How do they work?
by Enid Futterman July 15, 2021
Unlike any vaccine ever before given to humans.
Two brand new technologies have Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the US — mRNA and viral vector.
While completely different from traditional vaccines, which inject a small piece of the virus into the body, the Covid-19 vaccine technologies are quite similar to each other. The objective of all of them, whether mRNA and or viral vector, is to instruct the body to manufacture a synthetic version of the spike protein that covers the SARS CoV-2 virus believed to cause the illness called Covid-19.
Wait. What’s a spike protein? Had you ever heard the word ‘spike’ used as an adjective to modify the noun ‘protein’ before Covid? I had not, and for some time since Covid began, all we knew was that spike protein was the name given to the spiky protuberances that make the virus look like Sputnik, the ‘50s-era Soviet satellite, under a microscope.
We know a lot more now.
mRNA VACCINES: MODERNA AND PFIZER
The two vaccines first given EUA inject mRNA (messenger Ribonucleic Acid), a synthesized piece of the virus’s genetic code, into the body. mRNA technology had been studied for a couple of decades, but had never made it to market before.
From the official perspective, mRNA is the proverbial miracle of modern medicine, better than penicillin and the polio vaccine combined. It wasn’t rushed; the science caught up. The vaccines were developed at warp speed because billions were poured into development and red tape was cut. Two molecular biologists, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, received the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research for “their groundbreaking work in the modification of nucleic acids to develop RNA therapeutics and vaccines.”
Most doctors accept the narrative that mRNA is just what its name suggests — a vehicle that carries fragile RNA strands to the cells encased in protective lipid nanoparticles with a message to produce the spike protein. The body recognizes the protein as foreign and produces antibodies, which trigger an immune response if and when the actual virus shows up. The fragility of mRNA won’t allow it to survive in the body for long, the body will ‘get rid’ of it once its mission is accomplished, and it won’t enter the nucleus of the cells, and, therefore, can’t alter DNA.
A growing number of doctors and scientists say something else, but not exactly the opposite. mRNA is, by definition, genetic material, but the mRNA in the vaccine is not human, not found anywhere in nature.
Dr. Stephanie Seneff, senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory for five decades, co-authored a paper with naturopathic oncologist Greg Nigh, published in International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research on May 10 of this year. In an interview published on Dr. Joseph Mercola’s website, but since removed, Seneff says mRNA is “unbelievably unnatural” but would indeed be zapped by your body’s own enzymes immediately if it wasn’t encased in lipid nanoparticles.
Once in the cells, mRNA interacts with your own RNA, known as transfer RNA or tRNA, to do its job of relaying the message.
Dr. Ken Beigeleisen, an MD and virologist, writing for the Defender, the digital news outlet of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, says that, unlike DNA, “RNA cannot be directly incorporated into human chromosomes.” The route traveled is DNA to RNA, not the other way around, and Seneff agrees. “Transcription is DNA to RNA to protein. That’s basic biology.” But Seneff goes on to say that, in 1970, research scientists at MIT … discovered an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, which converts RNA back into DNA in a process called reverse transcription. And it turns out that “we have plenty of it in our own cells.” Beigeleisen concurs.
mRNA could do the same. “No one has any clue as to where in our genomes (the spike protein) will wind up, or what it will do when it gets there.” In theory, it could result in genetic modification, not unlike GMO corn. It could replicate in every cell and alter DNA. If it survives.
Having discovered all of this online, which is not easy, but doable if you know where to look, I wanted to talk directly to doctors, and met Dr. Jim Meehan, an ophthalmologist with a specialty in immunology and infectious disease, on a video call and asked the $64,000 question. Can an mRNA vaccine alter DNA?
“There is a non-zero probability that some of that RNA is reverse transcribed and integrated directly into the genome and becomes a permanent part of our DNA,” said Meehan. When I asked what that non-zero number might be, he said we don’t know, because there have been no long-term studies. To those who would say it will never happen, he says simply “It will happen.”
But on this hand, there are also two hands. the head medical honcho of Moderna, the pharmaceutical company that exists solely to produce mRNA vaccines, seems to agree that reverse transcription is a thing. But he says it’s a good thing.
In a 2017 Ted Talk, Dr. Tal Zaks, Chief Medical Officer of Moderna, said “We are actually hacking the software of life (emphasis mine), and it’s changing the way we think about prevention and treatment of disease. In every cell, there’s this thing called messenger RNA … that transmits the critical information from the DNA in our genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we’re all made out of … we think about it as an operating system. So, if you could change that, if you could introduce a line of code, or change a line of code … there are profound implications for everything.” If it isn’t obvious, Zaks meant genetic code.
VIRAL VECTOR VACCINES: JOHNSON & JOHNSON
Johnson & Johnson is one of two viral vector vaccines but the only one with Emergency Use Authorization in the US. The other, AstraZeneca, is in use in Europe. Both vaccines are based on another new technology.
A vector is the vehicle that transports a vaccine once injected into the body. The viral vector in the Covid-19 vaccines is a virus, but not SARS CoV-2, the one it’s designed to prevent. It’s an adenovirus, otherwise known as a common cold virus, used instead of mRNA. But it’s still a messenger, and its job is the same: to enter a cell and use the cell’s machinery to produce a synthetic version of the spike protein so the body will recognize it as the virus and make antibodies against it.
The scenario is pretty much the same as for mRNA vaccines, including the claim that it does not interact with DNA. And everything that has been said to contradict that claim for mRNA vaccines has also been said about viral vector vaccines.
In an article published on April 12 in the Defender, Beigeleisen says “adenovirus was supposed to only replicate and destroy the cell, but virology researchers in the 70s found that there was indeed extensive integration of viral genes into the host cell chromosomes.” Which means that a vaccine that uses a virus as vector is a DNA vaccine, and integration of DNA into the cell is a possibility. Which means it’s also possible that the cell’s genetic code is rewritten.
In any case, both mRNA and viral vector vaccines inject genetic material into the body and many doctors have drawn the logical conclusion that both are therefore gene therapies.
Neither fits the traditional definition of vaccine, because neither prevents transmission and infection, but they are permitted to be labeled vaccines, says Meehan, because the CDC edited the definition of vaccine on its website. As a result, they are spared from having to meet the standards of science required of every other medicine and medical intervention — long term trials, placebo controls, large numbers of patients.
So what exactly is in the vaccines? Hard to say. The ingredient lists provided by the makers are believed by some doctors to be incomplete, and some ingredients listed are hard even for medical professionals to identify.
Besides the key ingredients of mRNA in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, and adenovirus in the J&J vaccine, are polyethylene glycol (PEG), in both mRNA vaccines, and polysorbate-80, in the J&J vaccine, both used to make the protective lipid nanoparticle shields, but also strongly suspected of being allergens.
Only the J&J ingredient list mentions the spike protein as “the expression” of the main ingredient, not an ingredient itself, because it isn’t one. Evidence is piling up to suggest that the focus should not be soley on that which the vaccines contain, but on that which they produce as well.
We were deep into 2021 before a study emerged from the Salk Institute on April 30 that came to the revelatory conclusion that the spike protein on the virus is what makes Covid-19 so different from flu. Even in the absence of the virus itself, the spike protein causes clotting, bleeding and inflammation of the heart, leading to strokes and heart attacks and is what makes Covid-19 primarily a vascular disease, not primarily a respiratory disease.
So, if the spike protein is the worst part of the virus, the part that can and often does cause the disease to wreak such havoc in a human body, why did we design vaccines to produce it?
The lede of the article on the Salk institute website answers that one: “Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2’s distinctive ‘spike’ proteins help the virus infect its host by latching on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that the virus spike proteins (which behave very differently than those safely encoded by vaccines) (emphasis mine) also play a key role in the disease itself.”
I can’t swear to this, but I don’t remember that parenthetical phrase in my earlier readings of that article. I wonder if a) it was interjected to silence the alarm the study raised or b) it was just a needed clarification. If so, what does ‘safely encoded” mean?
A month later, on May 27, Dr. Byram Bridle, associate professor of immunology and vaccine researcher at the University of Guelf, Ontario, revealed on a podcast that he and his colleagues had obtained Pfizer’s own biodistribution study, which concludes that the spike protein produced by the body in response to vaccination can enter the bloodstream and stay there for several days, whereupon it settles in the tissues and can even cross the blood-brain barrier.
But if it’s “safely encoded,” does it matter?
We’re already halfway down the rabbit hole. But what is clear is this: The spike protein has the leading role in this movie. Hero or villain? Or both?
Next: The Covid-19 Vaccines, Part 3: What Could Go Wrong? (in the short term)