Maurizio Vacca member picture

Maurizio Vacca

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, National University of Singapore

Expertise: Immunology, Inflammation, Vaccines

Daily Mail article misleads with clickbait headline claiming cowpox-derived virus will “kill every type of cancer”

“This article substantially overhypes early pre-clinical work with a viral therapy that has not yet been tested in even the earliest stages of human clinical trials. The headline is particularly misleading as I can find only three published papers suggesting the therapy has efficacy in lung, breast and colorectal cancers in cell lines and mouse models only.”

Article claiming vaccines cause autoimmunity and autism due to fetal DNA contaminants found unsupported and implausible

“While the letter provides some concerns about the fetal cell-derived DNA contamination in vaccines, it does not provide any actual evidence to support the claims made. The whole hypothesis of the author (which is misleadingly presented as fact) is based on the author’s own measurements of fetal cell-derived DNA, which has serious methodological problems that could be easily prevented by RNase treatment”