MRNA Vaccines Can Cause Cancer Misinformation Fingerprint
MRNA vaccines can cause cancer
The False Narrative
MRNA vaccines, including those used to protect against COVID-19, can cause cancer.
The Facts
MRNA vaccines do not cause cancer, according to multiple studies and experts. The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines rely on mRNA, which carries genetic information needed to make proteins, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. These vaccines instruct cells to produce a protein that resembles part of the COVID-19 virus, triggering the body’s immune system to respond and produce antibodies.
According to a March 2021 article on Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s website, “It’s important to know that none of the COVID-19 vaccines interact with or alter your DNA in any way. They cannot cause cancer.” An article on the website of the American Cancer Society that was last updated in March 2023 states, “There is no information that suggests that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer. There is also no information that suggests these vaccines can make cancer grow or recur (come back).”
A variation of this false narrative originated on NaturalNews.com, a network of health misinformation sites that NewsGuard has found to have repeatedly published false or egregiously misleading content. A March 2021 NaturalNews.com article, titled “MEDICAL SHOCKER: Scientists at Sloan Kettering discover mRNA inactivates tumor-suppressing proteins, meaning it can promote cancer,” was based on a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center study published in August 2018 in the journal Nature. While that study did find that changes in mRNA can inactivate tumor-suppressing proteins, the research was not connected to mRNA vaccines like those used against COVID-19.
“This [Natural News] article circulating is categorically false, misrepresents the findings of our study and draws incorrect conclusions about vaccine risks,” Sloan Kettering spokesperson Jeanne D’Agostino told Agence France-Presse in March 2021.
In fact, months before the NaturalNews.com story was published, Sloan Kettering had updated its August 2018 press release about the study, to make it clear that the research did not involve mRNA vaccines. The updated text stated, “It’s important to note that mRNAs are a normal component of all cells and the specific ones discussed here are not involved in mRNA-based vaccines, like the one developed against SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes COVID-19.
In another myth variation, a November 2020 ActivistPost.com article cited a 2007 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) to back its claim that COVID-19 vaccines “could cause weird mutations in the natural world which we cannot control,” including cancer. The WHO document, however, discussed DNA vaccines, a different type of vaccine that uses engineered DNA to produce an immune response. While the WHO report did state that DNA vaccines “could cause a transformation event leading to the formation of tumour cells,” it did not discuss mRNA vaccines.
An Idaho physician, Dr. Ryan Cole, advanced another variation to the false claim during a March 2021 forum hosted by Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, in which he said, “Since January 1, in the laboratory, I’m seeing a 20 times increase of endometrial cancers over what I see on an annual basis.” Cole did not provide any research or data to back his assertion.
However, as noted above, there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines that rely on mRNA have caused cancer. Dr. Roger Shapiro, associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told FactCheck.org in an April 2021 article, “There is nothing in the science of mRNA vaccines that would suggest carcinogenicity, and they have been tested in humans for other diseases before COVID-19. mRNA rapidly breaks down in the body, and probably does not last long enough to act as a carcinogen.”
The claim that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines suppress killer T-cells, which are a type of white blood cell that can fight virus-infected cells, has been refuted by peer-reviewed scientific research. An August 2021 study, published in the journal Immunity, found that killer T cells increased, not decreased, following the second dose of a mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in healthy individuals who had not been previously infected with COVID-19.
“There's no logical way that (Cole's claim of killer T cells being affected) makes any sense,” E. John Wherry, director of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine's Institute for Immunology and co-author of the August 2021 study, told USA Today in a September 2021 article.
Another variation of this false narrative originated with Fremont, Ohio, attorney Thomas Renz, who has repeatedly made false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. In a January 2022 panel discussion hosted by Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Renz said that U.S. Department of Defense data showed “an almost 300 percent increase in cancers” among U.S. military personnel in 2021, after COVID-19 vaccinations began. Renz’s claim was later cited in a February 2022 letter sent by Senator Johnson to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and was included in the November 2022 anti-vaccine documentary “Died Suddenly.”
Renz’s source for this claim was the Defense Military Epidemiological Database (DMED), a government platform providing medical event data for U.S. military members without providing identifying information.
However, U.S. Department of Defense spokespeople told PolitiFact and Reuters that the reported increase in cancer diagnoses in the database was due to bad data, and in fact, that there was no such increase. Peter Graves, a spokesperson at the U.S. Defense Health Agency, told PolitiFact in January 2022 that the agency “found that the data was incorrect for the years 2016-2020” because the numbers "represented only a small fraction of actual medical diagnoses." At the same time, the 2021 totals were correct, Graves said, which created the "appearance of significant increased occurrence of all medical diagnoses in 2021 because of the underreported data for 2016-2020.” A Defense Department spokesperson, Lisa Lawrence, similarly explained the mistake to Reuters in February 2022.
Another variation of this myth appeared to originate with Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician in British Columbia who has also repeatedly made false and misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines. In a November 2022 video posted by the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, Hoffe claimed that he had seen an increase in advanced cancer diagnoses among patients who had received COVID-19 vaccines and whose cancers were in remission.
"New cancers being diagnosed, the tumors are bigger than ever, they seem to grow very aggressively, spread very aggressively and be very resistant to treatment. So this is being nicknamed 'turbo-cancer,'" Hoffe said. "Cancer pathologists around the world have noticed this -- that unfortunately now, people who have previous cancers which were in remission are flaring up since their shots because of the damage to their immune system by the Covid shots."
However, Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said of Hoffe’s claims in a December 2022 Reuters article, “There is zero basis for any of the things being claimed here.” In a January 2023 statement to Agence France-Presse, British Columbia's Ministry of Health said, “There is no evidence in Canada or globally that vaccination leads to any forms of cancer or that Covid vaccines lead to rapid advancement in cancers.”
Moreover, studies published in peer-reviewed journals have found that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for cancer patients, but are less effective than in the general population due to the cancer patients’ weakened immune systems. For example, a March 2022 review of existing scientific evidence on the use of COVID-19 vaccine in cancer patients, published in the journal Nature, concluded that “the available vaccines are safe and effective in patients with cancer, although lower [vaccine efficacy] has been observed than in those without cancer.”
Yet another variation of this claim — which appears to have originated with a June 22, 2023, video on Instagram — misconstrued data from the American Cancer Society (ACS) to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines have caused a spike in breast cancer mortality. The claim misrepresented a January 2023 ACS report to state that there was a spike in breast cancer mortality among women under the age of 45 in the first six months of 2023, reaching a total of 297,000 deaths.
However, the ACS report, which is published annually and details current cancer incidence and projected cancer cases and deaths in the U.S., did not draw this conclusion. While the report did cite the 297,000 figure, that number referred to projected new cases of breast cancer among women of all ages in the U.S. in 2023 — not projected deaths in a specific age group.
In fact, the ACS report indicates that the organization projected 48,780 new cases of breast cancer and 3,780 deaths among women aged 50 and younger in 2023. This is similar to the ACS’ projections for new cases and deaths among younger breast cancer patients in 2022 (47,550 new cases and 4,040 deaths among women 50 and under) and 2021 (26,510 new cases and 2,310 deaths in women aged 45 and under).
An additional variation of this claim misrepresents a rodent study to state that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to “turbo” lymphoma cancers. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Oncology in May 2023, involved 28 mice, half of whom were injected with a high dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. The study’s authors observed that one of the 14 mice injected with the vaccine died two days after vaccination due to B-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer.
However, the study’s authors acknowledged several times that this observation was not conclusive evidence of a link between COVID-19 vaccines and lymphoma. The researchers called for “vigilance” but stated in their conclusion that “strong evidence proving or refuting a causal relationship between SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination and lymphoma development or progression is lacking…”
David Gorski, a surgical oncologist and professor at Wayne State University, noted several limitations to the study. In a July 2023 blog post on his website RespectfulInsolence.com, Gorski pointed out that the researchers’ data indicated that the mouse who eventually died had been losing weight for a week prior to vaccination — an indicator that the animal might have already been sick.
As noted above, there is no evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are linked to “turbo cancers.” Carly Pflaum, a press officer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told LeadStories.com in July 2023 that “Extensive monitoring of adverse events reported after vaccination with authorized and approved COVID-19 vaccines … does not show a safety signal for any type of lymphoma or other cancers, including aggressive tumors.”
Another variation of the false narrative asserted that Moderna had confirmed its mRNA COVID vaccine causes cancer.
For example, a Sept. 6, 2024, article from Expose-News.com, a U.K.-based website that has repeatedly published false or egregiously misleading health claims, was headlined “Moderna confirms mRNA COVID Vaccines cause Cancer,” and stated, “Moderna has admitted its mRNA COVID vaccine causes CANCER after billions of DNA fragments were found in vials of the dangerous injection.”
The basis for the claim were remarks made by Dr. Robert Malone, an anti-vaccine activist who identifies himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccines. (Malone was involved in early research that contributed to the development of mRNA vaccines, though the extent of this role has been disputed. He was not involved in the development of any mRNA vaccine for COVID-19.)
At a Nov. 13, 2023, event in Washington held by Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Malone “revealed how Moderna’s patent shows that its (COVID-19) ‘vaccine’ vials contain billions of DNA fragments and other contaminants linked to birth defects and cancer,” according to the Expose-News.com article.
In fact, Malone was referencing a portion of an August 2019 patent application from Moderna that related to DNA, not mRNA vaccines, which mentioned that there were theoretical concerns that DNA vaccines could lead to mutated cells called oncogenes that can cause cancer.
The patent said: “The direct injection of genetically-engineered DNA…into a living host results in a small number of its cells directly producing an antigen, resulting in a protecting immunological response. With this technique, however, comes potential problems, including the possibility of insertional mutagenesis, which could lead to the activation of oncogenes or the inhibition of tumor suppressor genes.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged that residual amounts of DNA can remain in mRNA vaccines for COVID from the vaccines’ manufacturing process, according to a December 2023 USA Today fact-checking article.. However, the FDA has also said there is no evidence this residual DNA could cause cancer.
Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, wrote in a Dec. 14, 2023, letter to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, “With over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified.”
Marks’ letter added: “Pharmacovigilance data in hundreds of millions of individuals also indicate no evidence indicative of genotoxicity.” According to the FDA’s website, genotoxicity refers to the ability of a substance to cause genetic damage and mutations that may lead to cancer.
Variations of this False Narrative
A 2023 mouse study proves that COVID-19 vaccines cause “turbo” lymphoma cancers.
Scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have discovered that mRNA inactivates tumor-suppressing proteins, meaning that mRNA vaccines used to protect against COVID-19 can cause cancer.
Moderna confirmed that mRNA vaccines cause cancer.
COVID-19 vaccines are responsible for a spike in breast cancer deaths among women under the age of 45, reaching 297,000 deaths in 2023.
MRNA COVID-19 vaccines have caused “turbo cancers,” meaning cancers with larger tumors that grow more rapidly and are more resistant to treatments.
MRNA COVID-19 vaccines caused a 300 percent increase in cancer among U.S. military personnel in 2021.
MRNA COVID-19 vaccines have caused a 20 times increase of cancer in vaccinated patients.
A 2007 report from the World Health Organization provides proof that mRNA vaccines can cause cancer.
Editor’s Note: This Misinformation Fingerprint was updated on Sept. 14, 2024, to include information on another variation of the false narrative. It was previously updated on July 24, 2023.
By John Gregory
Contributing reporting by Anicka Slachta