Tampa Bay Times – Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Wednesday issued new guidance urging Florida doctors to stop recommending mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, saying they contain contaminants that could penetrate human cells.
That claim was described as “misleading” and “disinformation“ by the Food and Drug Administration last month.
In a bulletin issued by the Florida Department of Health, Ladapo questioned the safety of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines pointing to the presence of small amounts of DNA fragments left behind during the manufacturing process.
The contaminants include lipid nanoparticles — part of a fatty compound found in cell membranes.
“DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients,” Ladapo said in a statement.
He called on health care providers to “prioritize patient access to non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and treatment.”
Ladapo first made those claims in a Dec. 6 letter sent to the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It earned a public rebuke from Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
More than one billion doses of the mRNA vaccines have been administered and “no safety concerns related to the residual DNA have been identified,” he said in a Dec. 14 reply to Ladapo.
Marks said it was implausible that small residual DNA fragments could penetrate cells and get into the nucleus of intact cells.
“Perpetuating references to this information about residual DNA without placing it in the context of the manufacturing process is misleading,” Marks wrote.
He added that vaccine disinformation is contributing to a low uptake of updated COVID-19 vaccines, which is “contributing to the continued death and serious illness toll of COVID-19 … ”
