#skepticism

[ghost-in-the-corner]

just as a general reminder

learn how to fact-check for yourself, cause soon enough, most online sources won't be reliable

[isitcorrect]

Claim: Did many cancers have cures discovered after the US left the WHO?

Claims like these are everywhere on X and Bluesky, and strangely enough not so much any other media. Let's figure out if cancer really was cured after the US (vaguely implied to have been suppressing the cure) left the WHO in January 2026

Pancreatic Cancer:

On January 27th Mariano Barbacid claimed to have cured pancreatic cancer in mice, but his study on this was published in December, before the US left the World Health Organization, and it was only in January that he asked for funding to pursue his cure (this El Pais article is one of the few sources digging into the claim and not citing the same clickbait, so it's my main source here)

Similar events occurred in 2011, when he claimed to have cured lung cancer, in mice, and immediately asked for funding. He was rebuked by the Spanish Ministry of Science for announcing results in mice as relevant to humans. The linked article includes scientists criticizing him for going to the press to call it a "cure for cancer" instead of a promising step. Indeed, a University of Pennsylvania team led by Ben Stanger discovered a similar therapy earlier in 2025 without the same amount of media attention.

All in all it paints a picture of something that happens very routinely, even before to the same scientist: a promising study of a potential treatment for cancer in mice that was blown up by the media into a imminent cure for cancer in humans. Regardless, it wasn't being conspiratorially suppressed until the US left WHO, because the study was announced beforehand, and an American team did similar research in 2025.

Colon Cancer

This is referring to South Korean scientists discovering a potential way to reverse colon cancer. Something first reported in 2024, well before the US left WHO.

Colorectal Cancer

This was apparently cured by Chinese scientists; this is a reference to Peixuan Guo, who found an RNA therapy to remove cancer...in mice. This is, once again, a promising treatment in mice that's yet to be tested in humans that the media seized upon.

As an aside, part of the reason conspiratorial claims that They are hiding the "cure for cancer" is because of sensationalist media coverage highlighting potential treatments way before they're ready for primetime. These stories happen all the time, and eventually either it becomes a treatment (not cure) we use or is discarded, but all the public sees is a stream of Cures for Cancer that seemingly vanish.

As for whether this was suppressed until the United States until they left WHO: Peixuan Guo conducted this research at...Ohio State University.

HPV

This is a reference to Eva Ramón Gallegos, who eradicated HPV in 29 women. In 2019. This is real research, but an older story that was brought up and framed as something new in order to cash in on the viral narrative after the pancreatic cancer claim took off.

Blood cancer

This refers to a study in Vietnam announced last year - again, before the US' departure from WHO was complete. But it is being inaccurately reported; it's not a cure on "blood cancers", it's a treatment using cell therapy that helped one patient with acute childhood leukemia. This is good and promising, but was never claimed to be a "cure for cancer" until the press got hold of it and twisted it to fit a current narrative

Anyway let's look at the ones in the other tweet

Breast cancer

I cannot find out what this is a reference to. I just find crank stories from the MAHA sphere

Lung cancer

I think this may be a reference to the colorectal cancer cure. Otherwise I just get a bunch of stories about ivermectin

Prostate cancer

This seems to be the same story as the one about colon cancer; otherwise I'm not finding a source story they're responding to

Stomach cancer

Yeah, for all these I'm just finding nothing but tweets insisting stomach cancer was "cured". Like, you would think that EVERY CANCER being cured would spawn a few news stories, at least, but no! It's just tweets claiming it was cured with no further information

Liver cancer

"Cancer cured" and ivermectin posts

Thyroid cancer

"Cancer cured" and ivermectin posts

Bladder Cancer

I found this study from 2025 for a treatment eliminating it in patients, but again, it's just "cancer cured" and ivermectin posts, with no citations of it, so I don't know if that spawned this

Esophageal Cancer

"Cancer cured" and ivermectin posts

So let's take tally:

Five real cancer treatments, none of which are cancer cures as far as we know yet, that went viral. The only one that was new was the colorectal cancer one, which was discovered in the United States. The others are largely from 2024 or 2025 and one as old as 2019.

Eight random ones thrown in without any clear source story. You would think the lack of any news stories about EVERY CANCER being cured would make some people get sus, but no

Let's just state what should be obvious: these types of stories happen all the time, and do not indicate a cure for cancer "being suppressed".

The US retreating from the World Health Organization and from medical research don't represent a win, of science finally getting out under the boot of repression, but a tremendous loss. The United States was the leader in clinical trials, number one in life sciences research. Or it was, until Trump slashed their funding for no reason. American medical researchers weren't greedy fatcats who were making cures for cancer just to hide them forever; they were responsible for much of the world's research and medical treatment! It should be obvious that the world is further away from a cure to any cancer after some of its biggest research institutions were decimated, and yet

[milliebobbyflay]

Imagine a world where creationism was unanimously central both to the ruling class's conception of self and to the logic that justifies their power. Darwin's work still exists, attempts to suppress it outright would only drive interest; curious and rigorous scholars who've sought out his work can testify to its quality and relevance, and often teach natural selection in their courses. Still, there remains an understanding that Darwin is not what the people with money and power want to hear, and so when proposing research grants or attempting to climb the academic ladder, Darwin is typically ignored in favor of alternative theoretical frameworks which, while less useful, are far more likely to receive funding.

This creates a cycle where, because Darwinism has been ignored in all of the most influential and groundbreaking research, it becomes inessential. Scholars can receive their PhDs without ever having read a single work on natural selection. Despite its utility as a theory, intuition and an implicit trust in the social reality created by and within these institions creates the sense that Darwinism is, to put it bluntly "crank shit," the sort of thing you study to amuse your own curiosity and stroke your ego rather than actually trying to change the world.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Darwin was correct, that evolution by natural selection is the primary mechanism by which species develop and change over time. However, since using Darwinist theory (or any alternative routes taken to similar models and conclusions) as anything but a garnish will get you labeled as a crank, the entire discipline of biology becomes warped around its absence. Entire fields form to cobble together makeshift solutions to the gaps Darwinism fills, further cementing it's irrelevance. Thousands of scholars devote their lives to fleshing out the forest of asterisks and duct tape holding on a vastly overstretched lamarckian and at times implictly creationist framework.

From the outside, the discipline begins looking absurd. Clearly driven by internal politics, sprawling in a million directions without any consistent underlying theory, shy on results. Despite billions pouring in year after year trying to answer some of the most fundamental questions about humanity, history, health, all lines of inquiry seem to eventually terminate in a shrug of "life is complex, how could we hope to understand everything about it?"

Okay now switch Darwin with Marx. This is the state of contemporary western social science.

[skeletalroses]

We need the Mythbusters back now more than ever to teach science and critical thinking, and every episode should include a segment where Adam and Jamie get to beat RFK Jr. mercilessly with any weapons of their choosing. As a treat.

Additionally or alternatively, they use him as Buster

[creature-wizard]

Basically, you can't just go "this thing is fake because it's racist/ableist/whatever" because people will think you just don't believe in it because it doesn't fit your ideology, and not because the evidence genuinely doesn't support it. That's why you have to explain why it's factually wrong, why it doesn't logically add up, etc. It's important to talk about bigoted motives behind things, but you have to do that in addition to laying out the facts.

[quasi-normalcy]

Which of the following are you *most* likely to believe in?

Alien have recentlh visited / are currently visiting Earth

Sympathetic magic / Witchcraft

Ghosts

Mind-reading / telepathy

Precognition / dreaming the future

The Mandela Effect / crossover between universes

Astrology / Divination

Bigfoot / Sasquatch / Abominable Snowman

Nessie / Lake Monsters

Elfs/ Dwarfs/ Goblins/ Fae

The world is orchestrated by unfathomably powerful forces according to a plan

I believe in none of these at all.

Voting ended onMay 21, 2024

[bodhrancomedy]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Yes

No

Nuanced answer (must show working)

Voting ended onJun 25