Anti-vaccine activists have been excitedly sharing what they call a “peer-reviewed” paper on the lessons learned about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, while calling for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to be removed.
The paper in question is called “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign” by Mead et. al. which includes anti-vaccine activists like Jessica Rose, Steve Kirsch, and Peter McCullough.
While it is being heralded as something new, the paper appears to be nothing more than a regurgitation of long-debunked claims about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Unfortunately, it received a patina of legitimacy when it was published in the journal Cureus, with anti-vaccine activists gleefully pointing out that it was a “peer-reviewed” paper.
What many people don’t realise is that Cureus uses “an unusually fast” peer-review process of just “a few days”, and relies heavily on “post-publication peer review”, as its Editor in Chief John R. Adler explained to Retraction Watch in 2015:
Yes, Cureus has an unusually fast review process, which is an important part of the journal’s philosophy. We believe that post publication peer review, a focus of our journal through commenting and our unique SIQ process, is potentially a more powerful way to discern truth.
In other words – the pre-publication peer review appears to be superficial, and Cureus relies on the scientific community to peer-review the papers after publication. All that “post-publication” criticism appear to have resulted in its decision to (finally) retract this controversial article.
On 19 February 2024, one of the article’s co-authors – Steve Kirsch, revealed (archive) that Cureus has decided to retract the article, citing a number of concerns.
The journal was recently made aware of several concerns regarding the validity of the work and, upon conducting an internal review, the journal has decided to retract your article. Upon further review, we have identified a significant number of concerns with your article that in our view can’t be remedied with a correction. The concerns include, but are not limited to:
We find that the article is misrepresenting all-cause mortality data
We find that the article appears to be misrepresenting VAERs data
The article states that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine saved two lives and caused 27 deaths per 100,000 vaccinations, and the Moderna vaccine saved 3.9 lives and caused 10.8 deaths per 100,000 vaccinations, though there does not appear to be convincing evidence for this claim.
Incorrect claim: Vaccines are gene therapy products.
The article states that vaccines are contaminated with high levels of DNA. Upon review we found that the cited references are not sufficient to support these claims.
The article states that SV40 promoter can cause cancer because SV40 virus can cause cancer in some organisms and inconclusively in humans. However, we find that this is misrepresenting the cited study (Li, S., MacLaughlin, F., Fewell, J. et al.Muscle-specific enhancement of gene expression by incorporation of SV40 enhancer in the expression plasmid. Gene Ther 8, 494–497 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3301419
The article states that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines did not undergo adequate safety and efficacy testing, which the journal considers to be incorrect
The article incorrectly states that spike proteins produced by COVID-19 vaccination linger in the body and cause adverse effects.
Given the concerns with your article, we find that the stated findings in this narrative review are to be considered unreliable, and are not sufficiently supported either by the cited research in the article itself or by other research. In line with the COPE retraction guidelines, the Editors have therefore decided to retract your article. The journal will publish the following retraction notice:
==
The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article. The following publication concerns were raised regarding a number of claims made in this article. Upon further review, the Editors-in-Chief found that the conclusions of this narrative review are considered to be unreliable due to the validity of some of the cited references that support the conclusions and a misrepresentation of the cited references and available data.
[will be amended as appropriate:] All authors agree to this retraction/ None of the authors agree to this retraction /[author name] agrees to this retraction/[author name] does not agree to this retraction/ [author name] has not responded to any correspondence from the editor/publisher about this retraction.
==
Please let me know by 23 February whether you agree or disagree with this retraction, as this will be noted in the retraction notice. Retraction of the article means that we will publish the retraction notice as a separate publication which will bidirectionally link to your article. The article itself will be clearly marked as retracted.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
Best regards,
Tim Kersjes Head of Research Integrity, Resolutions Springer Nature Research Integrity Group
The list of concerns in the Cureus letter is frankly, too short. In my earlier article, I already listed a number of other concerns with the article:
unsubstantiated claims that the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials were too short
unsubstantiated claims that mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 were not proven safe or effective
misleading emphasis on absolute risk (AR) versus relative risk (RR) in understanding vaccine efficacy
misleading emphasis on unverified adverse events that were reported after vaccination.
unsubstantiated claims that 74% of deaths were “judged to have been caused by the COVID-19 mRNA products”
In any case, Cureus officially retracted this “peer-reviewed” article on 26 February 2024, with this statement:
The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article. Following publication, concerns were raised regarding a number of claims made in this article. Upon further review, the Editors-in-Chief found that the conclusions of this narrative review are considered to be unreliable due to the concerns with the validity of some of the cited references that support the conclusions and a misrepresentation of the cited references and available data.
The authors disagree with this retraction.
One can’t help but wonder if this incident might persuade Cureus to spend a wee bit more time and effort on its peer-review process… or better still, don’t allow such articles to be labelled as “peer-reviewed” until they have at least passed proper, legitimate peer-review.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Did a study just show that COVID-19 vaccines killed 14x more people than they saved?!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : COVID Vaccines Kill 14X More People Than They Saved!
People are sharing an article (archive) by The People’s Voice (formerly NewsPunch), which claims that a study just showed that COVID-19 vaccines killed 14x more people than they saved!
Here is an excerpt from the long, and (intentionally?) rambling article. Feel free to skip to the next section for the facts!
Peer-Reviewed Study Finds Covid Vaccines Killed 14x More People Than They Saved
A new peer-reviewed study has confirmed what the eye-test suggested all along, proving that experimental Covid-19 mRNA vaccines killed far more people than they saved.
The study published in the prestigious Cureus journal analyzed reports from the initial phase 3 trials of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that led to the shots being approved under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the United States.
However, the study found that efficacy rates for the vaccines were “dramatically lower” than the pharmaceutical companies claimed.
The research scientists behind the study have urged world governments to immediately cease and desist using Covid-19 mRNA vaccinations in their territories.
Based on “conservative assumptions, the estimated harms of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines greatly outweigh the rewards: for every life saved, there were nearly 14 times more deaths caused by the modified mRNA injections.”
“Given the well-documented SAEs (serious adverse events) and unacceptable harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse and enforce a global moratorium on these modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.”
Truth : COVID Vaccines Did Not Kill 14X More People Than They Saved!
This is yet another example of fake news created / promoted by The People’s Voice, and here are the reasons why…
Fact #1 : Study Did Not Show 14X More People Died From Vaccines
Let me just start by pointing out that the study, which is called “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign” by Mead et. al. (archive), did not show that the COVID vaccines killed 14X more people than they saved.
Fact #2 : Cureus Relies On Post-Publication Peer Review
The People’s Voice article took great pains to point out that the paper was “peer-reviewed”, probably to suggest that it should be taken seriously. That’s not exactly accurate.
Even though this paper was marked as “peer-reviewed”, the peer review process at Cureus is “unusually fast” at just a few days. That’s because the journal Cureus relies on “post-publication peer review“, as its Editor in Chief John R. Adler explained to Retraction Watch in 2015:
Yes, Cureus has an unusually fast review process, which is an important part of the journal’s philosophy. We believe that post publication peer review, a focus of our journal through commenting and our unique SIQ process, is potentially a more powerful way to discern truth.
In other words – the pre-publication peer review appears to be superficial, and Cureus relies on the scientific community to peer-review the papers after publication.
Even if the paper was properly peer-reviewed by a prestigious journal, that would only be the first step in the scientific review process, which would include replication and verification, as well as criticism by other members of the scientific community.
The paper in question is a literature review, and was penned by notable anti-vaccine activists like Jessica Rose, Steve Kirsch, and Peter McCullough. You may note that some of the authors are not even scientists or were trained in medicine.
While it is being heralded as something new, the paper appears to be nothing more than a regurgitation of long-debunked claims about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. It certainly offers no evidence to back up their claim for a vaccine moratorium. Let’s just take a look at a few:
COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials Were Too Short?!
The paper claimed that no vaccine was permitted for market release without a testing period of at least four years, using the mumps vaccine by Merck as example. That’s not true.
The Mumpsvax (Jeryl Lynn strain) vaccine was developed and approved in a record four years, but its testing did not last four years. The mumps vaccine clinical trial in 1966 (abstract) only lasted 6 months.
This paper gives the results of a large field trial of the vaccine conducted among schoolchildren in North Carolina.
Vaccination was carried out in November 1966, every tenth child receiving a placebo preparation. Serum specimens were obtained at the time of vaccination and 4 weeks later from 556 children representing a cross-section of the total group of participants.
During the 180 days of post-vaccination surveillance, 56 cases of mumps were reported among the study population and 69 cases among non-participants.
There is no requirement by health authorities that testing or assessing any vaccine should last 10 years. The typical vaccine development time of 10-15 years is not a reflection of how much time a clinical trial needs to run, but rather the time it “generally” takes to create a vaccine, gather resources, get approvals, run clinical trials, process the data, file for approval, etc.
COVID-19 vaccines were so quickly developed because scientists all over the world collaborated on the effort, while governments funded their development, and fast-tracked their clinical trials and manufacturing preparations.
The speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines was also enabled by new vaccine platforms using mRNA or DNA technologies, in which genetic information from the new virus only needed to be “plugged in” to produce a new vaccine.
More importantly – the paper provided no evidence that the accelerated development of COVID-19 vaccines has actually resulted in unsafe vaccines.
mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Were Not Proven Safe / Effective?
The Mead et. al. paper claimed or suggested that the clinical trials did not show that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were safe or effective because too few people in the unvaccinated (placebo) group died from COVID-19.
Well, not only is that a “misunderstanding” of the clinical trial results (see the next section), many studies have been conducted into the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 since they were deployed.
Those real world studies (example, example, example) consistently showed that the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 are safe and effective.
Low Absolute Risk Shows No Need To Vaccinate?!
The Mead et. al. paper repeats the old trope that the low absolute risk (AR) seen in the mRNA vaccine clinical trials mean there is no need for anyone to get vaccinated. That’s simply not true, and is a (deliberate?) misunderstanding of statistical calculations.
The Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) will “always appear low” because it depends very much on the “event rate”. As the Meedan Health Desk explained:
Let’s say a study enrolled 20,000 patients into the control group and 20,000 in the vaccine group. In that study, 200 people in the control group got sick and 0 people in the vaccine group got sick.
Even though the vaccine efficacy would be a whopping 100%, the ARR would show that vaccines reduce the absolute risk by just 1% (200/20,000= 1%).
For the ARR to increase to 20% in our example study with a vaccine with 100% efficacy, 4,000 of the 20,000 people in the control group would have to get sick (4,000/20,000= 20%).
Hence, the Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) is used instead to determine a vaccine’s efficacy, because it tells us how much risk is reduced in the vaccinated group, compared to the unvaccinated control group.
To be clear – the clinical trials and post-vaccination monitoring and studies have clearly shown that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are effective in preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19.
The Mead et. al. paper claimed that the CDC said that “COVID-19 products would stop transmission”, but in the end “COVID-19 mRNA products do not prevent transmission or infection”. Well, that’s not really true.
For one thing – the CDC never said that COVID-19 vaccines would stop transmission. In fact, the CDC article the paper linked to only said that the vaccines appear to reduce (not stop) transmission:
… a growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission.
To be clear – the COVID-19 vaccines were primarily designed to reduce or prevent severe disease and death, which is why transmission for not an endpoint for their clinical trials. It would have been a nice bonus to block transmission completely, but partially reducing transmission is not too bad.
mRNA Vaccines Have A Lot Of AESIs?!
The Mead et. al. paper warns us about the many Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) reported after COVID-19 vaccinations. The problem is – those AESI are not actual vaccine side effects!
The AESI list for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for example has 9 pages of 1,291 adverse events, but that is not a list of the mRNA vaccine side effects. It is a list of “adverse events” that Pfizer must look for during the post-vaccination monitoring period. Not only are these “adverse events” not specific to the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, they include:
diseases like Herpes, MERS, Varicella, and other “communicable disease”,
exposure to SARS-CoV-2,
manufacturing and lab test issues, and even…
product availability and supply issues!
Needless to say – those adverse events are not vaccine side effects, or are any indication of vaccine performance or safety in any way.
The Mead et. al. paper also claimed that two large drug safety reporting systems in the US and Europe have over 7.8 million reports of adverse events, with “death, hospitalisations, and life-threatening reactions”. It is probably referring to VAERS and EudraVigilance.
The thing is – VAERS / Yellow Card / EudraVigilance data are all unverified, and may contain duplicated information. That’s why they are all prefaced with warnings like:
they may contain duplicated information and/or reports
the reported event may be caused by an illness, like a COVID-19 infection for example,
the reported event may be caused by a different drug taken by the patient at the same time
they have not been assessed by health authorities to ascertain if it’s even “biologically plausible”
In addition, open systems like VAERS, or the UK Yellow Card system, are very susceptible to abuse because they allow anyone from anywhere to post anything they want, without evidence or verification.
Anti-vaccination activists can, for example, key in unlimited numbers of adverse reaction reports, even if they never received a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine!
Autopsy Reports Show Deaths Caused By Vaccines?!
The Mead et. al. paper claimed that “autopsy studies” showed that 74% of deaths were “judged to have been caused by the COVID-19 mRNA products”.
The problem is – the study it referred to was a preprint by one of its own authors – Peter McCullough, that was removed by The Lancet for violating its “screening criteria”.
This preprint has been removed by Preprints with The Lancet because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology. Preprints with The Lancet reserves the right to remove a paper that has been posted if we determine that it has violated our screening criteria.
Not only was that study just a “review” of autopsy reports, many of the cases had other far more likely causes of death.
The paper suggested that the mRNA vaccines are contaminated with DNA “orders of magnitude higher than the EMA’s limit”.
The truth is – residual DNA is found in all biological products manufactured using cells, and has not shown any health risk after being studied for many decades.
Pfizer Vaccine Has DNA From SV40 Virus That Causes Cancer?!
The paper also warned about the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoter found in samples of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Why? Because it warns – the SV40 virus “induces lymphomas, brain tumors, and other malignancies in laboratory animals”.
First of all – after decades of studies, there is still no conclusive evidence that the SV40 virus can cause cancers in humans. However, out of an abundance of caution, the SV40 virus is considered to potentially cause cancer in humans.
In any case, the SV40 promoter is a DNA sequence that is often used to manufacture mRNA, and is not dangerous. It certainly poses no cancer risk, because the part of the SV40 that can potentially cause cancer – the T-antigen, is not present in the SV40 promoter, or the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
Please help us FIGHT FAKE NEWS by sharing this fact check article out, and please SUPPORT our work!
Please Support My Work!
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Did scientists call for a global moratorium on the mRNA vaccine, after finding high rates of serious post-injection injuries?!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : Scientists Call For mRNA Vaccine Moratorium!
The Children’s Health Defense (CHD) activist group, which is chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., just posted an article claiming that scientists have called for a global moratorium on the mRNA vaccine, after finding high rates of serious post-injection injuries!
Here is an excerpt from the CHD article (archive) with my emphasis in bold.
Scientists Call for Global Moratorium on mRNA Vaccines, Immediate Removal From Childhood Schedule
A review paper published last week in the journal Cureus is the first peer-reviewed paper to call for a global moratorium on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. The authors say that reanalyzed data from the vaccine makers’ trials and high rates of serious post-injection injuries indicate the mRNA gene therapy vaccines should not have been authorized for use.
Governments should endorse a global moratorium on mRNA vaccines until all questions about their safety have been thoroughly investigated, according to the authors of a new, peer-reviewed article on the COVID-19 vaccine trials and the global vaccination campaign published last week in Cureus, Journal of Medical Science.
Cureus is a web-based peer-reviewed open-access general medical journal using prepublication peer review.
The authors surveyed published research on the pharmaceutical companies’ vaccine trials and related adverse events. They also called for the COVID-19 vaccines to be removed immediately from the childhood immunization schedule.
After the first reports from vaccine trials claimed they were 95% effective in preventing COVID-19, serious problems with method, execution and reporting in the trials became public, which the paper reviewed in detail.
Evidence also shows the products never underwent adequate safety and toxicological testing, and since the vaccine rollout, researchers have identified a significant number of adverse events (AEs) and serious adverse events (SAEs).
Scientists Call For mRNA Vaccine Moratorium : My Fact Check
The CHD story appears to suggest that scientists are calling for a global moratorium on the mRNA vaccine because it’s dangerous. However, it’s really more like the same bunch of anti-vaccine activists repeating long-debunked claims about the mRNA vaccine, and calling (yet again) for a moratorium.
Here are the reasons why the vast majority of scientists and health authorities are ignoring them, and why you too should ignore their repeated calls for an mRNA vaccine moratorium:
Fact #1 : Cureus Relies On Post-Publication Peer Review
The Children’s Health Defense (CHD) article repeatedly points out that the paper was “peer-reviewed”, probably to suggest that it should be taken seriously. That’s not exactly accurate.
Even though this paper was marked as “peer-reviewed”, the peer review process at Cureus is “unusually fast” at just a few days. That’s because the journal Cureus relies on “post-publication peer review“, as its Editor in Chief John R. Adler explained to Retraction Watch in 2015:
Yes, Cureus has an unusually fast review process, which is an important part of the journal’s philosophy. We believe that post publication peer review, a focus of our journal through commenting and our unique SIQ process, is potentially a more powerful way to discern truth.
In other words – the pre-publication peer review appears to be superficial, and Cureus relies on the scientific community to peer-review the papers after publication.
Fact #2 : It Regurgitates Long-Debunked Claims
The paper in question is a literature review called “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign” by Mead et. al. (archive), which includes anti-vaccine activists like Jessica Rose, Steve Kirsch, and Peter McCullough.
While it is being heralded as something new, the paper appears to be nothing more than a regurgitation of long-debunked claims about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. It certainly offers no evidence to back up their claim for a vaccine moratorium. Let’s just take a look at a few:
COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials Were Too Short?!
The paper claimed that no vaccine was permitted for market release without a testing period of at least four years, using the mumps vaccine by Merck as example. That’s not true.
The Mumpsvax (Jeryl Lynn strain) vaccine was developed and approved in a record four years, but its testing did not last four years. The mumps vaccine clinical trial in 1966 (abstract) only lasted 6 months.
This paper gives the results of a large field trial of the vaccine conducted among schoolchildren in North Carolina.
Vaccination was carried out in November 1966, every tenth child receiving a placebo preparation. Serum specimens were obtained at the time of vaccination and 4 weeks later from 556 children representing a cross-section of the total group of participants.
During the 180 days of post-vaccination surveillance, 56 cases of mumps were reported among the study population and 69 cases among non-participants.
There is no requirement by health authorities that testing or assessing any vaccine should last 10 years. The typical vaccine development time of 10-15 years is not a reflection of how much time a clinical trial needs to run, but rather the time it “generally” takes to create a vaccine, gather resources, get approvals, run clinical trials, process the data, file for approval, etc.
COVID-19 vaccines were so quickly developed because scientists all over the world collaborated on the effort, while governments funded their development, and fast-tracked their clinical trials and manufacturing preparations.
The speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines was also enabled by new vaccine platforms using mRNA or DNA technologies, in which genetic information from the new virus only needed to be “plugged in” to produce a new vaccine.
More importantly – the paper provided no evidence that the accelerated development of COVID-19 vaccines has actually resulted in unsafe vaccines.
mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Were Not Proven Safe / Effective?
The Mead et. al. paper claimed or suggested that the clinical trials did not show that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were safe or effective because too few people in the unvaccinated (placebo) group died from COVID-19.
Well, not only is that a “misunderstanding” of the clinical trial results (see the next section), many studies have been conducted into the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 since they were deployed.
Those real world studies (example, example, example) consistently showed that the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 are safe and effective.
Low Absolute Risk Shows No Need To Vaccinate?!
The Mead et. al. paper repeats the old trope that the low absolute risk (AR) seen in the mRNA vaccine clinical trials mean there is no need for anyone to get vaccinated. That’s simply not true, and is a (deliberate?) misunderstanding of statistical calculations.
The Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) will “always appear low” because it depends very much on the “event rate”. As the Meedan Health Desk explained:
Let’s say a study enrolled 20,000 patients into the control group and 20,000 in the vaccine group. In that study, 200 people in the control group got sick and 0 people in the vaccine group got sick.
Even though the vaccine efficacy would be a whopping 100%, the ARR would show that vaccines reduce the absolute risk by just 1% (200/20,000= 1%).
For the ARR to increase to 20% in our example study with a vaccine with 100% efficacy, 4,000 of the 20,000 people in the control group would have to get sick (4,000/20,000= 20%).
Hence, the Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) is used instead to determine a vaccine’s efficacy, because it tells us how much risk is reduced in the vaccinated group, compared to the unvaccinated control group.
To be clear – the clinical trials and post-vaccination monitoring and studies have clearly shown that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are effective in preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19.
The Mead et. al. paper claimed that the CDC said that “COVID-19 products would stop transmission”, but in the end “COVID-19 mRNA products do not prevent transmission or infection”. Well, that’s not really true.
For one thing – the CDC never said that COVID-19 vaccines would stop transmission. In fact, the CDC article the paper linked to only said that the vaccines appear to reduce (not stop) transmission:
… a growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission.
To be clear – the COVID-19 vaccines were primarily designed to reduce or prevent severe disease and death, which is why transmission for not an endpoint for their clinical trials. It would have been a nice bonus to block transmission completely, but partially reducing transmission is not too bad.
mRNA Vaccines Have A Lot Of AESIs?!
The Mead et. al. paper warns us about the many Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) reported after COVID-19 vaccinations. The problem is – those AESI are not actual vaccine side effects!
The AESI list for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for example has 9 pages of 1,291 adverse events, but that is not a list of the mRNA vaccine side effects. It is a list of “adverse events” that Pfizer must look for during the post-vaccination monitoring period. Not only are these “adverse events” not specific to the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, they include:
diseases like Herpes, MERS, Varicella, and other “communicable disease”,
exposure to SARS-CoV-2,
manufacturing and lab test issues, and even…
product availability and supply issues!
Needless to say – those adverse events are not vaccine side effects, or are any indication of vaccine performance or safety in any way.
The Mead et. al. paper also claimed that two large drug safety reporting systems in the US and Europe have over 7.8 million reports of adverse events, with “death, hospitalisations, and life-threatening reactions”. It is probably referring to VAERS and EudraVigilance.
The thing is – VAERS / Yellow Card / EudraVigilance data are all unverified, and may contain duplicated information. That’s why they are all prefaced with warnings like:
they may contain duplicated information and/or reports
the reported event may be caused by an illness, like a COVID-19 infection for example,
the reported event may be caused by a different drug taken by the patient at the same time
they have not been assessed by health authorities to ascertain if it’s even “biologically plausible”
In addition, open systems like VAERS, or the UK Yellow Card system, are very susceptible to abuse because they allow anyone from anywhere to post anything they want, without evidence or verification.
Anti-vaccination activists can, for example, key in unlimited numbers of adverse reaction reports, even if they never received a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine!
Autopsy Reports Show Deaths Caused By Vaccines?!
The Mead et. al. paper claimed that “autopsy studies” showed that 74% of deaths were “judged to have been caused by the COVID-19 mRNA products”.
The problem is – the study it referred to was a preprint by one of its own authors – Peter McCullough, that was removed by The Lancet for violating its “screening criteria”.
This preprint has been removed by Preprints with The Lancet because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology. Preprints with The Lancet reserves the right to remove a paper that has been posted if we determine that it has violated our screening criteria.
Not only was that study just a “review” of autopsy reports, many of the cases had other far more likely causes of death.
The paper suggested that the mRNA vaccines are contaminated with DNA “orders of magnitude higher than the EMA’s limit”.
The truth is – residual DNA is found in all biological products manufactured using cells, and has not shown any health risk after being studied for many decades.
Pfizer Vaccine Has DNA From SV40 Virus That Causes Cancer?!
The paper also warned about the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoter found in samples of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Why? Because it warns – the SV40 virus “induces lymphomas, brain tumors, and other malignancies in laboratory animals”.
First of all – after decades of studies, there is still no conclusive evidence that the SV40 virus can cause cancers in humans. However, out of an abundance of caution, the SV40 virus is considered to potentially cause cancer in humans.
In any case, the SV40 promoter is a DNA sequence that is often used to manufacture mRNA, and is not dangerous. It certainly poses no cancer risk, because the part of the SV40 that can potentially cause cancer – the T-antigen, is not present in the SV40 promoter, or the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
Please help us FIGHT FAKE NEWS by sharing this fact check article out, and please SUPPORT our work!
Please Support My Work!
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Let’s take a look at the recent “peer-reviewed” study on the lessons learned about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, and find out what the facts really are!
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned??
Some people are excitedly sharing a “peer-reviewed” study on the lessons learned about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, while calling for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to be removed.
Mary Talley Bowden MD : Peer-reviewed article published in @CureusInc : COVID shots must be pulled off the market. If you are a physician or politician, now is the time to be on the right side of history.
Steve Kirsch :BREAKING: It’s now published in the peer-reviewed literature! The COVID vaccines should be stopped.
“Given the extensive, well-documented SAEs and unacceptably high harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse a global moratorium on the modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.”
Dr Jordan B Peterson : Stunning. 2024 is opening with a bang: an utterly damning report on the Covid “vaccines.”
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Lessons Learned : My Fact Check
Let’s go through the “peer-reviewed” study on the lessons learned about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, and see what the facts really are!
Fact #1 : Cureus Relies On Post-Publication Peer Review
Let me start by pointing out that the journal Cureus relies on “post-publication peer review”. Even though this paper was marked as “peer-reviewed”, it was an “unusually fast” peer review.
Cureus uses “an unusually fast” peer-review process of just “a few days”, and relies heavily on “post-publication peer review”, as its Editor in Chief John R. Adler explained to Retraction Watch in 2015:
Yes, Cureus has an unusually fast review process, which is an important part of the journal’s philosophy. We believe that post publication peer review, a focus of our journal through commenting and our unique SIQ process, is potentially a more powerful way to discern truth.
In other words – the pre-publication peer review appears to be superficial, and Cureus relies on the scientific community to peer-review the papers after publication.
Fact #2 : It Regurgitates Long-Debunked Claims
The paper in question is called “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign” by Mead et. al. which includes anti-vaccine activists like Jessica Rose, Steve Kirsch, and Peter McCullough.
While it is being heralded as something new, the paper appears to be nothing more than a regurgitation of long-debunked claims about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Let’s just take a look at a few:
COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials Were Too Short?!
The paper claimed that no vaccine was permitted for market release without a testing period of at least four years, using the mumps vaccine by Merck as example. That’s not true.
The Mumpsvax (Jeryl Lynn strain) vaccine was developed and approved in a record four years, but its testing did not last four years. The mumps vaccine clinical trial in 1966 (abstract) only lasted 6 months.
This paper gives the results of a large field trial of the vaccine conducted among schoolchildren in North Carolina.
Vaccination was carried out in November 1966, every tenth child receiving a placebo preparation. Serum specimens were obtained at the time of vaccination and 4 weeks later from 556 children representing a cross-section of the total group of participants.
During the 180 days of post-vaccination surveillance, 56 cases of mumps were reported among the study population and 69 cases among non-participants.
There is no requirement by health authorities that testing or assessing any vaccine should last 10 years. The typical vaccine development time of 10-15 years is not a reflection of how much time a clinical trial needs to run, but rather the time it “generally” takes to create a vaccine, gather resources, get approvals, run clinical trials, process the data, file for approval, etc.
COVID-19 vaccines were so quickly developed because scientists all over the world collaborated on the effort, while governments funded their development, and fast-tracked their clinical trials and manufacturing preparations.
The speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines was also enabled by new vaccine platforms using mRNA or DNA technologies, in which genetic information from the new virus only needed to be “plugged in” to produce a new vaccine.
More importantly – the paper provided no evidence that the accelerated development of COVID-19 vaccines has actually resulted in unsafe vaccines.
mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Were Not Proven Safe / Effective?
The Mead et. al. paper claimed or suggested that the clinical trials did not show that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were safe or effective because too few people in the unvaccinated (placebo) group died from COVID-19.
Well, not only is that a “misunderstanding” of the clinical trial results (see the next section), many studies have been conducted into the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 since they were deployed.
Those real world studies (example, example, example) consistently showed that the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 are safe and effective.
Low Absolute Risk Shows No Need To Vaccinate?!
The Mead et. al. paper repeats the old trope that the low absolute risk (AR) seen in the mRNA vaccine clinical trials mean there is no need for anyone to get vaccinated. That’s simply not true, and is a (deliberate?) misunderstanding of statistical calculations.
The Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) will “always appear low” because it depends very much on the “event rate”. As the Meedan Health Desk explained:
Let’s say a study enrolled 20,000 patients into the control group and 20,000 in the vaccine group. In that study, 200 people in the control group got sick and 0 people in the vaccine group got sick.
Even though the vaccine efficacy would be a whopping 100%, the ARR would show that vaccines reduce the absolute risk by just 1% (200/20,000= 1%).
For the ARR to increase to 20% in our example study with a vaccine with 100% efficacy, 4,000 of the 20,000 people in the control group would have to get sick (4,000/20,000= 20%).
Hence, the Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) is used instead to determine a vaccine’s efficacy, because it tells us how much risk is reduced in the vaccinated group, compared to the unvaccinated control group.
To be clear – the clinical trials and post-vaccination monitoring and studies have clearly shown that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are effective in preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19.
The Mead et. al. paper claimed that the CDC said that “COVID-19 products would stop transmission”, but in the end “COVID-19 mRNA products do not prevent transmission or infection”. Well, that’s not really true.
For one thing – the CDC never said that COVID-19 vaccines would stop transmission. In fact, the CDC article the paper linked to only said that the vaccines appear to reduce (not stop) transmission:
… a growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission.
To be clear – the COVID-19 vaccines were primarily designed to reduce or prevent severe disease and death, which is why transmission for not an endpoint for their clinical trials. It would have been a nice bonus to block transmission completely, but partially reducing transmission is not too bad.
mRNA Vaccines Have A Lot Of AESIs?!
The Mead et. al. paper warns us about the many Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) reported after COVID-19 vaccinations. The problem is – those AESI are not actual vaccine side effects!
The AESI list for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for example has 9 pages of 1,291 adverse events, but that is not a list of the mRNA vaccine side effects. It is a list of “adverse events” that Pfizer must look for during the post-vaccination monitoring period. Not only are these “adverse events” not specific to the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, they include:
diseases like Herpes, MERS, Varicella, and other “communicable disease”,
exposure to SARS-CoV-2,
manufacturing and lab test issues, and even…
product availability and supply issues!
Needless to say – those adverse events are not vaccine side effects, or are any indication of vaccine performance or safety in any way.
The Mead et. al. paper also claimed that two large drug safety reporting systems in the US and Europe have over 7.8 million reports of adverse events, with “death, hospitalisations, and life-threatening reactions”. It is probably referring to VAERS and EudraVigilance.
The thing is – VAERS / Yellow Card / EudraVigilance data are all unverified, and may contain duplicated information. That’s why they are all prefaced with warnings like:
they may contain duplicated information and/or reports
the reported event may be caused by an illness, like a COVID-19 infection for example,
the reported event may be caused by a different drug taken by the patient at the same time
they have not been assessed by health authorities to ascertain if it’s even “biologically plausible”
In addition, open systems like VAERS, or the UK Yellow Card system, are very susceptible to abuse because they allow anyone from anywhere to post anything they want, without evidence or verification.
Anti-vaccination activists can, for example, key in unlimited numbers of adverse reaction reports, even if they never received a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine!
Autopsy Reports Show Deaths Caused By Vaccines?!
The Mead et. al. paper claimed that “autopsy studies” showed that 74% of deaths were “judged to have been caused by the COVID-19 mRNA products”.
The problem is – the study it referred to was a preprint by one of its own authors – Peter McCullough, that was removed by The Lancet for violating its “screening criteria”.
This preprint has been removed by Preprints with The Lancet because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology. Preprints with The Lancet reserves the right to remove a paper that has been posted if we determine that it has violated our screening criteria.
Not only was that study just a “review” of autopsy reports, many of the cases had other far more likely causes of death.
The paper suggested that the mRNA vaccines are contaminated with DNA “orders of magnitude higher than the EMA’s limit”.
The truth is – residual DNA is found in all biological products manufactured using cells, and has not shown any health risk after being studied for many decades.
Pfizer Vaccine Has DNA From SV40 Virus That Causes Cancer?!
The paper also warned about the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoter found in samples of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Why? Because it warns – the SV40 virus “induces lymphomas, brain tumors, and other malignancies in laboratory animals”.
First of all – after decades of studies, there is still no conclusive evidence that the SV40 virus can cause cancers in humans. However, out of an abundance of caution, the SV40 virus is considered to potentially cause cancer in humans.
In any case, the SV40 promoter is a DNA sequence that is often used to manufacture mRNA, and is not dangerous. It certainly poses no cancer risk, because the part of the SV40 that can potentially cause cancer – the T-antigen, is not present in the SV40 promoter, or the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
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Did a Swedish study show that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine altered the DNA of human liver cells in just 6 hours?!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : Study Show Pfizer Vaccine Altering Liver DNA In 6 Hours!
The Expose is back again, with yet another “fakexpose” on the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. This time, they are recycling a February 2022 fake story that I fact checked earlier.
Here are selected excerpts from their long-winded article. Feel free to skip it, and head to the next section for the facts.
A Swedish study has demonstrated and confirmed that the mRNA in the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid injections infiltrates cells and transcribes its message onto human DNA within 6 hours, altering our own DNA.
The findings come after a previous study published in October 2021 from Sweden found the spike protein enters our cells nuclei and impairs the mechanism cells have to repair damaged DNA.
Because of the findings of the animal studies and the MIT study, a group of Swedish scientists from Lund University conducted a study to investigate the effect the Pfizer/BioNTech injection (BNT162b2) had on human liver cells and if Pfizer’s encoded spike protein RNA can be reverse transcribed into DNA. The study, ‘Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line’, was published on 25 February 2022.
“In this study, we investigated the effect of BNT162b2 on the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro,” the study authors wrote.
The study found that the mRNA injection is able to enter the human liver cell line Huh7 and that the injections’ mRNA is reverse transcribed into DNA as fast as six hours after the cells were exposed to it.
“A possible mechanism for reverse transcription is through endogenous [intracellular] reverse transcriptase LINE-1, and the nucleus protein distribution of LINE-1 is elevated by BNT162b2,” the study authors wrote.
“Huh cells are ‘immortal’ liver tumour cells and grow ad-infinitum if you give them love,” Jessica Rose explained, “LINE-1 is a reverse transcriptase that we carry and comprises ~17% of our genome!”
“Our study shows that [Pfizer’s mRNA injection] … can be reverse transcribed to DNA … and this may give rise to the concern if [injection]-derived DNA may be integrated into the host genome and affect the integrity of genomic DNA, which may potentially mediate genotoxic side effects.”
Everything posted by The Exposemust be considered fake news, until proven otherwise.
Fact #2 : Study Did NOT Say Pfizer Vaccine Alters Our DNA
First things first – the Lund University study is called Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line, and you can read it in its entirety here.
If you read just the discussion, you will note that the study authors actually pointed out that their study does NOT show that the Pfizer vaccine integrates with the liver cell DNA, or alters it in any way.
At this stage, we do not know if DNA reverse transcribed from BNT162b2 is integrated into the cell genome.
To be clear, the study offers no evidence that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine alters our DNA in any way or form.
Fact #3 : It Was A Laboratory Study
I should also point out the obvious fact that this was an in-vitro study – a laboratory study, not a clinical study.
In-vitro studies are important, but they cannot be extrapolated to make any conclusion about what actually happens in a human body.
For example, in-vitro studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin have an inhibitory effect on the SARS-CoV-2 virus; but once tested in actual human beings – they were shown to have no clinical benefit.
In other words – what works in a laboratory, may not work in an actual human being.
The casual reader of the Lund University study will not realise that Huh7 (or Huh-7) cells are not ordinary liver cells that you or I have.
Huh7 cells were derived from the liver tumour of a 57 year-old Japanese man, and are special because :
they are immortal liver cancer cells that can keep multiplying
they are highly-susceptible to Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection
they are genetically different, with an abnormal number of chromosomes (between 55 and 63, normal human cells have 46)
The Huh7 cell line is useful for the study of liver cancer and Hepatitis C, as well as drugs that may combat HCV; but it is important to understand that Huh7 cells are not representative of normal human cells.
Fact #5 : Huh7 Liver Cells Were Cultured In Plates
For a “more physiologically relevant study of viruses“, these Huh7 cells have to be cultured in a NASA-designed 3D Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) bioreactor.
These RWV bioreactors create 3D aggregates of Huh7 cells that are more “similar in structure and function” to their in vivo counterparts, with “completely altered gene expression and differentiation patterns“.
In other words, these RWV-grown Huh7 cells look and behave differently, more like regular human cells compared to plate-cultured Huh7 cells.
For the record, the Lund University study used plate-cultured Huh7 cells, and not RWV-grown Huh7 cells.
There is nothing wrong with that, but we should keep in mind that these cells are not an ideal representation of human cells.
This is what a 24-cell culture plate looks like
Fact #6 : Normal Human Cells Don’t Produce LINE-1 Enzyme
The scientists chose to use these Huh7 cells because like many cancerous cells, they express (produce) the LINE-1 enzyme.
LINE-1 is a reverse transcriptase that converts mRNA into DNA, so it is not surprising that the study would show it converting mRNA from the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine into DNA. That is literally what it is meant to do.
Normal human cells have the LINE-1 gene, but it is not expressed. Normal human cells do not produce the LINE-1 enzyme, which is why they could not use regular human cells in this study.
That is also why it is inappropriate to use the Huh7 cell culture to evaluate how mRNA vaccines would actually work or behave in humans.
Fact #7 : Transcribed DNA Did Not Enter Nucleus
The study only looked at whether mRNA from the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine can be transcribed into DNA by the LINE-1 enzyme.
As the study showed – yes, it can… because that’s what the LINE-1 enzyme does. But the study does not show that the transcribed DNA entered the cell nucleus and altered human DNA.
While that is plausible, it would require another enzyme called integrase, that viruses produce, to move that DNA into the cell nucleus itself.
Without the integrase enzyme, the DNA transcribed by the LINE-1 enzyme will only float outside, and will never integrate with the DNA inside the cell nucleus.
Did Pfizer mRNA Vaccine Combine With DNA In Liver Cells?!
Fact #8 : mRNA Vaccines Do Not Modify Our Genes
An mRNA vaccine only contains a limited number of lipid nanoparticles containing those delicate mRNA instructions. So only a limited number of cells are involved in the vaccination process.
Even if it is somehow possible for the mRNA instructions from the vaccine to enter the cell nucleus and integrate with the DNA inside, it will only affect those cells.
Our cells die and are replaced by new cells all the time, so even if hypothetically the vaccine “infects” and modifies the DNA of a few hundred thousand cells, those cells will eventually die and be replaced by new cells without the modified DNA.
It is simply not possible for mRNA vaccines to modify our genes.
Fact #9 : Viruses Integrate With Cell DNA
Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 (diagram below) integrate their genes with the host cell DNA, to hijack the cell and use it to produce copies of itself.
You can see how a typical RNA virus would infect a host cell, convert its RNA into DNA which is moved into the cell nucleus using the integrase enzyme.
Once inside, the viral DNA integrates with the host cell DNA, which gets transcribed into instructions for the cell to produce copies of the virus.
This is the same way how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects our cells, to produce copies of itself to infect even more cells.
If you are truly worried about anything modifying your cell’s DNA, you should try to avoid viral infections like COVID-19. Better still – vaccinate yourself, and get protected against COVID-19!
Everything posted by The Expose must be regarded as FAKE NEWS, until proven otherwise.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
