STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Microbiologist Kevin McKernan and his team recently discovered simian virus 40 (SV40) promoters in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s bivalent mRNA COVID shots
- SV40 have long been suspected of causing cancer in humans
- DNA contaminants may have the ability to alter the human genome. One of Pfizer’s vials also had an SV40 promoter with a nuclear localization sequence (NLS), a 72 base pair insertion that makes the promoter “much more aggressive and also drives the sequence into the nucleus” of the cell
- DNA contamination is a warning sign that endotoxin, which causes anaphylaxis when injected, may be present
- A cinnamycin-resistant gene is also included in the sequencing vector, and it’s unclear if or how this might impact human health. In a worst case scenario, it could make your microbiome resistant to antibiotics
In the video above, Jessica Rose, Ph.D., interviews microbiologist Kevin McKernan on “Good Morning CHD.” McKernan’s team recently discovered1,2,3,4 simian virus 40 (SV40) promoters in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s bivalent mRNA COVID shots, which, for decades, have been suspected of causing cancer in humans.5 As explained in the abstract, posted on OSF Preprints in April 2023:6
“Several methods were deployed to assess the nucleic acid composition of four expired vials of the Moderna and Pfizer bivalent mRNA vaccines. Two vials from each vendor were evaluated … Multiple assays support DNA contamination that exceeds the European Medicines Agency (EMA) 330ng/mg requirement and the FDAs 10ng/dose requirements …”
Equally, if not more, troubling, these DNA contaminants also can alter the human genome. As explained by McKernan, genomic sequencing involves reading the letters of the genome, A, T, C and G, which make up the DNA code. Both DNA and RNA can be sequenced in this manner.
DNA can be likened to a copy of the hard drive of your cell, while RNA is like your task manager, dictating the software program being run in a given moment. When you sequence RNA, you get a sense of what the cell is being instructed to do, while sequencing DNA tells you everything the cell could possibly do if the proper instructions are present.
COVID Shots Contain Both RNA and DNA
It’s been assumed that the COVID shots contained only RNA, but using genomic sequencing, McKernan discovered they contain DNA fragments as well, and there really should not be any. The RNA is basically copied, or “Xeroxed” off the DNA, and only the RNA should be in the final product.
As noted by McKernan, the DNA used is proprietary. “They don’t want people to know all the tricks they put in the DNA to drive maximum amount of Xeroxing, if you will.” But what popped out during sequencing was the entire sequencing vector, “which shows us everything they’re doing to drive the expression of this RNA,” McKernan says.
So, we now know they’re using a T7 promoter, an SV40 promoter, an antibiotic-resistance gene, that the replication is bacterial in origin and more. As explained by McKernan, to get the amount of RNA required for these shots, you need very large amounts of DNA. To get the DNA required, a piece of DNA that codes for RNA in a circle, called a plasmid, was created and then reproduced inside E. coli in a huge vat.
Plasmids are unique in that they have an origin of replication that allows the DNA to copy itself several hundred times inside every cell of the E. coli, and, since bacteria double every 20 minutes, you get exponential amplification of the DNA overnight.
The DNA must then be extracted from the E. coli and purified. Once that’s done, a T7 in vitro transcription reaction is run on the purified DNA, which copies the RNA off that DNA.
The plasmid that is put in with the E. coli — the sequencing vector — is the blueprint for how the RNA is made, and this is what McKernan found, in its entirety, in the vials. It really should not be there. Only the purified RNA should be present.
Regulatory agencies have an acceptable upper limit for double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) in medical products, but the DNA McKernan found was orders of magnitude higher than those thresholds.
The arbitrary limit for dsDNA set by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is 330 nanograms per milligram (ng/mg), but McKernan suspects that limit isn’t stringent enough, because they probably didn’t consider that it might include replicable DNA. In all likelihood, this limit was primarily based on concerns about E. coli DNA, which might get mixed in.
In a May 20, 2023, Substack article,7 McKernan also pointed out that Pfizer itself submitted evidence to the EMA showing sampled lots contained anywhere from 1 ng/mg to 815 ng/mg of DNA, so regulators knew they had quality control problems from the start. In McKernan’s testing, the highest level of DNA contamination found was 30%, which is rather astounding.
Endotoxin Concerns
McKernan also explains that one of the primary concerns when pulling plasmids out of E. coli is the fact that endotoxins frequently tag along. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin, sits on the outside of gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli. When endotoxin is injected, it can cause anaphylaxis, and life-threatening anaphylaxis just so happens to be among the most commonly reported side effects of these shots. According to McKernan:8
“Whenever we see DNA contamination, like from plasmids, ending up in any injectable, the first thing people think about is whether there’s any E. coli endotoxin present because that creates anaphylaxis for the injected … You can see people get injected with this and drop. That could be the background from this E. coli process of manufacturing the DNA …”
What Is the SV40 Promoter For?
As mentioned earlier, the sequencing vector found also included an SV40 promoter. To be clear, this is not the whole virus. It’s only the promoter, meaning a specific portion of the viral DNA that is essential for gene expression. The problem is that this particular promoter is known to be problematic.
SV40 promoters have been studied for years and are known to trigger cancer when encountering an oncogene (a gene that has the potential to cause cancer). What’s more, McKernan found that one of the Pfizer vials had not just one but two SV40 promoters.
One of them had a nuclear localization sequence (NLS) that the other didn’t have — a 72 base pair insertion for a nuclear localization sequence (NLS) that makes the promoter “much more aggressive and also drives the sequence into the nucleus” of the cell. NLS is basically a sequence that tags a given protein for import into the cell nucleus, and this further heightens the risk of genome integration.
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