Doctor Joseph Ladapo, the state surgeon general of Florida, is urging medical professionals to cease endorsing the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. He bases this on claims made by anti-vaccine campaigners about potential health concerns, which federal health regulators have already dismissed as “implausible” and “misleading.”
Regarding “nucleic acid contaminants” in the licensed Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccinations, Ladapo expressed concerns in a bulletin published on the Florida Department of Health’s website on Wednesday. In addition to raising worries about the possibility of cancer, he said that this might introduce “contaminant DNA” into human cells.
According to Ladapo, “DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health” and the human genome, “including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients.” He continues, “If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.”
In order to protect patients, he asked healthcare professionals to give priority to “non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and treatment.” (A non-mRNA option is the COVID vaccination from Novavax, which was released in the fall. mRNA is not used in the administration of monoclonal antibodies or Paclovid therapies.)
The FDA addressed the same concerns in a letter that Ladapo sent last month. His allegations were rejected by federal health inspectors as “quite implausible” and “misleading.”
“We would like to make clear that based on a thorough assessment of the entire manufacturing process, FDA is confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines,” the agency stated in its reply. “The agency’s benefit-risk assessment and ongoing safety surveillance demonstrate that the benefits of their use outweigh their risks.”
“Additionally, with over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified,” the Food and Drug Administration stated in its letter.
Ladapo is not arguing that the vaccine’s mRNA will integrate into the human genome; rather, he is putting forth the theory that “contaminant DNA (often present at trace amounts in biologics) might integrate, and that by doing so it might activate an oncogene (i.e. a gene that causes cancer),” according to Dr. Céline Gounder, a medical contributor for CBS News and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News.Gounder stated that the term “turbo cancer,” which is used by anti-vaxers, is unfounded.
“There’s no evidence that any of this might happen or could happen,” Gounder stated. Having said that, as cancers usually progress slowly, it can take years to formally demonstrate that a biologic does not cause cancer.
Conversely, COVID is a disease that kills in weeks, and the mRNA vaccines stop serious illness, hospitalization, and death within that period.”
Gounder adds that there has been no connection between DNA-based vaccinations and cancer over a long period of use. “DNA vaccines have never been associated with cancer development despite delivering orders of magnitude more DNA than is present as a contaminant in mRNA vaccines,” she claims. “Almost all biologics used in medicine that are produced in cell cultures contain traces of DNA, including monoclonal antibodies, some of which are utilized as cancer treatments. Since the other COVID vaccinations are produced in cell cultures, there will also be some trace amounts of DNA in them.”
She also makes the observation that “mRNA cannot integrate into your DNA biologically. Gene therapy is not what mRNA vaccines are. Public health organizations have responded in opposition to letters from Ladapo before.
Further criticism of Ladapo’s statements regarding the COVID-19 vaccines came in March from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which described them as “incorrect, misleading, and could be harmful to the American public.”
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