A Top Brown University Cancer Researcher Published His Findings on Covid Vaccines. Then Came the Attacks.

By Louis Conte and Staff of The MAHA Report

Toward the end of a nearly two-hour interview over Zoom, the tone of Brown University Medical Science Professor Wafik El-Deiry’s voice shifted. He had just patiently explained to a reporter the science behind a paper he’d published on how cancer cells respond to the spike protein found in Covid-19 vaccines. Now his words registered in a deeply personal key.

“At what point do you acknowledge the weaponization of PubPeer, that is causing harm to individuals, causing distress, disrupting people’s lives in a way that I have been experiencing?” asked Professor El-Deiry, who in addition to research, clinical care and teaching about cancer and precision oncology also serves as Director of Brown’s Legorreta Cancer Center and Director of the Joint Program in Cancer Biology, at Brown and affiliated hospitals.

“I’ve called it criminal activity,” he added, “and I really think it’s criminal activity that needs to be investigated.”

Reflecting on recent attacks against friends in the scientific community, he continued, “Why are you doing this to scientists? I have for decades been saying things like, ‘scientists, biomedical researchers are one of our most precious national resources. We should respect people who have dedicated their lives to make things better for the rest of us.’ Things have happened in medicine and science that just make it less fun to go into these professions.”

The nefarious ‘things’ to which Dr. El-Deiry refers are the types one would expect to find in George Orwell’s 1984 not in America in 2026.

And yet here we are.

Like many top scientists, El-Deiry says he’s been attacked and discredited on PubPeer and other platforms for co-authoring a paper on cancer and the mRNA vaccine, by a plethora of anonymous posters, some of whom use bacteria names as pseudonyms.

Why attack him?

A widely respected oncologist, El-Deiry has published over 500 cancer research papers during a decades-long career. Years ago, he identified the mechanism of the TP53 gene, a critical tumor suppressor, often called the ‘guardian of the genome’ in stopping cell division to maintain our genomic stability by preventing DNA damage.

On March 9, at a MAHA Institute roundtable discussion about the ‘epidemic’ of vaccine injuries, held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., El-Deiry reflected on how he’s been treated since his paper questioned the safety of Covid vaccines.

“For years, I’ve understood that P53 is the center of the universe for cancer research – and we know that some viruses can cause cancer,” he told the roughly 200 attendees.

When the pandemic broke out, El-Deiry began studying ways of blocking Covid infections, the severity of Covid, and whether the Covid virus could cause cancer. Ultimately, his research found that the spike protein from the vaccine as well as the spike protein from the actual Covid virus may be associated with an increase in cancer.

In April of 2024, El-Deiry published a paper titled “Transfected SARS-CoV-2 spike DNA for mammalian cell expression inhibits p53 activation of p21(WAF1), TRAIL Death Receptor DR5 and MDM2 proteins in cancer cells and increases cancer cell viability after chemotherapy exposure.”

In describing the paper, El-Deiry noted, “I thought we were very balanced,” making the case that he did not offer conclusions he could not scientifically support. For example, he shared information about designing safer vaccines that boost immunity against deadly viruses while limiting collateral damage towards important host defenses against cancer.

But such information, which challenged the status quo, didn’t go over well. PubPeer attacks escalated so that by the summer of 2024, El-Deiry posted a generic response to them. The PubPeer attacks continued, including right after his major heart surgery in July 2025; El-Deiry was being attacked on PubPeer while recovering at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

El-Deiry was asked to serve on a subcommittee of the Advisory Commission on Immunization Practices (ACIP), to further study Covid vaccines. After accepting and digging in, El-Deiry and his colleagues found and shared with ACIP slides and presented, along with Tufts University’s Charlotte Kuperwasser, details about unexpected immune changes, biodistribution, frameshifting, impurities, and cancer that occurred after Covid modified-mRNA vaccine shots.

El-Deiry’s findings are consistent with increases in many cancers in working age Americans found by other researchers and described here as ‘Turbo-cancers.’ El-Deiry recently stated his views on ‘turbo-cancers’ and also here, early in 2023.

Examples of increases in cancer:

• CDC data show that colorectal cancer deaths among people ages fifteen through forty-four are surg­ing, with a 17-percent increase over the four-year pandemic period—four times more for that age cohort than for the population as a whole.

• Dr. Pierre Kory and journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer also note a 37-percent spike in uterine cancer deaths in the twenty-five to forty-four age group, over the four years, more than double the 15-percent rise overall.

• Liver and pancreatic cancer deaths increased disproportionately in young adults, from 2019 to 2022.

This data tells a dramatic story about health outcomes after Americans took the Covid vaccine.

In January 2026, along with Professor Kuperwasser, El-Deiry published a paper in the NIH publication, Pub Med, titled “COVID vaccination and post-infection cancer signals: Evaluating patterns and potential biological mechanisms.”

“We summarized research that showed an association between Covid vaccines and cancer,” he said, adding, “We found not only a temporal but also a spatial association as well.”

In other words, cancers were occurring near the locations of the Covid vaccine injection sites.

And then the attacks on PubPeer intensified again.

“There were attacks on me and there was a cyber-attack on the journal,” El-Deiry recalled. “They called me anti-vaccine, which is not true. I believe that vaccines can be helpful if they are safe and effective.”

“As a physician, I also believe in informed consent.” El-Deiry shared his views on the content of informed consent for Covid modified mRNA vaccines. He has also described “a possible path for revocation of Covid mRNA vaccine approval by the US FDA…if satisfactory evidence of clean manufacturing and safety is not provided immediately or has not already been provided to the FDA.”

El-Deiry called the attacks on PubPeer “severe and horrible,” all the more so because the commentators were anonymous. “Some of these people are from foreign countries,” he said. “They don’t disclose their conflicts of interest.” He added, “people laughed at me. I don’t think it’s funny… I am someone who is an example and I’m suffering through it.”

In the middle of the attacks, someone with a gmail account, claiming to work at Pfizer, offered El-Deiry a job. Was this a covert Faustian deal he better not refuse? Stay quiet about what you know, accept a fat paycheck, and the attacks will stop?

El-Deiry did not accept the offer. The public defamation continued.

“I do not want to spend the rest of my life under investigation,” El-Deiry said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” He has further stated that government officials should comment on and address egregious behavior of entities such as PubPeer.

This articulate scientist, with decades of rigorous work behind him, performed at some of the world’s most distinguished institutions, described the same brutal playbook that has been rolled out against other doctors and scientists, some of whom El-Deiry knows. Was Big Pharma pulling the strings? If you challenge their “settled science” narratives will you be silenced?

The prolonged abuse El-Deiry suffered for producing science, that seeks nothing more or less than the truth, is greater than simply the abuse of a man who has dedicated his life to healing people with cancer. It is designed to stifle scientific debate and free speech. It is designed to ruin careers, no matter how stellar.

“Right now I will fight because I don’t have a choice,” said El-Deiry. “The current situation is just unacceptable. It can’t continue like this.”