Princess Catherine of Wales has cancer. So does King Charles III. So does Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, who was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma in January after being diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2023, and undergoing a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. If that seems like a lot of cancer in one family over a relatively short period of time, it is, unfortunately, increasingly common.

In Australia, the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (released this week) reveals a continuing increase in cancer deaths in 2023 of over 7 per cent.

Australia is far from alone in experiencing a disturbing increase in cancer deaths. Former BlackRock analyst, Ed Dowd, published a paper on ‘US – Trends in Death Rates from Neoplasms (ie tumours), Ages 15-44’ this month. It looks at crude data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the period of 2010 to 2022. The study shows that the death rate for people in this age group whose underlying cause of death was cancer trended down from 2010 to 2019, flattened out with only a tiny drop in deaths in 2020, and rose significantly in 2021 and 2022.

This pattern was mirrored in deaths in this age group where cancer was one of multiple causes of death. In both cases, the change in the trend line was statistically significant or highly statistically significant in 2020 and can be considered extreme in 2021 and 2022.

Dowd’s team did an even more detailed report on cancer in people in the same age group in the UK which it published last October. It showed a large increase in mortality due to malignant cancers that started in 2021 and accelerated substantially in 2022 which was highly statistically significant and indicated that from late 2021 a novel phenomenon was leading to increased malignant cancer deaths in individuals aged 15 to 44.

The team also analysed the ten most common causes of cancer deaths. Unfortunately, the pattern seen in cancer deaths overall was repeated in breast cancer deaths for women, which fell significantly between 2010 and 2020 but rose by about 12 per cent in 2021 and by 28 per cent in 2022.

A similar pattern was identified in deaths from cancers where it was impossible to identify where the cancer originated. These appear to be ‘turbo cancers’ where the primary site cannot be identified because by the time they are diagnosed, the cancer has already spread throughout the body. In 2020 there were no excess deaths in this category. In 2021, there was a dramatic, 60 per cent increase in this category in women, and in 2022 there was a dramatic increase in deaths in this category in both sexes with men experiencing a 60 per cent increase and women experiencing a 55 per cent increase compared with the previous trend.

Deaths from skin cancer also fell between 2010 and 2020 but showed a dramatic, highly significant increase in 2022 particularly for men who suffered an increase of 120 per cent compared to the trend whereas for women it was 35 per cent.

Unlike other forms of cancer, colon cancer in young people was trending upward between 2010 and 2019 but the results were not statistically significant until 2022 when there was a dramatic 50 per cent increase which was worse for men than for women.

There was no increase in pancreatic cancer and no excess mortality until 2021 when it rose by 20 per cent and then increased by 70 per cent in 2022.

Deaths from brain tumours did not increase for either sex until 2022 when there was a highly significant increase which was bad for both sexes although worse for men than women.

Overall, for women breast cancer dominated and contributed the most to the increase in excess deaths (about 25 per cent) followed by colon and cervical cancers. For men, there was no dominant cancer type. Brain, colon and stomach cancers accounted for 30 per cent of the increase in cancer deaths in 2022. And even though most men don’t die of skin cancer the increase in these deaths of 118 per cent in 2022 is striking. Cancers of the digestive tract – colon, stomach, and oesophagus – rose substantially too and disproportionately affected men as did pancreatic cancer affecting first men and then both sexes.

Pundits have been quick to blame and shame so-called conspiracy theorists after the Princess of Wales revealed her cancer diagnosis and to draw parallels with the death of Princess Diana. As one columnist in a leading Australian newspaper put it, ‘In 1997, paparazzi photographers on motorbikes chased Diana, Princess of Wales, to her death at the age of 36 in Paris’ Pont de l’Alma tunnel. A shocked world – and Diana’s justifiably vituperative family – blamed the press. They were right.’

Those with perhaps a more empirical approach to the tragedy observe that the driver’s blood alcohol reading put him three times over the French legal limit and that he’d consumed about ten drinks.

Of course, ever since the arrival of Covid when mainstream media columnists talk about conspiracy theorists they usually mean anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the official narrative, particularly the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines. This is despite the fact that concerns about the safety of Covid vaccines in relation to cancer have been raised by leading medical researchers.

Serge Goldman, the head of nuclear medicine at the hospital of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, documented how an mRNA Covid booster dramatically exacerbated the lymphoma of his brother Michel – a leading Belgian immunologist.

Professor Angus Dalgleish, an expert in immunology and Professor of Oncology at St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, is another brave voice who in November 2022 warned in a letter to Dr Kamran Abbasi, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, that, ‘As a practising oncologist I am seeing people with stable disease rapidly progress after being forced to have a booster, usually so they can travel’ and that he was, ‘experienced enough to know that these are not the coincidental anecdotes that many suggest, especially as the same pattern is being seen in Germany, Australia, and the USA.’

Dr Harvey Risch, a retired Yale professor of epidemiology, recently spoke about the rise in ‘turbo’ cancers which are ‘so aggressive that between the time that they’re first seen and when they come back for treatment after a few weeks, they’ve grown dramatically,’ he said.

The good news is that after two years of repeated attempts, Senator Ralph Babet of the United Australia Party has been successful in getting Australia’s excess mortality referred to the Community Affairs References Committee to investigate the factors contributing to it.

The public can make submissions with public hearings expected to follow and a report prepared by 31 August.

At the end of her moving video revealing her diagnosis, Princess Catherine sent a message to all those affected by cancer asking them ‘not lose faith or hope’ and telling them resolutely, ‘You are not alone.’

The heartbreaking truth is that the ranks appear to be swelling every day with no end in sight.