Authored by Tom Ozimek and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Clinical pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole has said that DNA contamination in some COVID-19 vaccines may be related to an increase in cancers, micro-clotting, and autoimmune diseases.
“My big concern is the fact that billions of people across the earth have received a product that was overtly contaminated with something that should not have been in the product,” Dr. Cole, an anatomic clinical pathologist with postgraduate Ph.D. training in immunology, recently told the “American Thought Leaders” program.
“If I went and bought some meat at the grocery store and they had heavy metal or pesticide toxins, they would pull those from the shelves immediately,” he added.
Recently, researchers found that vaccine vials containing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines had billions of residual DNA fragments, including molecules derived from Simian Virus 40 (SV40) used as “promoters” or “enhancers” that help produce the mRNA molecules that help human cells make proteins that trigger an immune response inside the body.
Monkey Virus ‘Enhancers’ in Vaccines
SV40 is a monkey polyomavirus that has been linked to cancer in laboratory animals. While the virus itself was not found to be present in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, the presence of the SV40 enhancer gene is controversial because it comes from a virus associated with malignant transformation. However, some experts have raised concerns that the SV40 enhancer itself may be associated with adverse events.
Dr. Cole believes that the SV40 enhancer has health risks, saying it contains a “concerning” nuclear co-localization sequence that “allows it to get into the nucleus of the cell and to induce these different pathways of action and mechanisms that can, again, go haywire, mutate, cause toxicity.”
Molecular virologist David Speicher, the lead author of the study that found SV40 enhancers in COVID-19 vaccines, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview that much more research is needed to investigate DNA contamination in the COVID-19 vaccines. Unanswered questions include whether the SV40 sequence in the vaccines is triggering “turbo cancers,” meaning ones of a particularly aggressive and fast-growing variety, he said.
A recent review of cancer registry records from 44 countries found a rapid rise in the incidence of early-onset cancers for 14 types—including colorectal, breast, esophageal, gastric, and pancreatic cancers—especially in younger adults.
‘Turbo Cancers’ Rising?
Dr. Cole said that “turbo cancers” is a colloquial term for a phenomenon physicians are increasingly observing, namely that the cancer symptoms come faster.
“Now I’m seeing the solid tissue cancers at rates I’ve never seen,” Dr. Cole said. “Patients that were stable, or cancer-free for one, two, five, ten years and their cancer’s back—it’s back with a vengeance and it’s not responding to the traditional therapies.”
He said there’s no easy explanation for the “turbo cancer” phenomenon but he believes it may have something to do with immune system suppression.
“It’s not necessarily that the gene sequence is causing cancer with the gene sequence … it can cause some of the mutations that lead to cancers—but what it’s also doing it’s suppressing the immune system,” he said.
“And your immune system is what kills cancer. And if your immune system is asleep, your killer cells can’t be activated,” he added.
In a separate study, microbiologist Kevin McKernan, a researcher who worked on MIT’s Human Genome Project, said he found that the amount of DNA in COVID-19 vaccines could be 18 to 70 times higher than the limits required by a top health agency.
"Early in 2023, genomics scientist Kevin McKernan made an accidental discovery. While running an experiment in his Boston lab, McKernan used some vials of mRNA Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines as controls. He was ‘shocked’ to find that they were allegedly contaminated with tiny… pic.twitter.com/hofRn7Ckgs
— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) November 28, 2023
Earlier this year, Mr. McKernan published a paper finding that the quantities of DNA contamination in the vaccines exceeded the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA’s) 330 ng/mg of DNA to RNA requirement by between 18 and 70 times. It’s also higher than the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) 0 ng/dose requirements, and it had a reading of 12 ng/dose.
At the time, he warned that the DNA plasmids could infiltrate the human genome, contradicting public statements made by the FDA and other regulators that COVID-19 vaccines do not alter human DNA.
Dr. Cole explained that the smaller a fragment of DNA is, the more likely it has the opportunity to intercalate into one’s own DNA, though he added more research is needed.
“Do we still have some testing, some probes, that we need to develop to prove this? Yes, we do have to do that,” he said. “Several of us are in some small communication groups, trying to figure out the long term implications of this. But it does explain a lot of the really strange happenings in the human body that we’re seeing in terms of, you know, clots, auto-immune disease, cancers, etc.”
He said the reason he and others believe this may be the case is because the DNA fragments are changing the signals within cells.
“Human cells are meant to make human proteins,” he said. “Human cells were not meant to make foreign proteins. When we program people’s cells to make things they’re not supposed to make, they can go haywire, they can mutate, they can become a target, have our own immune attack … our own immune system attacking ourselves.”
‘Horrific Idea’
Dr. Cole said that there are “so many tangents” of possible adverse events associated with the DNA fragments in the COVID-19 vaccines, while warning that it’s not known how long these fragments can remain in human cells.
He added that his concern about the impact of the DNA fragments on human health isn’t just confined to COVID-19 vaccines.
“My concern is this entire technology, a lipid nanoparticle in and of itself, is an unproven product,” he said, referring to the tiny balls of fat that contain and shield the messenger RNA, or mRNA, from destructive enzymes as it’s shuffled into human cells to make proteins.
“They’re trying to create them for RSV and for flu and for many other pathogens,” he continued, saying that the lipid nanoparticles take “those little gene sequences any and everywhere in the body” and that they were designed to take chemotherapeutic agents across the blood-brain barrier into the brain in particular.
“So to use this as a carrier platform, a lipid nanoparticle plus whatever gene—[it’s] cool conceptually,” he said, but “in practicality, a horrific idea.”
But “to randomly and willy nilly give this to everybody with no long-term safety data” is a bad idea, he argued.
Besides possible links to cancer and immune system issues, Dr. Cole said that blood clotting was another possible adverse reaction to the vaccines, in particular to the spike protein that they contain.
“But not just the spike protein,” he was quick to add. “This was a message I got flying in yesterday, from a colleague: ‘Hey, we need to look at this particular sequence within the DNA contamination because it also codes for a very sticky protein,'” calling it “another area” that needs more research and further exploration.
“But the clots are an unusual type of clot,” he said, saying they’re an amyloid-type protein rather than a traditional amyloid.
While he cautioned that he was just “hypothesizing,” he said that clinical patterns suggest some people who got COVID-19 vaccines continue to produce “considerable” amounts of spike protein, which he said can “induce clotting pathways.”
He suggested that the human enzymes that naturally break clots down “are being blocked and inhibited because of those unusual sequences that have been injected into a lot of people” by way of COVID-19 vaccines.
‘Benefits of Their Use Outweigh Their Risks’: FDA
The FDA has responded to concerns about billions of plasmid DNA fragments in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by saying that the benefits of the shots outweigh their risks.
“The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines authorized or approved for use in the United States are not defined as a gene therapy,” the FDA told Maryanne Demasi, a former Australia Broadcasting Corporation journalist who now writes a Substack page.
The FDA spokesperson continued by saying that the agency “is confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of these vaccines” and added that the “agency’s benefit-risk assessment and ongoing safety surveillance demonstrates that the benefits of their use outweigh their risks.”
The context for the FDA’s response was Ms. Demasi’s interview with Phillip Buckhaults, a cancer genomics expert and a professor at the University of South Carolina, who said that “there is DNA contaminating the vaccine, but I was also able to put a stop to some of the rumors on social media about the SV40 virus being in the vaccine and that it’s going to give everybody cancer because that’s not true.”
He was referring to claims that the SV40 virus was present in COVID-19 vaccines and was giving people cancer after vaccinations.
“There’s just a piece of SV40 promoter in the vaccine,” Mr. Buckhaults added. “And that’s what people were seizing on, people were saying there’s a monkey virus, we’re all going to turn into monkeys or get cancers next week or something,” the professor continued, referring to the earlier claims on social media about it being the cause of cancers. “I did my due diligence to tamp down that kind of fear—which was my original purpose.”
Regarding the DNA fragments found in the Pfizer vaccine, the size of the tiny particles is what matters, Mr. Buckhaults said.
“The FDA says 10 nanograms. Now 10 nanograms could be from one molecule that’s absurdly ginormous. Or it could be a whole bunch of little bitty molecules. And the hazard for genome modification is not a function of the mass,” he continued. “It’s a function of how many independent molecules you’ve got. So, it’s actually way worse, having a whole bunch of these little pieces in terms of a risk of some insertional mutagenesis happening. That’s way worse than even having one big piece left over.”
However, he expressed the opinion that there likely isn’t “anything nefarious” at play and instead it was “kind of accidentally administratively dumb.”
What may have happened, according to the researcher, is that Pfizer, federal officials, and others “were scared to death” about COVID-19 in 2020 when the vaccines were being worked on and that mistakes were made.
‘Genotoxicity Risk’
Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the mRNA technology that the companies used for the shot, was among the witnesses testifying at a recent hearing in Washington in which he said that the SV40 enhancer sequence leaves behind residual DNA that could cause problems.
“That’s a proven genotoxicity risk,” he said.
There’s a possibility the fragments are causing the unusual types of cancers that have appeared following the rollout of the vaccines, he added later.
“I speculate that what we may find is that the cancer risk here may be partially attributed to these DNA contaminations; that would be consistent with the peer reviewed literature,” Dr. Malone said. “And by the way, these DNA fragments may also be shown to contribute to genetic anomalies in fetus[es], which is one of the most prominent causes of premature abortion.”
Dr. Malone previously said that the inclusion of the sequence means the vaccine is adulterated and should be recalled by the FDA.
The regulator told The Epoch Times that “no safety concerns related to the sequence of, or amount of, residual DNA have been identified” and that the FDA would not be recalling the shot.
The EMA, which regulates vaccines in European Union member states, told The Associated Press that “non-functional” fragments of SV40’s DNA sequence were used as “starting material” in producing the vaccine.
The EMA added that while most of these materials are broken down and removed in the manufacturing process, trace amounts might still remain at “very low levels” in the final product. However, the EMA has insisted they are well within established safety guidelines.
“EMA has seen no evidence of an association between mRNA vaccines and adverse events that could be linked to the presence of DNA material, nor are we aware of any scientific evidence showing that the very small amounts of residual DNA that may be present in vaccine batches could integrate into the DNA of vaccinated individuals,” the Amsterdam-based agency said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.
Pfizer did not respond to earlier requests for comment on the presence of the DNA fragments in its COVID-19 vaccine.
However, Pfizer told The Associated Press that “there is no evidence to support claims that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine contains plasmid DNA that could potentially impact a person’s DNA or be a theoretical cancer risk.”
Jack Phillips, Zachary Stieber, and Marina Zhang contributed to this report.
