An article published online by Russian researchers claims that mRNA-based COVID vaccines are linked to an increased incidence of cancer. Of course, you might already be seeing outlandish claims from anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers about this paper. Still, their conclusions are based on fallacious data and analysis.

If some researchers were able to demonstrate a correlation between mRNA-based COVID vaccines and cancer using actual medical records and then published it in a respected medical journal, I’d take notice.

These researchers used pointless VAERS data (here we go again) and published it online, not even in a journal. To be fair, if a researcher has critical data regarding vaccines and cancer, they would publish it in a respected English-language journal. In case you’re wondering, many researchers whose first language is not English frequently, if not exclusively, publish in English-language medical journals.

This post will attempt to decipher what the Russian researchers are claiming and then critique their claims.

mRNA-based COVID vaccines and cancer research

In a paper published online, Angelina A Seliverstova and Oleg G Makeev, MD, Professor, Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Ural State Medical University, Yekaterinburg, Russia, hypothesized that mRNA-based COVID vaccines were linked to increased rates of cancer.

The researchers used data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), not from patient records or from databases that use electronic health record data from member sites, to assess vaccine safety and detect adverse events in near-real time, such as the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

The researchers claim that their data suggest ovarian cancer risk rose dramatically post-COVID vaccination, according to VAERS data. They also reported 2,579 cancer-related entries in VAERS between late 2020 and August 2002 among COVID-vaccinated individuals

The researchers claim, with little supporting evidence, that somehow the mRNA-manufactured spike protein production in human cells could interfere with DNA repair pathways.  

Critiques

Since this self-published paper will make the rounds among those opposed to mRNA-based COVID vaccines, I want to make a few important criticisms:

1. This study is not a clinical trial; it is a narrative-based review of one CDC database.
2. This study uses the VAERS database, a thoroughly useless method for establishing correlation, let alone causation. As I have written before, VAERS is a dumpster fire of information. No reports within the database have been shown to actually link to adverse events — it relies upon self-reporting, not scientific links. Using VAERS to try to show a correlation between mRNA-based COVID vaccines and cancer is the lazy person’s method of medical research. There are better databases (such as VSD), but that takes real scientific analytical skills. Finally, VAERS reports are unverified and frequently incomplete.
3. Even if the researchers could show correlation, and it’s clear that they didn’t, they have not established causation between vaccines and cancer.
4. There were no controlled comparisons between COVID-vaccinated and -unvaccinated cohorts. These types of studies would eliminate coincidental increases in cancer that were unrelated to COVID vaccination.
5. The study completely ignored numerous studies that have not shown any increase in cancer rates.

Summary

The researchers present evidence that relies heavily on unsupported correlation, adverse-event reports, and speculative mechanisms rather than controlled, reproducible data. If the researchers had done a cohort study that relied upon better databases that link to actual medical records, they could have presented a strong study that would require researchers to examine if there are links between cancer and mRNA-based COVID vaccines.

But this is an awful study that wasn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal. To be honest, it’s like studies that anti-vaxxers love to publish to “prove” some weird link between vaccines and adverse events. It’s barely science.

Although anti-vaxxers are going to run around claiming that COVID mRNA vaccines are causing cancer, they don’t have anything. As far as real research goes, there is no evidence at all that COVID vaccines increase the risk of any cancer.

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