The View from a Drawbridge

Conspiracy theories are like weeds. Just when you think you’ve irradicated them with, oh, I don’t know, logic and facts? You turn around, and you see them growing someplace else, hellbent on creating a massive crack in your societal foundation. It’s like trying to play whack-a-mole, only with actual moles. Stupid little moles that have been endowed with evil intent.

Case in point: Turbo Cancer. This insidious bit of idiocy cropped up when COVID first did. The theory goes something along the lines of the “fact” that DNA has been found in COVID vaccines, and the “fact” that this DNA then alters the DNA of the vaccine recipient, causing them to become vectors for cancer that is said to proliferate faster than distant relatives on your doorstep do after you’ve won the lottery.

One poisonous tendril of this conspiracy theory claims that turbo cancer grows 14,000% faster than “regular” cancer. Not to make light of any type of cancer, but this makes me picture someone walking down the street, and then, pop! exploding like a popcorn kernel into a tumor that’s 10 times bigger than their original body.

Here’s the thing: No credible scientific source backs up any element of this conspiracy theory. None. The pseudo-science that is often used as evidence to prop it up is based on the VAERS system, which I heartily wish had never been created, because it allows for self reporters. So your Aunt Mabel, who also believes that mermaids exist, and is absolutely convinced that if she steps on a crack she will break her mother’s back, can conflate a scratchy throat after a vaccine to the coming apocalypse, and that information is added to any kind of manipulated statistics you care to extract from that database. Garbage in, garbage out.

Funny that of all the governmental information that has been taken down off the internet of late, the VAERS system hasn’t been touched. Of course not. How would Trump and his demented puppet RFK come up with any numbers for their crackpot ideas without it? When you send in the clowns, you have to keep them supplied with face paint, or else people stop falling for the illusion.

Well, actually, I should be more specific here. The VAERS system has been touched in that it used to reiterate on nearly every page that it’s not designed to determine if vaccines cause a health problem. That little disclaimer seems to have vanished. It makes it so much easier to claim your pseudo-data is legitimate that way.

Many fact checkers online have debunked the turbo cancer theory. Snopes. USA Today, , FactCheck.org. Also, this article in Reuters indicates that the rise in cancer in people under 50 predates COVID by decades. I can say this with conviction: There is no such thing as Turbo Cancer. There. Is. No. Such. Thing.

But you know what? If you don’t already know that, you’re probably not going to be convinced by me. This article, and this one, and I’m sure millions more on the internet, discuss why people become anti-vaxxers. It can be anything from prioritizing personal freedom over concern for your fellow Man, to a mistrust of expert knowledge, to a mistrust of media, to an innate gullibility, to a desire to rely on faith over science.

In fact, the movement sprang up in the 18^th century among religious leaders, who called vaccines the devil’s work. And then in the 19^th century, the New Thought Movement took the ball and ran with it. It was a spiritual movement that emphasized metaphysics and portrayed disease as an error of thought. Who needs a vaccine when you just have to think correctly? (I’m doomed.)

Anti-vaxxers are dangerous, because they are not only exposing themselves to increased risk of infectious diseases, but they are exposing everyone they come in contact with to that same risk. That’s particularly heinous if those people are from vulnerable groups, such as children, seniors, and people with auto-immune diseases, for example. Anti-vaxxers think they believe in personal freedom, when in fact they are preventing others from having their personal freedom in the deadliest of ways. If you want to be that selfish, go live in a cave somewhere. Or at the very least, surround yourself with town criers who can warn the vulnerable to avoid you.

The reason I get so worked up over the anti-vaxx movement is that I see, firsthand, the kind of damage it can cause. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, the medical profession’s equivalent of Darth Vader, wrote an article that said there was a link between vaccinations and autism. It turns out that he was defrauding the public because he was involved in a lawsuit that hinged upon his proving such a link, and so he cherry-picked the data to suit his case.

Wakefield’s medical license was revoked, but you can’t un-ring a bell, and the vaccination rate has never risen back up to what it was prior to his fraudulent article. The result, invariably, has been unnecessary deaths worldwide. If ever someone had blood on his hands, it’s this guy.

But it has caused even more damage to the autistic community. It has given parents of autistic children the false hope that there’s a cure to be found, which means they’re putting their children through horrific diets and procedures, spending enormous amounts of money that could be better spent elsewhere, and all the while, they’re teaching their children (hopefully unintentionally), that they are broken and need fixing, rather than focusing on strengthening the skills they do have, and forming a connection and a bond based on their child’s unique ways of showing up in the world.

And now, with RFK given a medical pulpit for which he has no experience, training or knowledge, and allowing him to float all his crackpot anti-vaxx theories, he is putting our efforts to be accepted by society-at-large back about 50 years. He’s making it sound like autistic people are drains upon society that should be put away. All the funding that should be used for policies and services that promote our inclusion in society are now being diverted into ridiculous theories that no reasonable doctor takes seriously. And in the meantime, we cry out for assistance and inclusion that simply does not exist. Thanks to RFK, these things are being pushed so far beyond the horizon that I’m quite sure I’ll never see them in my lifetime.

So, no. Don’t ever say “Turbo Cancer” in my presence. Don’t you dare.