Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong Claims Covid mRNA Vax Driving Explosion of Turbo-Charged Cancers, By Mrs. (Dr) Abigail Knight (Florida)
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a renowned transplant surgeon, biotech billionaire, and the inventor of the cancer drug Abraxane, has raised a provocative and alarming hypothesis in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, as reported by ZeroHedge on March 27, 2025.
He asserts that the Covid-19 pandemic—specifically the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the mRNA vaccines developed to combat it—may be driving a global surge in aggressive cancers, particularly among younger populations. Leveraging his extensive experience in immunology and oncology, Soon-Shiong suggests that this phenomenon could represent an "existential" non-infectious pandemic, potentially linked to immune dysregulation caused by widespread exposure to the virus and its spike protein.
Soon-Shiong's central argument is that the Covid-19 era has introduced unprecedented changes to human health, manifesting as a rise in rare and aggressive cancers, even in children and young adults—cases he claims were virtually unseen in his 50-year career. He cites specific examples, such as a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer and children under 11 with colon cancer, alongside surges in ovarian cancer among women in their 30s. These observations, he argues, deviate sharply from historical norms, prompting him to investigate what environmental or biological shift might be responsible.
He points to the Covid-19 pandemic as the most significant recent change, emphasising two key factors: the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself and the mRNA vaccines administered to over a billion people. Soon-Shiong posits that both the virus and the vaccines, which introduce the viral spike protein into the body, may be disrupting immune surveillance—the body's natural ability to detect and eliminate cancer cells. He draws parallels with known virally induced cancers (e.g., hepatitis leading to liver cancer, HPV causing cervical cancer), suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 could indirectly promote oncogenesis through chronic inflammation, immune exhaustion, or the activation of "suppressor cells" that dampen anti-tumour immunity. Regarding the vaccines, he implies that their failure to fully halt viral transmission, combined with their immune-altering effects, might exacerbate this risk.
Soon-Shiong's tone is one of urgency and fear, describing the situation as an "existential" threat that keeps him awake at night. He calls for strategies to "stop the inflammation" and "clear the virus from the body," hinting that persistent viral presence or immune imbalance could be fuelling this cancer surge. While he stops short of claiming definitive causation, his hypothesis is clear: the massive scale of exposure to Covid-19 and its vaccines could be silently undermining global health in ways we are only beginning to see.
Defense of Dr. Soon-Shiong's Claims
Expertise and Credibility
Dr. Soon-Shiong is not a fringe figure or a casual observer. As a transplant surgeon, immunologist, and biotech innovator, he has a deep understanding of the immune system and cancer biology. His development of Abraxane, a chemotherapy drug that enhances immune responses against tumours, and his work on a T-cell-based Covid vaccine booster demonstrate his expertise in both cancer and infectious disease. His clinical experience—spanning decades and thousands of patients—lends weight to his observations of anomalous cancer patterns. When a physician of his calibre flags a trend like paediatric pancreatic cancer, it merits serious consideration, even if the evidence is preliminary.
Anecdotal Corroboration from Peers
Soon-Shiong is not alone in his concerns. Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a respected oncologist and professor at St. George's, University of London, has reported similar patterns. In 2022, Dalgleish noted rapid cancer progression in previously stable patients following Covid-19 boosters, including new leukemias and explosive metastases. He argued these were not coincidental, citing short-term immune suppression post-vaccination as a possible mechanism. Reports from clinicians in Germany, Australia, and the U.S. echo this, suggesting a global phenomenon. While anecdotal, these accounts from experienced practitioners align with Soon-Shiong's hypothesis and underscore the need for investigation.
Several lines of evidence support the biological plausibility of Soon-Shiong's claims:
Viral Effects: A 2022 Frontiers in Oncology study found that the SARS-CoV-2 membrane protein can enhance the aggressiveness of breast cancer cells in vitro, suggesting the virus might alter the tumour microenvironment. If Covid-19 lingers in the body (as some "long Covid" research suggests), it could create a pro-cancer inflammatory state.
Immune Dysregulation: Reactivations of latent viruses like Epstein-Barr (linked to lymphomas) during Covid-19 or post-vaccination hint at immune disruption. This could weaken surveillance against nascent tumours.
Spike Protein Concerns: Preliminary lab studies have suggested that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might interfere with DNA repair or tumour-suppressor genes (e.g., p53), though this remains unconfirmed in vivo. Since mRNA vaccines induce spike protein production, this raises a theoretical risk, especially if production persists longer than expected.
These mechanisms, while not proven to cause cancer in humans, provide a foundation for Soon-Shiong's worries.
Population-Level Data Trends
Independent analyses, such as those from Phinance Technologies, bolster the broader context of a post-COVID health crisis. Their data show a 23 percent increase in excess deaths (310,000) and a 24.6 percent rise in disabilities (1.36 million) among U.S. working-age adults (16–64) from 2021–2022—timeframes overlapping with mass vaccination and widespread Covid exposure. The disproportionate impact on younger, healthier populations and the correlation with vaccine doses administered suggest something beyond the virus's direct lethality is at play. While not specific to cancer, these trends align with Soon-Shiong's warning of systemic health deterioration.
Historical Precedent
Soon-Shiong's reference to virally induced cancers (e.g., HPV, hepatitis) is apt. Viruses can promote cancer indirectly by disrupting immune balance or driving chronic inflammation—processes well-documented in oncology. SARS-CoV-2's massive inflammatory response and its potential to persist in tissues could plausibly fit this model, even if it's not a classic oncovirus. The vaccines, by mimicking aspects of the virus, might inadvertently replicate some of these effects, especially if immune responses are miscalibrated.
Critics, including fact-checkers and medical authorities, argue that there is no "credible evidence" linking Covid-19 vaccines to cancer. They point to extensive safety monitoring (e.g., VAERS, clinical trials) showing no cancer signal, and they dismiss anecdotal reports as insufficient to establish causation.
However, these counterarguments have limitations:
Timeframe Misconception: While de novo cancers take years, the acceleration of existing or latent tumours could occur quickly if immune surveillance falters. Soon-Shiong's focus on aggressive progression, not just new cases, fits this scenario.
Monitoring Gaps: Safety systems like VAERS are passive and may underreport long-term effects, especially if cancer is not an immediately obvious vaccine outcome. The lack of a signal doesn't disprove a subtle, population-wide effect.
Dismissal of Anecdotes: While anecdotes aren't definitive, they often precede formal studies in identifying trends (e.g., smoking and lung cancer). Ignoring clinicians' observations risks delaying investigation.
Dr. Soon-Shiong's claims, while not yet proven, are a compelling call to action rooted in his expertise, clinical observations, and emerging data. His hypothesis—that Covid-19 and its vaccines might be unleashing a wave of aggressive cancers via immune disruption—is biologically plausible and supported by parallel reports from peers, as well as troubling population health trends. Critics' reliance on the absence of definitive evidence overlooks the possibility of a slow-burning crisis that current monitoring might miss. Given the stakes—an "existential" threat affecting billions—his warning deserves rigorous, unbiased research rather than dismissal. The potential cost of inaction far outweighs the discomfort of challenging the establishment narrative
"Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong - a transplant surgeon-turned-biotech billionaire renowned for inventing the cancer drug Abraxane - has issued a startling warning in a new in-depth interview with Tucker Carlson.
Soon-Shiong, founder of ImmunityBio ($IBRX) and owner of the Los Angeles Times, claims that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the very vaccines developed to fight it, may be contributing to a global surge in "terrifyingly aggressive" cancers. In the nearly two-hour conversation, the Los Angeles Times owner leveraged his decades of clinical and scientific experience to outline why he suspects an unprecedented cancer epidemic is unfolding. This report examines Dr. Soon-Shiong's background and assertions, the scientific responses for and against his claims, new data on post-COVID health trends, and the far-reaching implications if his alarming hypothesis proves true.
Dr. Soon-Shiong's Claims
Soon-Shiong is a veteran surgeon and immunologist who has spent a career studying the human immune system's fight against cancer. He pioneered novel immunotherapies and even worked on a T-cell based COVID vaccine booster during the pandemic. In the interview, he draws on this background to voice deep concern over rising cancer cases, especially among younger people – something he describes as a "non-infectious pandemic" of cancer. He tells Carlson that in 50 years of medical practice, it was extraordinarily rare to see cancers like pancreatic tumors in children or young adults, yet recently such cases are appearing. For instance, Soon-Shiong was alarmed by seeing a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer, a scenario virtually unheard of in his prior experience.
"I never saw pancreatic cancer in children... the greatest surprise to me was a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer," Soon-Shiong told Carlson, adding that he's seen examples of very young patients (even children under 11 with colon cancer) and unusual surges in aggressive diseases like ovarian cancer in women in their 30s. These personal observations of more frequent, aggressive cancers in youth led him to probe what might have changed in recent years.
"We're clearly seeing an increase in certain types of cancer, like pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer... colon cancer... in younger people."
— Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
According Soon-Shiong, the COVID era is the obvious change - and suggests that both the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection and the widespread vaccination campaigns could be key drivers behind this cancer spike. He emphasizes the massive scale of human exposure to the virus and its spike protein (via infection or vaccination).
"I don't know how to say that without saying it. It scares the pants off me because I think what we may be, I don' think it's virus versus man now, this is existential. I think when I talk about the largest non-infectious pandemic that we're afraid of, this is it."
"Billions of people – literally billions – had the COVID virus. Over a billion got the spike protein vaccine," said Carlson, adding "So that's like, we're talking like a huge percentage of the Earth's population, unless I'm missing something."
"Now you understand what keeps you awake at night and kept me awake at night for two years, two and a half years," Soon-Shiong replied, suggesting that exposure to both is silently undermining the immune system's natural defenses against cancer on a global scale.
Soon-Shiong frames COVID-era cancers as potentially virally triggered or exacerbated. In the interview, he described cases of "virally induced cancers" in clinics during the pandemic – patients whose cancers may have been kicked into overdrive by the cascade of inflammation and immune stress associated with COVID-19 (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong: You're Being Lied to About Cancer, How It's Caused, and How to Stop It). COVID infection causes a massive inflammatory response, and some cancers are known to exploit inflammation to grow.
TUCKER: "a lot people have pointed to both COVID, the virus, and to the mRNA COVID vaccines as potential causes. Do you think that they're related?"
SOON-SHIONG: "The best way for me to answer that is to look at history. What we know about virally-induced cancers is well-established. We know that if you get hepatitis, you get liver cancer. Hepatitis is a virus infection. We know if you got human papillomavirus, HPV, you get cervical cancer."
We know that certain viruses directly cause cancer (e.g. HPV, Epstein-Barr), so it's not unprecedented for a virus to play a role in oncogenesis. While SARS-CoV-2 is not a known oncovirus, Soon-Shiong worries its indirect effects – chronic inflammation, immune exhaustion, or "suppressor cells" that emerge in the wake of infection/vaccination – could be accelerating tumor development. "The answer is to stop the inflammation…clear the virus from the body," he argues, positing that until we eradicate lingering virus and restore immune balance, we may see mounting cancer cases.
In sum, Dr. Soon-Shiong's claim is that the pandemic has set the stage for an explosion of aggressive cancers: the COVID virus itself (especially if it persists in survivors) might suppress immune surveillance, and the mRNA vaccines "that didn't stop it" might inadvertently contribute to an immunosuppressive environment. These effects, in his theory, could be unleashing cancers that the immune system would ordinarily have kept in check.
A number of clinicians and researchers have reported similar worrying observations, though these remain largely anecdotal at this stage. One prominent voice echoing Soon-Shiong's concern is Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a veteran oncologist and professor at St. George's, University of London. In late 2022, Dalgleish wrote to the BMJ's editor after noticing that some cancer patients who had been stable for years experienced "rapid progression of their disease after a COVID-19 booster." He cited cases of individuals who were doing well until shortly after vaccination – new leukemias, sudden appearance of Stage IV lymphomas, and explosive metastases in patients who had post-vaccine bouts of feeling unwell.
"I am experienced enough to know that these are not coincidental," Dalgleish wrote, noting that colleagues in Germany, Australia and the U.S. were independently seeing the same pattern. This frontline testimony aligns with Soon-Shiong's fear: something about the immune system post-vaccination might be removing restraints on latent cancers. Dalgleish specifically pointed to short-term innate immune suppression after mRNA vaccination (lasting for several weeks) as a plausible mechanism. Many of the cancers he saw were ones normally held in check by immune surveillance (melanomas and B-cell cancers), so a temporary post-vaccine drop in immune vigilance could allow a tumor growth spurt. He also alluded to "suppressor gene suppression by mRNA in laboratory experiments" – a reference to preliminary studies that found the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might interfere with key DNA repair or tumor-suppressor proteins in cells. These lab findings (while not yet confirmed in living organisms) lend some biological plausibility to the idea that spike exposure could affect cancer-related pathways.
Beyond individual doctors, some research is probing links between COVID and cancer behavior. For example, a 2022 study in Frontiers in Oncology explored how SARS-CoV-2 proteins interact with cancer cells. It found that the virus's membrane (M) protein can "induce the mobility, proliferation and in vivo metastasis" of triple-negative breast cancer cells in the lab (Frontiers | SARS-CoV-2 M Protein Facilitates Malignant Transformation of Breast Cancer Cells). In co-culture experiments, breast cancer cells exposed to the viral protein essentially became more aggressive and invasive. The researchers concluded that COVID-19 infection "might promote…aggressive [cancer] phenotypes" and warned that cancer patients who get COVID could face worse outcomes.
While this is one specific context (breast cancer cells and one viral protein), it underpins Soon-Shiong's general concern: the virus can directly alter the tumor microenvironment to the cancer's advantage.
Another line of evidence involves latent viruses and inflammation. Doctors have documented unusual reactivations of viruses like Epstein-Barr (which is linked to lymphomas and other malignancies) during both COVID-19 and post-vaccine immune reactions. Such reactivations hint at a period of immune dysregulation that might also let nascent cancer cells slip past defenses.
Or course,fact-checkers and medical authorities argue that there is no credible evidence of vaccines causing meaningful immune suppression. "There isn't evidence to date that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer or lead to worsening cancer," one infectious disease expert told FactCheck.org, though they do acknowledge rare side effects like myocarditis or blood clots were found, but not cancer.
Phinance Data Insights: Post-COVID Health Trends
While the scientific community debates mechanistic links between COVID and cancer, independent analysts have been parsing population-level data for unusual patterns. One notable effort is by Phinance Technologies, a research firm co-founded by former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd. Phinance has been analyzing excess mortality and disability data since the pandemic, looking for signals of broad health impacts in the aftermath of COVID and mass vaccination. Their findings reveal concerning trends, especially among younger, working-age populations, that lend some weight to Dr. Soon-Shiong's general warning of a post-COVID health crisis (though not specific to cancer alone).
Phinance's "Vaccine Damage Project" examined the U.S. population aged 16–64 (essentially the workforce) and stratified outcomes into four groups: no effect, mild injuries, severe injuries (disabilities), and death. Using official government databases (the CDC, Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc.), they estimated how each category changed starting in 2021 – when vaccines rolled out and COVID became widespread. The results are sobering. According to Phinance's analysis, by the end of 2022 the U.S. had experienced approximately 310,000 excess deaths among adults aged 25-64 (a ~23% increase in mortality in that group over normal expectations). Notably, they argue that after mid-2021, with vaccines available and the virus itself becoming less deadly (due to immunity and milder variants), COVID-19 should not have been causing such high excess death rates. Therefore, those 310k "unexplained" deaths in 2021–2022 could represent an upper bound on vaccine-related fatalities or other pandemic collateral damage.
Even more striking is the data on new disabilities. Phinance found that from early 2021 through late 2022, about 1.36 million additional Americans (age 16–64) became disabled – a 24.6% rise in disability in that cohort, far above historical trend. This jump in disabilities among the workforce correlates in time with the vaccine rollout (and was disproportionately higher in the labor force than among those not working). The analysts note that the healthiest segment of the population (employed working-age adults) saw a greater relative increase in disabilities after Q1 2021 than the older or non-working groups. This is unusual, since typically health shocks hit the elderly hardest – but here something was impacting younger, healthy people to a significant degree. Phinance investigated further and found a tight relationship between the cumulative number of vaccine doses administered and the rise in disabilities in 2021-22. In fact, for the 16–64 population, they computed a ratio of about 4 new disabilities per excess death in that period, suggesting many survivors were left with lingering health issues even if they didn't die."
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