President Joe Biden claimed in a July 20 speech that growing up in Delaware near oil refineries gave him cancer. Posts on social media misinterpreted that to mean he currently has cancer. A White House spokesperson said Biden was referring to a skin cancer that was removed before he became president.
President Donald Trump boasted of the lowest cancer death rate on record, and implied that his administration was responsible for the achievement. While he’s right about the statistic, the improved death rate is the result of decades-long efforts on cancer prevention, detection and treatment.
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden claimed without evidence that “more people are coming home from Iraq with brain cancer” than “any other war,” and blamed burn pits for the purported increase. But existing statistics do not bear that out, and the evidence on the cancer risk of burn pits is inconclusive.
On the campaign trail, former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump have both claimed that a cure to cancer would soon become a reality — if they were elected in 2020. Experts, however, don’t share that degree of optimism.
During an April 2 speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee, President Donald Trump once again attacked wind power, falsely claiming that noise from turbines causes cancer and that turbines sink property values by 75 percent. Both claims are unsubstantiated.
Q: Did people develop cancer because of the polio vaccine?
A: There are no known cases, and it’s very unlikely. In the 1950s and 1960s, people did receive polio vaccines contaminated with a virus that causes cancer in rodents. But research suggests this virus doesn’t cause cancer in humans.
Q: Does the herbicide glyphosate cause cancer?
A: There is evidence to suggest it may cause cancer at very high doses, but not at the low doses typically found in foods.
Q: Is bacon better for you than tilapia? Does tilapia cause cancer and/or Alzheimer’s disease?
A: No. These false claims, spread by multiple websites, are not supported by solid scientific evidence.