King Charles is not the first member of Royal Family to get cancer

A Facebook post published on February 6 includes a screenshot with the following statement: “Funny that NOBODY in the Royal Family ever gets cancer. What a surprise the King supposedly gets in just in time for new cancer jabs to be rolled out. I’m sure even the dumbest of the dumb can see where this is going. Especially after everyone is getting turbo cancers from the Covid jabs.”

However, King Charles III is not the first member of the Royal Family to get cancer. And there is no evidence of links between the vaccines and cancer. 

In fact 

Buckingham Palace announced that the King had been diagnosed with a form of cancer on February 6. The type of cancer has not been revealed.

Contrary to the claim, there have been multiple instances of cancer in the family over the years. According to the Royal Society of Medicine, King Edward VI, Charles’ great-great-grandfather, was diagnosed with a “rodent ulcer” (a form of skin cancer) in 1907. The carcinoma was cured with radium, which was then a comparatively new form of treatment. 

A 2021 article in the journal Cardiovascular Pathology states that Charles’ grandfather, King George VI, who was a heavy smoker, had his left lung removed due to cancer in 1951. This may have caused his death some months later, although at the time the official cause of death was said to be a coronary thrombosis.

According to BBC History, King Edward VIII (known as the Duke of Windsor after his abdication in 1936), brother of George VI and Charles’ great-uncle, succumbed to throat cancer in 1972.

According to her official biography written by William Shawcross and published in 2010, his maternal grandmother, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, was treated for colon cancer in 1966 and later had a tumour removed from her breast in 1984.

Furthermore, a 2022 biography by Gyles Brandreth states that Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was battling multiple myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer, in the last period of her life. And while not genetically related to the king, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023. According to The Guardian, she was also recently diagnosed with skin cancer. 

Claims about a surge in fatal cancers among those vaccinated have been made since late 2021. At the time, a spokesperson for the University of Oxford’s Vaccine Knowledge Project stated that no cause-and-effect relationship had been found between vaccines and cancer, and that diagnoses shortly after vaccination were coincidental.

Also, in 2023, The American Cancer Society told USA Today that there was no evidence of a link between the COVID-19 vaccines and cancer. European and American studies referred to by Reuters show that many screenings were missed during the pandemic, which may have led to patients presenting with more advanced stages of cancer than if they had been able to seek treatment earlier.

According to fact checks by USA Today and Reuters, no medical studies have referred to a more aggressive form of cancer after the pandemic or used the name “turbo-cancer.”

National Health Service officials recently announced that an experimental mRNA cancer vaccine is being trialed. The vaccine works by delivering the blueprint of the cancer to the patient's immune system, to help it recognize and destroy the disease. Unlike traditional vaccines, it will be given to patients who already have cancer. However, the vaccine is still in the early stages of clinical testing, and as yet only one U.K. patient is known to have received the vaccine. 

Verdict 

There have been multiple cases of cancer in the Royal Family over the years. Scientific studies do not support any connection between COVID-19 vaccines and cancer. We therefore rate this as false.