Two lingering doubts in social media conspiracy theories about the safety of the three COVID vaccines already ordered by the EU (and Malta) are the speed with which they have been developed and approved, and whether the mRNA vaccines may alter DNA in some of our body’s organs.

Medical scientists have been working since at least 2006 on using a messenger RNA technique to deliver drugs to specific cells intended to improve or cure their malfunction.  Once released into the circulation, mRNA decomposes very quickly after delivering its message to the part of the cell where there is no DNA. The notion that mRNA-based medicines may alter DNA is total fiction. 

The basic cause of cancer is DNA alteration or damage and we now have a pretty good idea what promotes this damage.  The two main causes are smoking and consuming too many animal-derived foods (all meats, not just the red type, and dairy produce). 

In several animal experiments published in peer-reviewed scientific journals in the 1970s and 1980s, the American team led by Colin Campbell PhD showed in laboratory mice and rats that Aflatoxin or hepatitis B virus (both known risk factors for liver cancer) only caused liver cancer in the animals fed substantial amount of animal protein (casein from cow’s milk was used), that is, animal protein was the main cancer promoter not the toxin or virus. 

Anybody spreading scare stories based on obsolete vaccine science or malicious fiction is acting against the common good

In medical science to disprove such a published claim, one has to repeat the experiments and prove a different conclusion.  Nobody has as yet disproven Campbell’s experimental conclusions.

Campbell’s team also collaborated with a Chinese university in the largest cancer epidemiological study ever conducted, showing how all cancers were practically unknown in vegetarian Chinese villages while towns which had adopted a Western diet (like Shanghai) had similar cancer and heart disease rates to America. Campbell wrote up all this work and the animal experiment findings for the public in a book called The China Study.

So, one hopes that those spreading the fear of ‘Frankenstein’ DNA alteration by mRNA vaccines are not smokers and not those whose diet consists mainly of meats, eggs, animal milk products and little or no vegetables and fruits.

Regarding the impressive speed by which these new vaccines have been developed and approved one needs to take into consideration the huge funding thrown at this vaccine effort to combat this global health and economic threat, that the scientific basis for these new vaccines has been developed over at least a 14-year period, that this new method of making vaccines is far faster than the older methods, and that regulatory bodies in the UK, US and EU are all entirely scientifically and legally independent.

Anybody spreading scare stories based on obsolete vaccine science or malicious fiction is acting against the common good. Such individuals would have been burnt at the stake, or quartered, a few centuries ago.  Aren’t they lucky they’re spreading false prophecies in the 21st century?

Albert Cilia-Vincenti is a former scientific delegate to the European Medicines Agency.