What’s Actually in the COVID-19 Vaccines?

Jan Jekielek, senior editor with The Epoch Times and host of “American Thought Leaders,” spoke with microbiologist Kevin McKernan — a former researcher and team leader for the MIT Human Genome project¹ — about DNA contamination in COVID-19 shots.²

In a preprint study McKernan and colleagues assessed the nucleic acid composition of four expired vials of the Moderna and Pfizer mRNA shots. “DNA contamination that exceeds the European Medicines Agency (EMA) 330ng/mg requirement and the FDAs 10ng/dose requirements” was found.³

So, in addition to the spike protein and mRNA in COVID-19 shots, McKernan’s team also discovered simian virus 40 (SV40) promoters that, for decades, have been suspected of causing cancer in humans, including mesotheliomas, lymphomas and cancers of the brain and bone.⁴ The media were quick to “fact check” the finding, with the AP publishing a rebuttal titled, “No, ‘Monkey Virus DNA’ Was Not Found in COVID Vaccines.’”⁵

Speaking with Jekielek, McKernan took issue with the AP’s fact check article, noting their paper “never said that the entire virus was present in the vaccines. We said that the promoter and the enhancer and the origin was in there, along with the polyA signal. It seems as if the AP has erected a strawman argument where they are trying to debunk something that was never said.”⁶

Could DNA Contamination in COVID Shots Cause Cancer?

The AP and other media outlets also downplayed the notion that DNA contamination in COVID-19 injections could contribute to cancer. “They are trying to make claims that this is not cancer-causing,” McKernan says, but “there are limits on how much DNA can be in a vaccine precisely because of the concern over DNA integration.”⁷

Such guidelines were based on research by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s molecular biologist Keith Peden,⁸ but when he evaluated how much DNA could “safely” exist in vaccines, he didn’t consider lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and other factors that could enhance how much DNA could enter a cell. McKernan explains:⁹

“Here are two additional things going on that mean the DNA in these vaccines is more likely to get to the nucleus and integrate into the genome than the information they had at that time. When they came to those regulations, they were assuming the previous DNA in the shots were host cell DNA, like maybe you grew the vaccine in some type of monkey kidney cell.

As a result of this, there’s background monkey DNA, or background human DNA, due to whatever host cell line they use. We have something very different going on here. We have a well-known promoter that’s used in gene therapy that’s inside the vaccines that’s getting injected through an LNP that makes it very effective at transecting cells. Then it has a signal in there that drives that DNA into the nucleus.

I don’t think Keith Peden had anticipated that when he came up with these 10 nanogram limits of DNA. I’d say the verdict is still out as to whether or not they can be cancer-causing, but the risk is certainly elevated from what the FDA’s guidelines have been constructed off of.”

How SV40 Promoters in COVID Shots Could Drive Disease

McKernan explains that in many cases, when tumors are sequenced, they’re found to contain sequences from SV40 and other viruses, which can integrate into your genome, causing disruptions and instability that can trigger the cell line to grow out of control.¹⁰

In the case of COVID-19 shots, he says, “The concern is if this DNA integrates the genome, one portion of the SSV40 sequence is an SV40 promoter, a very strong promoter, which means it drives transcription wherever it lands in the genome.

If this happens to drop itself in front of a proto-oncogene [a gene that has the potential to cause cancer] and drives a lot of expression off of a gene that’s known, if you hyper-express it and turn the cell cancerous, then we have a concern that DNA is in fact doing that.”¹¹

But not only do COVID-19 shots contain SV40 promoters, they also contain a 72 base pair insertion that makes the promoter much more aggressive and also drives the sequence into the nucleus of the cell. “And they’re right next to each other,” McKernan says. “If this DNA moves into the nucleus and it drags a promoter with it, and that integrates in front of a gene, it can disrupt gene regulation and potentially lead to the oncogenesis.”¹²

At the same time, a Pfizer trial showed that the shots may induce lymphocytopenia and neutropenia, or low concentrations of white blood cells. This could further allow for cancerous changes to proliferate. “After vaccination, patients have lower white blood cells, which you need to clear out cells that are misbehaving, like cancer cells,” McKernan adds.¹³

He’s also seen research showing that the spike protein from COVID-19 shots can enter the nucleus and disrupt regulation of p53 and BRCA1 genes:¹⁴

“People are probably familiar with BRCA1 because of breast cancer genes, but p53 is also another guardian of the genome. These are genes that clean up genomes that have been broken or have integration events …

If you have all three of those potentially increased integration risks happening, with white blood cell reduction and spike protein inhibiting the genes that are meant to clean up this type of problem, the combination of those things could certainly be tied to the rise in cancer that we’re currently seeing.”