Are COVID vaccines gene therapy?

A video featuring Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo claims that continuing COVID vaccination is “nuts” as they are gene therapy and bad in other ways.

Some COVID vaccines work by using mRNA, a temporary “recipe card” to teach your cells how to make a harmless piece of the virus’s spike protein. COVID vaccines are neither gene therapy nor experimental. They were thoroughly tested in large studies and do not change your DNA, as mRNA cannot enter the nucleus of the cell, but instead teach your body how to fight the virus without giving you the illness.

Clinical trials and studies show that these vaccines are safe for children, with serious side effects being extremely rare, while COVID-19 itself can cause long-term health problems, even in kids. Public health experts make vaccine recommendations based on scientific evidence, not ideology, to protect as many people as possible, especially the most vulnerable. While booster shot uptake has slowed, this is often due to misinformation or pandemic fatigue, not because the vaccines are harmful.

Stopping mRNA vaccines entirely would leave people at risk for serious illness and death, as these vaccines have already saved millions of lives worldwide. Vaccines are like a safe and temporary training session for your immune system, teaching it how to protect you better in the future.

Ladapo, on the other hand, is accused of committing scientific fraud and manipulating data to claim that the mRNA vaccines increase the risk of cardiac death.