Does a heart tumor prove COVID vaccines cause cancer?

A new article from anti-vaccine researchers, The McCullough Group, says that they found COVID vaccine DNA inside a heart tumor, proving that these vaccines cause Turbo Cancer.

• The article about COVID vaccine DNA in a tumor has not been peer-reviewed.
• The small piece of SV40 DNA used in vaccine production cannot make the virus or its cancer-linked proteins.
• There is no good evidence that COVID vaccines cause cancer. Cancer in younger adults was rising long before these vaccines existed.

The paper shared by the McCullough Group is a preprint posted on Zenodo, a website for sharing research. Zenodo is not a scientific journal. Posting a paper there does not mean other experts have checked its methods or findings. The preprint makes claims about SV40 used in making one mRNA COVID vaccine. 

SV40 is a virus found in some monkeys. It can infect humans, and certain proteins it makes can cause cancer in lab studies. Some early polio vaccines were accidentally contaminated with SV40 because the process used to kill the polio virus did not always kill SV40. However, studies have found no higher cancer risk in people who received those vaccines.

Scientists also use a small piece of SV40 DNA called a promoter in research and vaccine production. A promoter acts like an on switch, helping cells read genetic instructions. This piece is not the whole virus. It does not contain the instructions for making the proteins linked to cancer.

This DNA piece is used in making one mRNA COVID vaccine. During production, the DNA is broken down and mostly removed. Tiny pieces can remain, but they cannot make the SV40 virus or its cancer-linked proteins. 

There is no good evidence, including in this preprint, that COVID vaccines cause cancer, including what some people call turbo cancer. This claim comes partly from reports that doctors are seeing more cancer cases. But even strong cancer-causing substances can take years to cause cancer. Cancer in people under 50 has become more common, but research shows this rise was happening between 1990 and 2019, well before COVID vaccines were available.