RNA vaccines may be relatively new, but they aren’t genetic therapy. It does not get integrated into your DNA.
Comment on Or in 2025. Looking at you, Florida.
analog_fluffy@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
To be fair, the covid vaccine isn’t a vaccine. It’s experimental genetic therapy (created by a corporation that would happily murder you for profit).
That’s the facts.
yistdaj@pawb.social 1 month ago
Allero@lemmy.today 1 month ago
I’m pretty sure you misunderstood the way these vaccines work - no judgment, media is ass these days - so let me clear it out for you.
mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) give cells a piece of RNA (ribonucleic acid) coding the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. mRNA normally serves as a translation layer: it simply comes to rRNA, lays down and says “we make THIS”. And there’s the end of it. No long-term changes are made, the cell just produces respective proteins for a while, before new genuine orders come along.
In this process, spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 are being created, are being recognized by the immune system as something that is clearly not yours, destroyed and remembered. Spike-coding RNA does not replicate without being written into DNA and ceases to function.
Vector vaccines (Johnson & Johnson, Sputnik V) put the spike-coding sequence into another virus that is otherwise harmless. Then this virus enters your body with a shot, and then much the same thing occurs.
To be clear: viruses do these kinds of things all the time. SARS-CoV-2, that very virus causing COVID-19, does this too, except it instructs cells to replicate the entire thing, so that it could infect other cells and proliferate. In this way, such vaccines are no different than just getting infected, with one MAJOR difference in that you don’t get sick in the first place and don’t have random dangerous code replicate all around your body. Harmless spike proteins get formed in a controlled manner and quantity - and that’s it.
Even if you were an evil billionaire wishing to decimate human population or something, you’d have very hard time making something RNA-based that somehow persists in the body and also doesn’t reveal the effects for a long while. Easier to do with vector-based vaccines, but very hard to make it unnoticeable, either.
analog_fluffy@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
A vaccine was once “a weakened form of the pathogen, introduced so the body could create antigens without actually becoming ill”. Your technobabble (sorry) sounds like something different.
Allero@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Yes, because we knew no better. Now we can be more precise and replicate specifically the parts immune system can recognize that are not harmful to us. If anything, we made vaccines safer than they were before.
It’s like saying solar panels are technobabble because we once gathered nearly all energy by burning wood or coal. Sure, we did, but why do it now? We know better options.
Besides, it takes school-level knowledge of biology to understand the reasoning behind these vaccines. They rely on the knowledge we had for many decades now; it was only hard to produce such RNA sequences at scale and to meet all the standards while doing so. Now we can do this, and it makes no sense to do otherwise.
Traditional vaccines are more dangerous and, at their best, just as efficient. Besides, they typically take longer to develop and test, and time was a pressing issue. Some traditional-style vaccines got eventually rolled out, but they did not outperform the alternatives, and so they didn’t gain much traction.
analog_fluffy@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
It’s a nice story but I’m not buying it.
dyc3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A vaccine is a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against a disease. The COVID-19 vaccines do exactly this.
It trains your body to fight the disease. The methods and techniques are different but the fundamentals are still the same. It’s ridiculous to think that its permanent genetic modification.
BadlyTimedLuck@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The only “genetic modification” that I understand happening is the modification to our immune systems being able to fight diseases much better than before. Eventually getting rid of diseases entirely.
But I guess people thought that was stupid, so now we have measles again like its 1953
Allero@lemmy.today 1 month ago
I think it refers to insertion of mRNA inside the cells.
Except mRNA does not persist and thereby cannot be seen as a genetic alteration.
kossa@feddit.org 1 month ago
Traditional vaccines work, because your immune cells learn about the “key” they need, to open up the virus and destroy it.
mRNA is basically just shipping the “keyhole” instead of the whole virus organism for your body to learn the pattern. So no crazy “gene therapy”. It is just more precise.
Like, back in the day, people used maps to navigate. Now you use crazy GPS space stuff to do the same. Just better technology for the same end.
analog_fluffy@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
It’s a nice story. I’m on the fence tho
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 1 month ago
You nailed the murder for profit part, but you really missed the mark on everything else
analog_fluffy@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
There was only one other thing
yistdaj@pawb.social 1 month ago
By the way, why do you think mRNA vaccines are genetic therapy?
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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analog_fluffy@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Ok. Who should I listen to?