not specify the ages affected.

In particular, melanoma patients who had been in remission in his practice experienced sudden relapses. Cancer doctors around the world told him him about rapidly accelerating cancers, including lymphomas, leukemia, kidney and colorectal cancer and “multiple metastatic spread” of cancers throughout the body.

A Japanese study published in April in the journal Cureus reported post-COVID-19-vaccination increases in mortality for most age groups, including those under 50 years old. Cancers with the highest excess mortality rates included ovarian cancer, leukemia, prostate cancer, lip/oral/pharyngeal cancer and pancreatic cancer.

We do not have the data to point to

Mainstream medical experts have proposed several theories to explain the rising cancer rates among younger generations.

In the Lancet paper, the authors attribute the increase in cancers in younger people to higher exposure to carcinogens early in life, obesity, unhealthy diet, environmental chemicals, changes in reproductive patterns and alcohol-related behaviors.

In its “Cancer statistics, 2024” report, the ACS pointed to several additional potential culprits, including poverty-related factors such as inadequate health insurance and lack of access to screening and high-quality healthcare, and to structural racism-related factors, including mortgage lending bias and neighborhood-level redlining.

Dr. William Dahut, a medical oncologist and ACS chief scientific officer, told ABC News that finding a single cause is difficult. “It’s so easy for us to say ‘yes, it’s obesity’; ‘yes, it’s lack of exercise’; ‘yes, it’s processed food.’ But we do not have the data to point to.”

Dr. Kevin Nead, a radiation oncologist and assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, told ABC News that something different could be happening with the biology of cancer in younger patients, indicating a need for new approaches to screening and early detection.

Left entirely unaddressed by the current mainstream medical and media reporting is the potential contribution to the rising rates of brain, thyroid and salivary gland cancers of EMR (electromagnetic radiation) exposure from cellphones, Bluetooth headsets, Wi-Fi routers and 4G/5G transmission towers.

Rapid cancer onset ‘basically impossible along the known paradigm’

Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Defender, “Clinicians have been seeing very strange things, for example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer who don’t have family histories of the disease.”

He stressed that this cancer typically takes decades to develop and that its appearance in younger people is “basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works.”

On the podcast with Makis, Dr. Peter McCullough, a prominent cardiologist and researcher, also noted the typically longer lead time for cancers to develop.

“Is what we’re seeing now — are these just individuals who have cancers at the time they take the COVID vaccines or are these brand new cancers caused by the vaccines?” he asked.

Possible mechanisms for mRNA vaccine-caused cancers

Makis hypothesized that the mRNA vaccines could be accelerating already existing cancers and are likely responsible for the recent rise in aggressive cancers.

“These lipid nanoparticles [LNPs] — one of the key features is that they don’t stay in the arm. They end up in the systemic circulation,” Makis said.

He suggested that about 75% of the injection ends up in the bloodstream within a few hours, potentially depositing “pseudouridine, modified mRNA and DNA” throughout the body. He listed the brain, bone marrow, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, spleen, testes, ovaries, liver, colon and breast milk as among the locations where these components have been found.

“We are seeing cancers where there is deposition of these vaccine particles,” he said, noting that bone marrow deposition could be causing the increased incidence of leukemia.

Risch, while cautioning that long-term data is still lacking, pointed out potential mechanisms by which vaccines might affect cancer risk.

“The spike protein is toxic,” he stated. “The LNP itself is toxic. The biological manufacturing process involving inadequate filtration of possible harmful components can be toxic.”

Both Makis and Risch discussed the “IgG4 [immunoglobin type 4] antibody shift” caused by the mRNA vaccines as a likely contributor to rapid-onset cancers.

Risch explained how this particular antibody differs from IgG1 and IgG2 responses, which work to neutralize foreign pathogens. By contrast, IgG4 creates a “tolerance response” to keep the immune system from overreacting to things like pollen and food allergens.

Makis explained how after multiple mRNA injections, the level of IgG4 antibodies markedly increases, reducing immune surveillance, thus making “cancer invisible to your immune system.”

“If you’ve got tolerance to cancer cells, it’s not going to stop the cancer cells from reproducing,” Risch said. “You don’t want that to happen.”

Risch said that no one yet knows the depth of damage to the immune surveillance mechanisms the mRNA vaccines are causing, “but there are plausible mechanisms to be looking at.”

This article was originally published by The Defender – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views
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FDA Exposed: Hundreds of Drugs Approved without Proof They Work

Published on June 28, 2025

By

From the Brownstone Institute

By Maryanne Demasi

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved hundreds of drugs without proof that they work—and in some cases, despite evidence that they cause harm.

That’s the finding of a blistering two-year investigation by medical journalists Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee, published by The Lever.

Reviewing more than 400 drug approvals between 2013 and 2022, the authors found the agency repeatedly ignored its own scientific standards.

One expert put it bluntly—the FDA’s threshold for evidence “can’t go any lower because it’s already in the dirt.”

A System Built on Weak Evidence

The findings were damning—73% of drugs approved by the FDA during the study period failed to meet all four basic criteria for demonstrating “substantial evidence” of effectiveness.

Those four criteria—presence of a control group, replication in two well-conducted trials, blinding of participants and investigators, and the use of clinical endpoints like symptom relief or extended survival—are supposed to be the bedrock of drug evaluation.

Yet only 28% of drugs met all four criteria—40 drugs met none.

These aren’t obscure technicalities—they are the most basic safeguards to protect patients from ineffective or dangerous treatments.

But under political and industry pressure, the FDA has increasingly abandoned them in favour of speed and so-called “regulatory flexibility.”

Since the early 1990s, the agency has relied heavily on expedited pathways that fast-track drugs to market.

In theory, this balances urgency with scientific rigour. In practice, it has flipped the process. Companies can now get drugs approved before proving that they work, with the promise of follow-up trials later.

But, as Lenzer and Brownlee revealed, “Nearly half of the required follow-up studies are never completed—and those that are often fail to show the drugs work, even while they remain on the market.”

“This represents a seismic shift in FDA regulation that has been quietly accomplished with virtually no awareness by doctors or the public,” they added.

More than half the approvals examined relied on preliminary data—not solid evidence that patients lived longer, felt better, or functioned more effectively.

And even when follow-up studies are conducted, many rely on the same flawed surrogate measures rather than hard clinical outcomes.

The result: a regulatory system where the FDA no longer acts as a gatekeeper—but as a passive observer.

Cancer Drugs: High Stakes, Low Standards

Nowhere is this failure more visible than in oncology.

Only 3 out of 123 cancer drugs approved between 2013 and 2022 met all four of the FDA’s basic scientific standards.

Most—81%—were approved based on surrogate endpoints like tumour shrinkage, without any evidence that they improved survival or quality of life.

Take Copiktra, for example—a drug approved in 2018 for blood cancers. The FDA gave it the green light based on improved “progression-free survival,” a measure of how long a tumour stays stable.

But a review of post-marketing data showed that patients taking Copiktra died 11 months earlier than those on a comparator drug.

It took six years after those studies showed the drug reduced patients’ survival for the FDA to warn the public that Copiktra should not be used as a first- or second-line treatment for certain types of leukaemia and lymphoma, citing “an increased risk of treatment-related mortality.”

Elmiron: Ineffective, Dangerous—And Still on the Market

Another striking case is Elmiron, approved in 1996 for interstitial cystitis—a painful bladder condition.

The FDA authorized it based on “close to zero data,” on the condition that the company conduct a follow-up study to determine whether it actually worked.

That study wasn’t completed for 18 years—and when it was, it showed Elmiron was no better than placebo.

In the meantime, hundreds of patients suffered vision loss or blindness. Others were hospitalized with colitis. Some died.

Yet Elmiron is still on the market today. Doctors continue to prescribe it.

“Hundreds of thousands of patients have been exposed to the drug, and the American Urological Association lists it as the only FDA-approved medication for interstitial cystitis,” Lenzer and Brownlee reported.

“Dangling Approvals” and Regulatory Paralysis

The FDA even has a term—”dangling approvals”—for drugs that remain on the market despite failed or missing follow-up trials.

One notorious case is Avastin, approved in 2008 for metastatic breast cancer.

It was fast-tracked, again, based on ‘progression-free survival.’ But after five clinical trials showed no improvement in overall survival—and raised serious safety concerns—the FDA moved to revoke its approval for metastatic breast cancer.

The backlash was intense.

Drug companies and patient advocacy groups launched a campaign to keep Avastin on the market. FDA staff received violent threats. Police were posted outside the agency’s building.

The fallout was so severe that for more than two decades afterwards, the FDA did not initiate another involuntary drug withdrawal in the face of industry opposition.

Billions Wasted, Thousands Harmed

Between 2018 and 2021, US taxpayers—through Medicare and Medicaid—paid $18 billion for drugs approved under the condition that follow-up studies would be conducted. Many never were.

The cost in lives is even higher.

A 2015 study found that 86% of cancer drugs approved between 2008 and 2012 based on surrogate outcomes showed no evidence that they helped patients live longer.

An estimated 128,000 Americans die each year from the effects of properly prescribed medications—excluding opioid overdoses. That’s more than all deaths from illegal drugs combined.

A 2024 analysis by Danish physician Peter Gøtzsche found that adverse effects from prescription medicines now rank among the top three causes of death globally.

Doctors Misled by the Drug Labels

Despite the scale of the problem, most patients—and most doctors—have no idea.

A 2016 survey published in JAMA asked practising physicians a simple question—what does FDA approval actually mean?

Only 6% got it right.

The rest assumed that it meant the drug had shown clear, clinically meaningful benefits—such as helping patients live longer or feel better—and that the data was statistically sound.

But the FDA requires none of that.

Drugs can be approved based on a single small study, a surrogate endpoint, or marginal statistical findings. Labels are often based on limited data, yet many doctors take them at face value.

Harvard researcher Aaron Kesselheim, who led the survey, said the results were “disappointing, but not entirely surprising,” noting that few doctors are taught about how the FDA’s regulatory process actually works.

Instead, physicians often rely on labels, marketing, or assumptions—believing that if the FDA has authorized a drug, it must be both safe and effective.

But as The Lever investigation shows, that is not a safe assumption.

And without that knowledge, even well-meaning physicians may prescribe drugs that do little good—and cause real harm.

Who Is the FDA Working for?

In interviews with more than 100 experts, patients, and former regulators, Lenzer and Brownlee found widespread concern that the FDA has lost its way.

Many pointed to the agency’s dependence on industry money. A BMJ investigation in 2022 found that user fees now fund two-thirds of the FDA’s drug review budget—raising serious questions about independence.

Yale physician and regulatory expert Reshma Ramachandran said the system is in urgent need of reform.

“We need an agency that’s independent from the industry it regulates and that uses high-quality science to assess the safety and efficacy of new drugs,” she told The Lever. “Without that, we might as well go back to the days of snake oil and patent medicines.”

For now, patients remain unwitting participants in a vast, unspoken experiment—taking drugs that may never have been properly tested, trusting a regulator that too often fails to protect them.

And as Lenzer and Brownlee conclude, that trust is increasingly misplaced.

Republished from the author’s Substack

 

Author

Maryanne Demasi

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

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Health

Red Deer Hospital Lottery 2025 Winners

Published on June 26, 2025

By

The Red Deer Regional Health Foundation is thrilled to announce the winners of this year’s Red Deer Hospital Lottery prizes – including the Dream Home, a $100,000.00 cash prize, and Mega Bucks 50.

James Smith of Spruce View has won the $100,000.00 cash prize.

Montey Brehaut of Red Deer has won the Mega Bucks 50 jackpot, taking home $301,702.50.

The grand prize Sorento Custom Homes Dream Home, including furnishings by Urban Barn and worth $1,074,472 – has been awarded to Oscar Gunnlaugson of Sylvan Lake.

The winner announcements took place at noon on June 26 , 2025 – and was streamed live on Facebook from Red Deer Regional Hospital Center.

“We’re excited to celebrate this year’s winners and deeply grateful to everyone who supported the lottery,” said Manon Therriault, CEO of the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation. “Funds raised will directly enhance patient care at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.”

This year’s lottery proceeds will fund essential new and replacement equipment, ensuring Red Deer Regional Hospital Center can continue to serve the 500,000 people who rely on it. While plans for the hospital expansion move forward, healthcare doesn’t wait. Patients in our community need access
to life-saving technology today, and supporting Red Deer Hospital Lottery has made that possible.

A full list of winners, including electronics prize recipients, will be posted on July 2 at reddeerhospitallottery.ca.

Winners will also receive instructions on how to claim their prizes by mail.

The keys to the Dream Home will be presented at a special ceremony this summer.

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