A series of peer-reviewed studies published in recent weeks revealed evidence that DNA contamination and spike protein from the mRNA COVID-19 shots persist in the body for longer than claimed by their manufacturers, according to Kevin McKernan, the scientist who first identified DNA contamination in the shots last year.
McKernan, founder of Medicinal Genomics, joined “The Defender In-Depth” this week to discuss these developments. “There’s been five different papers that have come out in the last few weeks on this topic, so it’s certainly heating up,” he said.
McKernan also discussed his new research, which found evidence of DNA and spike protein in a tumor from a cancer patient who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. McKernan’s research also found two “undisclosed” plasmids likely originating from the vaccine.
Regulators ‘seem to be running cover for Pharma’
McKernan explained that traditionally, vaccines have been regulated on the amount of allowable DNA that can be in them. The limit, originally 10 picograms, has “migrated a thousandfold … to 10 nanograms” after the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which gave liability protection to vaccine manufacturers for injuries caused by their products.
Typically, vaccines contain DNA “in a manner where it would be naked and readily destroyed by your body,” McKernan said. But mRNA vaccines are different.
“We have a very different platform here where this DNA is now wrapped in lipid nanoparticles and is not exposed to that destruction,” McKernan said. “It actually gets transfected directly into your cells” where it “can throw off the cellular circuitry.”
According to McKernan, the presence of DNA in the cells can pose health risks, because it “could integrate into the genome and cause disruption of the genome … or it could disrupt other genes that are related to cancer.”
McKernan referred to a recent paper that found DNA integration “in 99% of patients,” with “thousands of integrations per genome.” The paper found that 10% of those patients ultimately got cancer.
McKernan said vaccine manufacturers did not disclose the presence of this DNA in the shots. “It was something that they hid from the regulators, particularly the SV40 elements” — referring to simian virus 40, the DNA contaminant McKernan discovered in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines last year.
According to McKernan, SV40 “is a nuclear targeting sequence used in gene therapy” that interferes with cell function. Despite claims by regulators and pharmaceutical companies that SV40 is non-functional, McKernan said there’s “clear evidence that it’s functional and it’s in the vaccines at billions of copies per dose.”
McKernan said regulators “seem to be running cover for Pharma.”
“Pfizer hid that” from regulators, McKernan said. “You can’t actually manufacture plasmid without the SV40 promoter that’s in front of their antibiotic resistance gene.” He accused Pfizer of feeding the comment to regulators, and regulators of failing to critically evaluate the comment’s truthfulness.
For McKernan, the debate among scientists no longer pertains to whether or not there is DNA contamination in the mRNA shots, but “how much of it is there and what’s the clinical implication for this.”
“We don’t have proof this is causing cancer, but it’s certainly something that needs to be looked at more thoroughly because these vaccines did not go through any genome toxicity trials. They were assumed to be pure RNA. What we’ve shown … is it’s not pure RNA,” McKernan said.
‘We’re in uncharted territories’ when it comes to spike protein risks
McKernan also discussed the lingering presence of spike protein from the mRNA shots in the body, noting that multiple recent studies have shown it lingers for significantly longer than vaccine manufacturers claimed.
“The vaccines were sold on the fact that [spike protein] would only be in your body for 48 hours and … would degrade very quickly and stay in the arm” following vaccination, McKernan said.
He added:
“What we know today is that spike protein doesn’t stay in the arm. It distributes all over the body, sometimes collecting in the testes and the ovaries and in the liver. The spike protein, in some papers, is detected as far as 246 days out after vaccination.”
It might even remain in the body for even longer. “The only reason we don’t have longer data than that is because people haven’t been measuring longer than that.”
The presumption now is that spike proteins “persist for a very long time, maybe years,” McKernan said. “This can create a chronic state of inflammation in patients.” Researchers have identified the presence of spike protein in breast milk, heart tissue and the placenta.
“To the extent that you can find nucleic acids, parts and products of the vaccines in patients beyond that timeframe, we’re in uncharted territories in terms of the potential clinical risks,” McKernan said.
Spike proteins may also be spread to others through shedding, McKernan said.
“The DNA is detectable in cell lines after you wash them and grow them for 30 days. And these cell lines are emitting spike protein in exosomes. Spike protein in exosomes could be a problem for transmission and for shedding,” McKernan said.
McKernan explained that exosomes can get exhaled and excreted through the skin. “If any of those exosomes are carrying spike protein and people are sensitized to that, that can be a transmission problem and a shedding problem. And what we don’t know is if those exosomes are carrying any of the mRNA or the DNA.”
Referring to a recent study that found spike proteins pose a risk to neurological health but that claimed COVID-19 vaccination reduces the presence of spike protein in the body, McKernan said the researchers used “a very odd dose when they were looking at this in mice” and failed to include a proper control group in their study.
“They only looked at this with the vaccine and the virus. They didn’t do the control where they looked at just the vaccine. So, I think that study has some bias to it and we should approach some of the findings … with caution,” McKernan said.
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New study finds ‘undisclosed’ plasmids from COVID shots in tumor
McKernan also discussed initial results from his research that he recently wrote about on Substack. He said he identified the presence of SV40 and spike proteins — and two “undisclosed” plasmids — in a colon cancer patient’s tumor one year after that person last received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
“This is very early work and the reason it’s not thrown up on a preprint server yet is … we’re doing one more round of work to purify the DNA from this tumor in another laboratory just to rule out potential contamination,” McKernan said.
These plasmids, which are highly similar to plasmids commonly used to study SARS-CoV-2 or to manufacture SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, were discovered at 100 copies per cell in the cancer tumor, McKernan said.
The tumor came from a patient who received four doses of the Pfizer vaccine and who died 30 days after the tumor was detected. After successive biopsies were performed, “we found things we weren’t expecting in this tumor,” McKernan said.
“When we sequence those biopsies, we can find very low levels of the Pfizer spike protein or sequence. The spike protein also was present in the tumor, he said.
What McKernan and his team also found though “were two other research plasmids that are often used for vaccines” — pcDNA3.1 and pCMV-Spike. According to McKernan, Pfizer did not disclose the presence of these plasmids. Their origin is thus far unknown and the subject of further testing.
These plasmids “are expressing human inflammatory spike proteins and potentially nucleocapsid proteins,” the draft paper states. Nucleocapsid proteins are structural proteins involved in viral replication and assembly, according to a 2023 study.
According to the draft paper, the plasmids may have entered the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, or certain vaccine lots, “through a laboratory leak or contamination during the vaccine manufacturing process.”
McKernan suggested the plasmids may be a product of controversial gain-of-function research, which involves the genetic alteration of an organism to enhance its biological functions.
According to McKernan, the new study also identified SV40 in the tumor. “This is something that should be alarming regulators,” if exosomes are involved, “if any of these plasmids are, in fact, capable of replicating mammalian cells,” McKernan said.
Spike protein was also present in the tumor, McKernan said — at “very, very low levels, but it’s still detectable and it’s definitely the … Pfizer vaccine that we’re seeing inside that tumor.”
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‘Culture of non-investigation’ at public health agencies
Addressing growing calls for a moratorium on mRNA shots or an outright ban of the products, McKernan said he is “hopeful” this will occur under the next administration.
“I think one of the challenges the current administration has faced is that NIH [National Institutes of Health] has at least $400 million in royalties from Moderna on these vaccines, so I’m sure that creates a culture of non-investigation,” McKernan said.
The nomination and potential confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “is going to create a culture where … investigation is going to be allowed,” McKernan said.
This “will perhaps help open people’s eyes to looking at this from a more neutral perspective,” McKernan said. “Hopefully we will no longer have this considered fringe and conspiratorial [and] people will begin to put some actual effort into investigating what occurred with this vaccine program.”
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