Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine
Goes Into Liver Cells and Is Converted to DNA: Study
BY MEILING LEE TIMEMARCH 1, 2022 PRINT
The messenger RNA
(mRNA) from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine
is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA,
according to Swedish researchers at Lund University.
The researchers
found that when the mRNA vaccine enters the human liver cells, it triggers the
cell’s DNA, which is inside the nucleus, to increase the production of the
LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.
The mRNA then
leaves the nucleus and enters the cell’s cytoplasm, where it translates into
LINE-1 protein. A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or
ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccine’s mRNA
and reverse transcribes into spike DNA.
Reverse
transcription is when DNA is made from RNA, whereas the normal transcription
process involves a portion of the DNA serving as a template to make an mRNA
molecule inside the nucleus.
“In this study we
present evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 is able to enter the human
liver cell line Huh7 in vitro,” the researchers wrote in the study, published
in Current Issues of Molecular Biology. “BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse
transcribed intracellularly into DNA as fast as 6 [hours] after BNT162b2
exposure.”
BNT162b2 is
another name for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that is marketed under
the brand name Comirnaty.
The whole process
occurred rapidly within six hours. The vaccine’s mRNA converting into DNA and
being found inside the cell’s nucleus is something that the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) said would not happen.
“The genetic
material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells,”
the CDC said on its web page titled “Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines.”
This is the first
time that researchers have shown in vitro or inside a petri dish how an mRNA
vaccine is converted into DNA on a human liver cell line, and is what health
experts and fact-checkers said for over a year couldn’t occur.
The CDC says that
the “COVID-19 vaccines do not change or interact with your DNA in any way,”
claiming that all of the ingredients in both mRNA and viral vector COVID-19
vaccines (administered in the United States) are discarded from the body once
antibodies are produced. These vaccines deliver genetic material that instructs
cells to begin making spike proteins found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that
causes COVID-19 to produce an immune response.
Pfizer didn’t
comment on the findings of the Swedish study and said only that its mRNA
vaccine does not alter the human genome.
“Our COVID-19
vaccine does not alter the DNA sequence of a human cell,” a Pfizer spokesperson
told The Epoch Times in an email. “It only presents the body with the
instructions to build immunity.”
More than 215
million or 64.9 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated as of Feb. 28, with
94 million having received a booster dose.
Autoimmune Disorders
The Swedish study
also found spike proteins expressed on the surface of the liver cells that
researchers say may be targeted by the immune system and possibly cause
autoimmune hepatitis, as “there [have] been case reports on individuals who
developed autoimmune hepatitis after BNT162b2 vaccination.”
The authors of
the first reported case of a healthy 35-year-old female who
developed autoimmune hepatitis a week after her first dose of the Pfizer
COVID-19 vaccine said that there is a possibility that “spike-directed
antibodies induced by vaccination may also trigger autoimmune conditions in
predisposed individuals” as it has been shown that “severe cases of SARS-CoV-2
infection are characterized by an autoinflammatory dysregulation that
contributes to tissue damage,” which the virus’s spike protein appears to be
responsible for.
Spike proteins
may circulate in the body after an infection or injection with a COVID-19
vaccine. It was assumed that the vaccine’s spike protein would remain mostly at
the injection site and last up to several weeks like other proteins produced in
the body. But studies are showing that is not the case.
The Japanese
regulatory agency’s biodistribution study of the Pfizer vaccine showed that some of the mRNAs moved
from the injection site and through the bloodstream, and were found in various
organs such as the liver, spleen, adrenal glands, and ovaries of rats 48 hours
following injection.
In a different study,
the spike proteins made in the body after receiving a Pfizer COVID-19 shot have
been found on tiny membrane vesicles called exosomes—that mediate cell-to-cell
communication by transferring genetic materials to other cells—for at least
four months after the second vaccine dose.
The persistence
of the spike protein in the body “raises the prospect of sustained inflammation
within and damage to organs which express the spike protein,” according to
experts at Doctors for COVID Ethics, an organization consisting of
physicians and scientists “seeking to uphold medical ethics, patient safety,
and human rights in response to COVID-19.”
“As long as the
spike protein can be detected on cell-derived membrane vesicles, the immune
system will be attacking the cells that release these vesicles,” they said.
Dr. Peter
McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist, wrote on Twitter that the Swedish study’s findings have
“enormous implications of permanent chromosomal change and long-term
constitutive spike synthesis driving the pathogenesis of a whole new genre of
chronic disease.”
Whether the
findings of the study will occur in living organisms or if the DNA converted
from the vaccine’s mRNA will integrate with the cell’s genome is unknown. The
authors said more investigations are needed, including in whole living
organisms such as animals, to better understand the potential effects of the
mRNA vaccine.
“At this stage,
we do not know if DNA reverse transcribed from BNT162b2 is integrated into the
cell genome. Further studies are needed to demonstrate the effect of BNT162b2
on genomic integrity, including whole genome sequencing of cells exposed to
BNT162b2, as well as tissues from human subjects who received BNT162b2
vaccination,” the authors said.
