The dangers of mRNA vaccines – Dr. Gerry Quinn’s EuroTox2025 presentation
- CERES team
- Sep 30
- 5 min read
Two weeks ago, CERES member, Dr. Gerry Quinn, gave a presentation at the 59th EuroTox conference in Athens, Greece (14th-17th September 2025). We asked him to summarise the event and to share his slides.
Post by Dr. Gerry Quinn
Recently, I had the privilege of presenting our work on COVID-19 policies in the Hot Topic session (Safety and Toxicology Issues Related to microRNA and mRNA Applications in Medical Practice) at the European Toxicology Conference (EUROTOX2025) in Athens, Greece, at the invitation of Prof. Aristides M. Tsatsakis.
My presentation, titled “The Evolving Understanding of the Risks and Benefits of the New mRNA Technologies in the Prevention of COVID-19 (#1321),” discussed issues raised in our recent manuscript published in the International Journal of Public Health, titled What Lessons can Be Learned From the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic?
I have provided my slides in pdf format below:
Background to my presentation
This session allowed us to discuss the experimental nature of mRNA vaccine technology, concerns about potential off-target effects, and the evolving understanding of subsequent risks. The material was mostly based on our recent manuscript (Quinn et al. 2025), but supplemented with some of the additional discussion in my Substack article on the Risks associated with the genetic technology currently used in COVID vaccines, as well as newer studies published since May 2025.
Since the beginning, we have been very concerned about the rapid policy decisions that were made during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of robust scrutiny of the underlying assumptions. For example, we had warned policymakers in a 2021 pre-print manuscript, A tale of two scientific paradigms: Conflicting scientific opinions on what “Following the Science” means for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic “,(Quinn et al. 2021), that the models used as a basis for many decisions were flawed due to erroneous and outdated assumptions.
We noticed that, at this time, it was very hard to publish manuscripts that contradicted official government policies on COVID-19. We think this severely hampered the ability of the scientific community to adequately scrutinise the policies that were being implemented.
Even our follow-up manuscript, “Influence of Seasonality and Public-Health Interventions on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northern Europe” (Quinn et al. 2024), which showed that seasonality, rather than public health interventions, was the main driver influencing the progression of COVID-19 waves in Northern Europe, took several years to be accepted by a peer-reviewed journal. This was published alongside another manuscript, “Unintended consequences of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for population health and health inequalities” (ÓhAiseadha et al. 2023), which outlined the potential harms of government interventions.
In particular, we were shocked by the lack of critical appraisal there was of the mRNA and DNA COVID vaccines given how radically different they were from traditional vaccines. Indeed, before the COVID vaccination programmes began, there was already a lot of cause for scientific concern due to the prior safety record of this technology, its experimental nature, and the flimsy excuses for introducing a vaccine for a rapidly mutating RNA virus.
In my talk, I showed that those initial concerns seem to have been validated in the years since the roll-out began. In 2021, governments and health authorities insisted that this completely new type of “vaccine” was totally “safe and effective”. However, we have noticed that as the years have rolled on, the scientific papers getting published have been progressively showing those initial claims to have been far too optimistic.
In terms of safety, each year’s scientific papers have revealed that the adverse reactions associated with the new mRNA/DNA vaccines are more common than the previous year had suggested. Likewise, the claims of “effectiveness” of these genetic vaccines have steadily decreased since the initial wildly hopeful assertions that they were 90-95% effective at preventing people from getting sick.
In other words, the passage of time is vindicating those who were concerned that this experimental technology was rushed on to the public prematurely. Some of my key concerns include:
The rationale for creating a vaccine for a rapidly mutating virus.
The choice of a genetic vaccine platform, given its checkered safety profile.
The unknown biodistribution and dosage of the genetic vaccine product.
The reliance on biased and skewed statistics to assert vaccine safety and efficacy.
Increasing reports of serious harms and deaths associated with the vaccine.
The immunological consequences of an artificially engineered sequence.
The immunological effects of cloaking the vaccine against innate immunity.
The non-specific targeting of potentially every cell in the body and the subsequent immune response.
Coercive vaccination policies and the suspension of fully informed consent.
The suppression of other antiviral therapies.
Despite many professionals and scientists highlighting the numerous unknowns, potential harms, and speculative benefits of this product, it was approved under emergency use authorization. Recent revelations, including obscured vaccine trial data, whistleblower testimony about irregular recording practices during trials, unblinding of participants, failure to document serious adverse events, and underreported result categories, have further reinforced our concerns (Thacker 2021).
In my slide presentation for the Hot Topic session, I documented these misgivings and reported that many potential risks of the genetic vaccine platform have gradually been revealed through scientific literature. These risks began with admissions of rare events and have evolved to reports suggesting that adverse events may be more common than expected (Vu et al. 2022; Fraiman et al. 2022; Mansanguan et al. 2022; Faksova et al. 2024).
As scientists, we strive to voice objections to certain policies professionally, but our publication efforts have often faced significant delays. Fortunately, many other doctors and scientists have also raised concerns about the introduction of this genetic vaccine platform. We hope that health administrations around the world as well as the medical and scientific communities pay attention to the major revelations over the potential and real harms associated with the mRNA and DNA COVID vaccines.
Other speakers in this session included:
Prof. Angus Dalgleish: Clinical Manifestations of mRNA COVID Vaccine Side Effects, Including Increased Incidence of Cancer After Boosters with at Least Six Major Mechanisms by Which mRNA Can Induce or Promote Cancers (#1323)
Prof. Apostolos Zaravinos: Mechanistic Insights into mRNA Vaccines: Evaluating Safety and Toxicological Challenges (#1322)
Prof. Monica Neagu: Immunotoxicology Testing of mRNA-Based Drugs – What Is Known and What Is Still Needed (#1320)
References
Faksova, K., D. Walsh, Y. Jiang, et al. 2024. “COVID-19 Vaccines and Adverse Events of Special Interest: A Multinational Global Vaccine Data Network (GVDN) Cohort Study of 99 Million Vaccinated Individuals.” Vaccine 42 (9): 2200–2211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2024.01.100.
Fraiman, Joseph, Juan Erviti, Mark Jones, et al. 2022. “Serious Adverse Events of Special Interest Following mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination in Randomized Trials in Adults.” Vaccine 40 (40): 5798–805. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.036.
Mansanguan, Suyanee, Prakaykaew Charunwatthana, Watcharapong Piyaphanee, Wilanee Dechkhajorn, Akkapon Poolcharoen, and Chayasin Mansanguan. 2022. “Cardiovascular Manifestation of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Adolescents.” Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease (Switzerland) 7 (8). https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed7080196.
ÓhAiseadha, Coilín, Gerry A. Quinn, Ronan Connolly, et al. 2023. “Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) for Population Health and Health Inequalities.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20 (7). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20075223.
Quinn, Gerry A., Michael Connolly, Norman E. Fenton, et al. 2024. “Influence of Seasonality and Public-Health Interventions on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northern Europe.” Journal of Clinical Medicine 13 (2). https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13020334.
Quinn, Gerry A., Ronan Connolly, Coilín ÓhAiseadha, et al. 2025. “What Lessons Can Be Learned From the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic?” International Journal of Public Health Volume 70-2025. https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2025.1607727.
Quinn, Gerry A., Ronan Connolly, Coilín ÓhAiseadha, and Paul Hynds. 2021. “A Tale of Two Scientific Paradigms: Conflicting Scientific Opinions on What ‘Following the Science’ Means for SARS-CoV2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Preprint, OSF Preprints, August 11. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/s9z2p.
Thacker, Paul D. 2021. “Covid-19: Researcher Blows the Whistle on Data Integrity Issues in Pfizer’s Vaccine Trial.” Feature. BMJ 375 (November): n2635. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2635.
Vu, Christina, Eric S Kawaguchi, Cesar H Torres, et al. 2022. “A More Accurate Measurement of the Burden of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Hospitalizations.” Open Forum Infectious Diseases 9 (7): ofac332. https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofac332.