WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A study's reported rise in cancer rates is explained by the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
OUR VERDICT
False. The study was done before COVID-19 vaccine mandates were introduced.
AAP FACTCHECK - It is being falsely implied that COVID-19 vaccines explain a study's reported rise in cancer rates in Australia.
However, the research on bowel cancer rates is based on data from 1990 to 2020, before COVID-19 vaccines were introduced.
A Facebook post features a screenshot from a news report about a study that found an increase in bowel cancer diagnoses among younger Australians.
The screenshot depicts a woman lying in a hospital bed and the headline "Australia sets world's worst cancer rate - as possible surge revealed".
The post is captioned by a Facebook user: "Ironically, Australia also had some of the strictest v@ccine mandates".
Various posts with similar captions have been widely shared on Facebook and appear to originate from a June 15 post on an X account.
The Daily Mail article referenced in the post discusses research from the University of Melbourne that found bowel cancer diagnoses have more than doubled for Australians below the age of 50 over the last three decades.
Nowhere in the Daily Mail article are COVID vaccines mentioned, nor are they mentioned in the study cited.
The preprint article looked at how many Australians between 20 and 49 were diagnosed with early-onset bowel cancer between 1990 and 2020.
The first COVID vaccines weren't rolled out in Australia until February 2021, well after the time frame of the study.
There have also been multiple studies on rising bowel cancer rates among younger people in parts of the world outside Australia, such as this one in the Lancet and one from the University of Otago in New Zealand.
The Melbourne study makes no conclusions about why bowel cancer rates are rising in Australia and says there's a "need to identify factors driving these trends."
The post is one of many that attempt to link COVID vaccines to other ailments, such as cancer in children and nonexistent syndromes like 'VAIDS' and 'turbo cancer' - all of which have been debunked by AAP FactCheck in the past.
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