Drew Weissman refutes RFK Jr. adviser’s claims about Covid pictures

On Thursday and Friday, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention held a assembly of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a key panel that provides the CDC’s director steerage about what vaccines to advocate to the general public.

The panel, in the long run, postponed its most controversial vote and made suggestions that appeared aimed toward fostering doubts in regards to the Covid-19 vaccines whereas nonetheless maintaining them extensively out there. However some presenters and panelists raised issues that the mRNA Covid vaccines – those made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech – might have unconfirmed issues of safety.

Particularly, Retsef Levi, who chairs ACIP’s working group on Covid vaccines, raised issues that mRNA, the lipid nanoparticles they’re encapsulated in, and the spike protein the vaccines produce might all persist and be extensively distributed within the physique. He additionally stated they might provoke an immune response that isn’t understood and will even change the best way the physique reads its personal genetic materials. Moderna and Pfizer stated that the claims have been refuted by well-done research that met international regulatory requirements.

STAT posed questions on these claims to Drew Weissman, a professor on the College of Pennsylvania and co-recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Drugs for his discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines. That dialog, edited for size and readability, follows.

On the ACIP assembly, there have been plenty of discussions about experiences of mRNA being extensively distributed within the physique or persisting.

If you happen to look within the literature you could find papers that say that the earth is flat, you could find papers that say DNA isn’t double stranded. You will discover something. The issue is there’s hundreds, tens of hundreds, a whole bunch of hundreds, thousands and thousands of different papers that refute that.

What these folks do, is that they search, they discover one paper or two papers that make an outlandish declare based mostly on dangerous information that a whole bunch or hundreds or tens of hundreds of different papers refute, they don’t point out every thing that refutes it. They solely point out, oh, look, I discovered a paper that claims spike is round for 9 months! It’s simply not true.

Many good research haven’t seen that. The RNA is gone in days. It doesn’t go to the mind. It doesn’t go to the eyes. What these research did is that they put large doses of RNA right into a mouse and used very delicate assays, and that’s the place it went. It goes in every single place. If you happen to put a vaccine equal dose, you see it within the muscle, you see it within the draining lymph node, and that’s about it.

However how sure are we that mRNA shouldn’t be persevering with to provide spike protein? As an example, the preprint authored by Akiko Iwasaki, which incorporates effectively revered Yale researchers. That’s a paper that discovered a minimum of residual spike protein.

The issue is that they used a nasty assay to measure spike. It’s an extremely, ultra-sensitive assay, nevertheless it makes plenty of errors, and also you don’t imagine something except it’s above a sure degree as actual. What they reported was within the unknown space the place it may simply be noise within the assay versus actual spike. Many different assays utilizing good experiments, utilizing good assays, don’t discover spike protein circulating.

(In late August, Iwasaki advised STAT: “We now have already completed two totally different orthogonal approaches to measure spike proteins to this point however are actually engaged on creating extra delicate and correct strategies to additional validate our findings.”)

How certain are you? How certain are you that there isn’t any case of mRNA being distributed extra extensively within the physique?

I do know it’s not distributed extensively. I imply, we confirmed that again in 2017 at vaccine doses. We’ve checked out mice, we’ve checked out macaques, we’ve checked out rabbits, and we’ve completed as a lot as we may on people at a vaccine dose. You don’t see RNA circulating within the placenta, within the testes, within the coronary heart, within the eye, within the mind, all of the locations that they listing. We and plenty of others have regarded and we simply don’t see it.

And the mRNA couldn’t be persistent? Might one dose of mRNA proceed to make spike protein for months in a uncommon affected person?

It’s completely unattainable. MRNA is degraded extremely quickly. Whenever you modify it, it’s a little bit slower. It’ll final 24 hours. It by no means, ever lasts six months. That’s simply unattainable. However I could make an assay that provides you any reply you need, and that’s what these folks have completed.

I’d prefer to learn particularly from the issues about mRNA vaccines made by Dr. Retsef Levi, the chair of the working group for ACIP. We coated his concern about “extensive biodistribution and extended persistence of spike, mRNA and nano-lipid particles.” He additionally wrote that there are extended immune responses that aren’t understood.

In people who find themselves vaccinated, it was extremely uncommon to see that. It was largely immunized mice. You possibly can at all times discover individuals who react in another way. You possibly can at all times discover individuals who don’t reply, as an illustration.

One other concern is a “body shift resulting in manufacturing of unintended proteins and associated immune response,” that means the vaccine has modified the best way that DNA is learn to make proteins.

That was one paper that claimed that uridine prompted a frameshift mutation and induced immune responses. It was by no means seen in hundreds and hundreds of different research.

What in regards to the challenge of DNA contamination — that DNA impurities are current at too excessive a degree and that the lipoprotein that permits the mRNA to get into cells may result in them being taken up?

Nearly each vaccine has DNA contamination. Whether it is constructed from eggs, whether it is constructed from dwelling cells, whether it is an inactivated virus, if it’s a reside virus. They’re all grown in cells and cells have DNA. So once you purify the virus, you get very low ranges of DNA contamination. We’ve by no means seen an opposed occasion. 

And these are minute quantities. For mRNA, the DNA strands are a few nucleotides lengthy. We’ve by no means seen them combine into the chromosomes or trigger most cancers, it simply hasn’t been seen. Folks give a milligram dose of DNA plasmid as a vaccine, it’s in medical trials proper now. We don’t see any opposed occasions from that.

Is there anything you’d prefer to say?

What involved me extra from these conferences is that they voted towards mixed childhood vaccines. They voted towards making Covid-19 vaccines out there to bigger populations. They’re going to seemingly vote towards giving hepatitis B vaccines to infants.

So if you happen to look again on the information, 250 years in the past, 40% of youngsters by no means made it to maturity. As we speak, it’s 4%. The vast majority of that lower is because of vaccines. Vaccines have saved extra lives than some other sort of medical intervention, together with antibiotics, together with every thing. Vaccines have saved an unlimited variety of lives. 

No vaccine was examined extra extensively than the RNA vaccines, and no vaccine was given to extra folks than the mRNA vaccines, and so they have been discovered to be extremely protected, safer than some other vaccine platform and efficient. They saved 20 million lives, and so they stopped a pandemic that was shutting down the world.