Do mRNA vaccines cause cancer?

The video-featured physician starts is infamous for making false claims about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines; his claims here are no exception. There are two issues with this claim: it is based on the beliefs of a person with no medical background and it misrepresents the data cited.

When we evaluate the accuracy of any claim, it’s important to consider the expertise of the source. Here, we have a physician known for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The authority this physician cites for his claims is a self-described equity investment executive with no medical or public health background.

This executive claims that people aged 25–45  who had the COVID-19 vaccine experienced an 84 percent increase in mortality, but this claim has been proven false. Our non-medical executive also tries to support his false claim with a graph of excess deaths taken from CDC data. However, the data he uses actually represent excess deaths due to COVID itself. There is absolutely no evidence that vaccines were involved in these deaths.

The tweet’s suggestion that mRNA in the COVID vaccine causes cancer is a misrepresentation of a 2018 study performed by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The center did do a study of mRNA, but it was not the mRNA used in the vaccine. As the center explained in a statement clarifying their research, “There are thousands of different kinds of mRNA in human cells. Each kind of mRNA does different things. The mRNA used in vaccines does not cause cancer or alter DNA.”