But do COVID vaccines actually cause cancer?

In a new video, Professor Dalgleish, an oncologist known for his work in HIV/AIDS research, claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain synthetic DNA that can get into human genes, causing more cases of cancer, and he urges stopping the use of these vaccines because of the health risks.

Angus Dalgleish, who had a financial interest in a competing COVID vaccine while he was speaking out against mRNA vaccines, was citing bad science when claiming contamination of synthetic DNA that “presents risks of a genomic instability which can manifest as cancers, immune disorders, and hereditary diseases.”

The synthetic DNA he refers to is a promoter gene (a DNA sequence that starts RNA transcription) used in vaccine production. In other words, a promoter gene is like a switch in DNA that tells the cell when to start making RNA, which is used to make proteins. It controls when and how much of a gene gets turned on, helping the cell know what to do and when to do it.

While promoters are used to make mRNA vaccines, they are not considered an ingredient in the vaccines since almost all of them are removed during production. These claims, that DNA plasmids were found in mRNA vaccines at a higher proportion of mRNA to DNA than is allowed by FDA guidelines, originally stem from a previous preprint paper acknowledging that one limitation of the study is the “unknown provenance of the vaccine vials under study.”They also note that the vaccines arrived without being stored at proper temperatures and were all expired.

Dalgleigh cites the authors’ follow-up paper, a preprint testing “24 unopened expired vials” and “three vials of in-date remnants.” The exported and improperly stored vaccines are a problem. Since mRNA breaks down or degrades much faster than DNA, the small amounts of DNA used in making the vaccine could become larger in proportion compared to the mRNA remaining. The DNA would be more noticeable, especially in expired vials or vials that weren’t stored correctly.

More importantly, the mRNA and the promoters cannot get into the nucleus of cells and cannot change DNA. mRNA vaccines are not gene therapy.

There is also no evidence that COVID vaccines cause cancer. Some of the most powerful carcinogens can take years to manifest in the form of cancer. And while there has been an increase in early-onset cancers, this increase started in the early 1990s, well before the introduction of COVID vaccines.

Read more of our posts debunking claims about covid vaccines and cancer.