Florida Surgeon General’s Call to Halt Use of the Vaccines Sparks Debate

On January 3, 2024, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo called for a halt in the use of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines after US health agencies failed to adequately address his concerns about DNA contamination in the products.

In a statement on X, Ladapo accused the FDA and CDC of always playing it “fast and loose” with Covid-19 safety, but their failure to test whether DNA fragments in the vaccine could integrate into a person’s genome was “intolerable.”

As I and others have pointed out on numerous occasions, the FDA’s own guidance on regulatory limits for residual DNA in vaccines states “there are several potential mechanisms by which residual DNA could be oncogenic [cause cancer], including the integration and expression of encoded oncogenes or insertional mutagenesis following DNA integration.”

In a letter, Ladapo had also asked the two agencies if they’d carried out any risk assessment regarding the presence of the “SV40 promoter” in the vaccines, which is thought to enhance DNA integration into host cells.

But the FDA’s top vaccine official Peter Marks responded to Ladapo’s demand for answers with intransigence and obfuscation.

Similar to how the FDA shut down my previous enquiries into this matter, the agency failed to provide Ladapo with any evidence that it had even conducted tests to address the risk of genomic integration.

In fact, Marks had the temerity to imply that ongoing discussion about this topic was perpetuating misinformation “which results in vaccine hesitancy that lowers vaccine uptake.”

Ladapo explained;

DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA Covid-19 vaccine recipients. If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.

He also recommended that providers concerned about health risks of Covid-19 should prioritise patient access to non-mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and treatment.

Quick to dismiss Ladapo’s concerns was Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Centre at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who serves on the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee.

Offit hit back in a video published on MedPage Today saying, “It is hard to believe that Dr Ladapo actually issued that statement…[DNA fragments] can’t possibly do harm. So scaring people unnecessarily like this has been hard to watch.”

Professor Paul Offit, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Unfortunately, Offit’s video contains a series of erroneous statements that exposes his fundamental misunderstanding of the manufacturing and regulation of Covid vaccines.

For example, Offit says it’s unlikely that DNA fragments enter the cytoplasm of cells, or survive, once they’re inside.

“Our cytoplasm hates foreign DNA and it has a variety of mechanisms, including innate immunological mechanisms and enzymes, to destroy foreign DNA,” says Offit.

“That DNA, which would never survive the cytoplasm, would have to then cross the nuclear membrane into the nucleus, which would require a nuclear access signal that these DNA fragments don’t have…So the chance that DNA could affect your DNA is zero,” he adds.

But this statement is disingenuous on multiple fronts.

Offit talked about DNA fragments as if they were not encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles, which specifically ferry the genetic material into the cell cytoplasm. Indeed, without the lipid nanoparticles, the vaccines would never have made it to market.

A recent publication in Nature found that within hours, around 7% of cells are integrated when mixed with a transfection solution containing linear pieces of DNA.

Offit also said that DNA wouldn’t cross into the cell’s nucleus, but scientists have known that foreign DNA can be delivered into mammalian cells to modify a host cell’s genetic makeup in a process called “DNA transfection.”

It also ignores the fact that the DNA fragments contain the “SV40 promoter” which includes a nuclear targeting signal (NTS) to aid its entry into the nucleus.

A full critique of Offit’s commentary was recently published by Dr Robert Malone who pioneered some of the early work into mRNA technology.

Phillip Buckhaults, a cancer genomics expert, and professor at the University of South Carolina, has confirmed the presence of DNA fragments in the vaccines after replicating the work of McKernan et al.

Buckhaults has welcomed Ladapo’s announcement.

“I’m glad Dr Ladapo is taking a firm leadership stance to protect the people under his care. I think he is taking a lot of heat over genuinely looking out for others. I think he is acting in good faith and that is to be respected,” says Buckhaults.

Professor Phillip Buckhaults, University of South Carolina

He also believes that Ladapo’s stance on the mRNA vaccines is “based on solid scientific reasoning” because the long-term genomic safety has not been demonstrated for fragments of DNA that are encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles.

However, rather than completely halting the vaccines, Buckhaults says he would err on the side of caution and still “recommend the vaccine to select populations who are at high risk for death from [Covid-19].”

Buckhaults hopes that Ladapo can use his authority to compel the FDA to request an extra “cheap and easy step” in the processing of the vaccines to remove the vast majority of DNA from upcoming batches.

“Then we would not even need to have this argument about DNA anymore. The risk of the DNA would be essentially gone and the crisis in confidence in leadership would be addressed,” he says.

Buckhaults has testified before a South Carolina Senate hearing about his alarm over the “very real hazard” that these fragments of foreign DNA can insert themselves into a person’s genome and become a “permanent fixture of the cell.”

He has also discussed with me at length the potential harms to people’s health caused by DNA contamination in the mRNA vaccines. Last year, Buckhaults notified the FDA of his concerns via email but never received a response.

Supplementary information: reading:

FDA shuts down enquiries about DNA contamination in [Covid] vaccines

EXCLUSIVE: An interview with Buckhaults about DNA contamination in [Covid] vaccines

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Maryanne Demasi

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

Related Topics:#BrownstoneInstitute #DNAContamination #DrJosephLadapo #FloridaCovidVaccine #MaryanneDemasi #mRNACovid-19Vaccine

Up Next

Post-pandemic: Canada desperately needs an impartial COVID-19 inquiry

Don't Miss

Free speech victory: Charges against nurse who opposed vaccine mandates defeated

Todayville

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Looks like the Liberals don’t support their own Pipeline MOU

Alberta / 39 mins ago

They never wanted a pipeline! – Deputy Conservative Leader Melissa Lantsman

Business / 1 hour ago

Canada Can Finally Profit From LNG If Ottawa Stops Dragging Its Feet

COVID-19

University of Colorado will pay $10 million to staff, students for trying to force them to take COVID shots

Published on December 8, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine caused ‘life-altering damage’ to Catholics and other religious groups by denying them exemptions to its COVID shot mandate, and now the school must pay a hefty settlement.

The University of Colorado’s Anschutz School of Medicine must pay more than $10.3 million to 18 plaintiffs it attempted to force into taking COVID-19 shots despite religious objections, in a settlement announced by the religious liberty law firm the Thomas More Society.

As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in April 2021, the University of Colorado (UC) announced its requirement that all staff and students receive COVID jabs, leaving specific policy details to individual campuses. On September 1, 2021, it enforced an updated policy stating that “religious exemption may be submitted based on a person’s religious belief whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations,” but required not only a written explanation why one’s “sincerely held religious belief, practice of observance prevents them” from taking the jabs, but also whether they “had an influenza or other vaccine in the past.”

On September 24, the policy was revised to stating that “religious accommodation may be granted based on an employee’s religious beliefs,” but “will not be granted if the accommodation would unduly burden the health and safety of other Individuals, patients, or the campus community.”

In practice, the school denied religious exemptions to Catholic, Buddhist, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, Protestant, and other applicants, most represented by Thomas More in a lawsuit contending that administrators “rejected any application for a religious exemption unless an applicant could convince the Administration that her religion ‘teaches (them) and all other adherents that immunizations are forbidden under all circumstances.’”

The UC system dropped the mandate in May 2023, but the harm had been done to those denied exemptions while it was in effect, including unpaid leave, eventual firing, being forced into remote work, and pay cuts.

In May 2024, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked the school for denying the accommodations. Writing for the majority, Judge Allison Eid found that a “government employer may not punish some employees, but not others, for the same activity, due only to differences in the employee’s religious beliefs.”

Now, Thomas More announces that year-long settlement negotiations have finally secured the aforementioned hefty settlement for their clients, covering damages, tuition costs, and attorney’s fees. It also ensured the UC will agree to allow and consider religious accommodation requests on an equal basis to medical exemption requests and abstain from probing the validity of applicants’ religious beliefs in the future.

“No amount of compensation or course-correction can make up for the life-altering damage Chancellor Elliman and Anschutz inflicted on the plaintiffs and so many others throughout this case, who felt forced to succumb to a manifestly irrational mandate,” declared senior Thomas More attorney Michael McHale. “At great, and sometimes career-ending, costs, our heroic clients fought for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans who were put to the unconscionable choice of their livelihoods or their faith during what Justice Gorsuch has rightly declared one of ‘the greatest intrusion[s] on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.’ We are confident our clients’ long-overdue victory indeed confirms, despite the tyrannical efforts of many, that our shared constitutional right to religious liberty endures.”

On top of the numerous serious adverse medical events that have been linked to the COVID shots and their demonstrated ineffectiveness at reducing symptoms or transmission of the virus, many religious and pro-life Americans also object to the shots on moral grounds, due to the ethics of how they were developed.

Catholic World Report notes that similarly large sums have been won in other high-profile lawsuits against COVID shot mandates, including $10.3 million to more than 500 NorthShore University HealthSystem employees in 2022 and $12.7 million to a Catholic Michigander fired by Blue Cross Blue Shield in 2024.

COVID-19

Canadian Health Department funds study to determine effects of COVID lockdowns on children

Published on December 5, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The commissioned study will assess the impact on kids’ mental well-being of COVID lockdowns and ‘remote’ school classes that banned outdoor play and in-person learning.

Canada’s Department of Health has commissioned research to study the impact of outdoor play on kids’ mental well-being in light of COVID lockdowns and “remote” school classes that, for a time, banned outdoor play and in-person learning throughout most of the nation.

In a notice to consultants titled “Systematic Literature Reviews And Meta Analyses Supporting Two Projects On Children’s Health And Covid-19,” the Department of Health admitted that “Exposure to green space has been consistently associated with protective effects on children’s physical and mental health.”

A final report, which is due in 2026, will provide “Health Canada with a comprehensive assessment of current evidence, identify key knowledge gaps and inform surveillance and policy planning for future pandemics and other public health emergencies.”

Bruce Squires, president of McMaster Children’s Hospital of Hamilton, Ontario, noted in 2022 that “Canada’s children and youth have borne the brunt” of COVID lockdowns.

From about March 2020 to mid-2022, most of Canada was under various COVID-19 mandates and lockdowns, including mask mandates, at the local, provincial, and federal levels. Schools were shut down, parks were closed, and most kids’ sports were cancelled.

Mandatory facemask polices were common in Canada and all over the world for years during the COVID crisis despite over 170 studies showing they were not effective in stopping the spread of COVID and were, in fact, harmful, especially to children.

In October 2021, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector, saying the un-jabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a new report released by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) raised alarm bells over the “harms caused” by COVID-19 lockdowns and injections imposed by various levels of government as well as a rise in unexplained deaths and bloated COVID-19 death statistics.

Indeed, a recent study showed that COVID masking policies left children less able to differentiate people’s emotions behind facial expressions.