In recent days we have seen Covid misinformation posts on ET claiming that mRNA Covid vaccines change your DNA. It is sad that we are dealing continually with this stream of bullshiat misinformation -- but that is how anti-vax Covid-deniers roll. They just post the latest crap they find on social media all over the place.
Let's take a look at this DNA claim...
Anti-vaxxers say a new study claims mRNA vaccines can alter your DNA. Here's why experts say that's bunkum
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-04/coronacheck-mrna-vaccines-not-genotoxic-pete-evans/100879220
This week, we look at fresh claims that mRNA vaccines put your genes at risk, and bring you the latest on the coronavirus "lab leak" theory.
Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine spills over into the realm of mis- and disinformation, we launch a new section looking at the facts and falsehoods surrounding the conflict.
And make sure to read to the bottom for some
crocodile-related debunking.
No, mRNA jabs aren't 'genotoxic'
Claims that COVID-19 jabs can alter human DNA resurfaced this week as vaccine sceptics across social media seized upon the results of a new study to suggest that people receiving the vaccine risked changing or even poisoning their genes.
"YES THE ‘VACCINE' ALTERS YOUR DNA," read one post in a popular conspiracy forum, viewed more than 30,000 times.
Former TV chef Pete Evans also used his Telegram channel to announce that "mRNA could alter human DNA!", while also sharing an edited extract from the study that suggested this process may "potentially mediate GENOTOXIC SIDE EFFECTS".
So, should you be worried?
Not according to three experts consulted by Fact Check, who separately described the latest study as "regrettably weak", "[not] very robust" and "very limited" in its findings.
Published by academics in Sweden,
the study purports to show that the "messenger" RNA at the heart of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine can be converted to DNA inside a human cell via "reverse transcription".
This is a process whereby RNA (
itself a product of DNA) creates DNA. However, inserting that DNA into our genome requires a secondary process called "retrotransposition", which, as experts writing in The Conversation
have explained, is exceedingly rare.
According to a
fact sheet written by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the genetic material contained in mRNA vaccines "never enters the nucleus [centre] of your cells, which is where your DNA is kept".
Claims of mRNA vaccines altering human DNA have persisted throughout the pandemic, despite being debunked by fact checkers at
Reuters,
PolitiFact and
AFP.
As for the latest study, Traude Beilharz, an associate professor and RNA biologist at Monash University, told Fact Check that "the level of evidence [it provides] for reverse-transcription is low, [while] the evidence for genome integration is non-existent".
She said that if the vaccine had triggered the retrotransposition process "then the other [approximately] 10,000 mRNAs within the cell should be ending up in the genome too".
"But that simply doesn't happen," she added, explaining that human cells have "myriad mechanisms" to prevent it, and that there were "many experimental tests available to researchers to detect even vanishingly rare retrotransposition events".
Even so, the authors wrote that they did "not know if DNA reverse transcribed from [the Pfizer vaccine] is integrated into the cell genome".
In an email to Fact Check, Archa Fox, an associate professor at the University of Western Australia's School of Molecular Sciences, noted several issues with the design of the study, including that it relied on an artificially high dose of the vaccine.
But in any event, "the fact that something is found in DNA format is neither here nor there … [without proving] it was integrated into the genome", she said.
Stephen Turner, head of Monash University's Department of Microbiology, also raised concerns about the concentrated dose tested, along with the absence of controls for the study's use of cultured cells, which he said "don't represent the tissues of our body".
"So to use it as evidence that these things change … or get incorporated into our DNA, is presumptive at best, misleading at worst," he said.
