No, Covid-19 Vaccines Won’t Change Your DNA
Here’s how they actually work
The false claim that coronavirus vaccines will alter a person’s genetic code has spread on social media platforms in recent months as companies like Pfizer and Moderna sprinted to develop vaccines against the highly contagious virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
The notion even led a Wisconsin pharmacist to intentionally remove 57 vials of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine from the fridge at the hospital where he worked and leave them out at room temperature, hoping they would spoil. The man admitted to police that he had deliberately tried to sabotage his hospital’s vaccination efforts because he believed the vaccine could harm people and “change their DNA.”
The confusion may arise from the fact that Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines use a tiny piece of genetic material called messenger RNA to stimulate an immune response in the body. Though sometimes called “genetic vaccines,” they can’t modify a person’s DNA in any way.
“Messenger RNA vaccines do not have the capacity to change your DNA,” Shobha Swaminathan, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Rutgers University and medical director of infectious diseases practice at University Hospital in Newark, tells the Medium Coronavirus Blog. Swaminathan is also the principal investigator for…
