State’s politically appointed surgeon general claims vaccines can contaminate human DNA but experts say comment has no merit

State’s politically appointed surgeon general claims vaccines can contaminate human DNA but experts say comment has no merit

An assertion by Florida’s politically appointed surgeon general that Covid-19 vaccines can contaminate human DNA has been dismissed as “scientific nonsense” by public health experts, who say he is putting lives at risk by wanting to block distribution.

…

“We’ve seen this pattern from Dr Ladapo that every few months he raises some new concern and it quickly gets debunked,” he told the Washington Post, referring to an erroneous claim in September that the latest release of Covid boosters had not been tested on humans.

“This idea of DNA fragments, it’s scientific nonsense. People who understand how these vaccines are made and administered understand that there is no risk here.”

Dr David Gorski, professor of surgery and oncology at Wayne State University and managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, which debunks misinformation in medicine, told the newspaper: “I’ve never seen a state health authority parrot anti-vaccine disinformation as a justification for stopping the use of a vaccine that has saved so many lives before.”

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
    57·
    1 year ago

    Okay let’s talk about what Ladapo is pointing to. It’s this preprint from October of 2023 from the Center for Open Science (COS). Now preface, COS is an open place and there’s quality there, but it’s open, so there’s also bullshit. So approaching anything within COS should be taken with massive grains of salt. Additionally, you should take what I have to say as such too. In fairness, I’m relaying information from a person I know who works on infectious diseases.

    Alright let’s move on. What’s this preprint saying? Here is a breakdown, remember this is just a breakdown glossing over the finer points here.

    Making the mRNA requires scientists starting with circular pieces of DNA called plasmids. The plasmids contain the genetic code for the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. (slight aside here) The spike protein is how the virus enters your cells so that it can be copied, producing more virus that then subsequently infect even more cells. The idea of a vaccine is to have an antibody already within you that can attach itself to the spike. When an antibody is attached to the spike, the spike cannot attach to one of your cells, because the anitbody is quite literally in the way.

    (okay back to the main part) The plasmids are reproduced billion fold via bacteria. A chemical is added to the bacteria that makes them release the plasmids they’ve created. An enzyme causes our target spike DNA to be cut out of the plasmid and then another enzyme causes that DNA to be made into mRNA. A final series of enzymes then takes the DNA and slices it into nonsense, think paper shredder for DNA. The mRNA is extracted and that’s added to a nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC).

    (okay another aside) NLCs are made up of a few parts:

    • A surfactant which is a chemical that has surface tension. Here’s a cute example of water doing it
    • A lot of solid lipid nanoparticles. Think of it as really, really tiny blocks of lard. That fill the inside of the surfactant.
    • The actual mRNA also inside.
    • A liquid lipid basically a watery like oil that fills the rest.

    There’s other parts to keep it fresh and what not, but that’s the main points. All of these are easily broken down by your body since they’re all basically fat, oil, or somewhere in between those two (lard-ish like). The way they deliver their mRNA to your cell is by getting close to your cell’s wall and kind of “bubble popping” because the surfactant is made to do that when it’s touched by things like your cell wall. Sort of how a soapy hand doesn’t pop a bubble but a dry one will. It’s a bit more complex, but that’s roughly how it works-ish.

    (back to what I was saying) So we have the NLCs loaded up, but obviously during this whole process, some DNA fragments from the DNA shredder gets into the final product. This plasmid DNA is what Ladapo and the preprint are talking about.

    Okay so we now know where the DNA they speak about is coming from. Does it actually pose a problem? No.

    One, the DNA isn’t loaded up into the NLCs, so the odds that it’ll make it to a cell wall in the first place is really low. Remember the inside of your body is a torrent of flow, if your payload isn’t in a ship (NLC) it’ll get carried away by the flow. The DNA is likely to run into all kinds of random things inside your body, slowly damaging it until a random white blood cell sees it and says “this doesn’t belong here” and then nom-nom.

    Two, your cells have walls. And neat thing, it was a whole todo that lead us to the technology to convince a cell to take in a random lipid we gave it. TL;DR - It was really fucking complicated!! Cells don’t like random shit getting inside them. Go figure.

    Three, yes there is an even smaller chance that a fragment might actually cross the cell wall. Once inside there’s a whole dizzying city in there with all kinds of organelles doing shit. Odds are any one of those things is going to catch the fragment just floating around in there. And when caught is sent to the recycler.

    Four, your actual cell’s DNA is inside the nucleus. Which has it’s own complex wall and security system. The odds that any one fragment makes it pass that barrier are unfathomably impossible. But even still.

    Five, if it gets pass that. It can’t get integrated into your DNA. That requires a sequence of specific enzymes to signal to the cell to begin that process. Which random DNA fragment floating around wouldn’t trigger. The odds that, that function is on-going AND a fragment has made the long journey bypassing literally every security system in your body. Even with the preprint’s 5,100 ng/dose contamination, you have better odds of finding a specific grain of sand on this planet (1 in 7.5 sextillion), than that happening.

    (continued)

    • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
      36·
      1 year ago

      (continued)

      The preprint mentions this:

      Using fluorometry all vaccines exceed the guidelines for residual DNA set by FDA and WHO of 10 ng/dose by 188 – 509 fold

      Which is correct. The random DNA is considered a contaminant. But not because “oh no! It’s going to enter your DNA!!” but because of that first point I just mentioned.

      One, the DNA isn’t loaded up into the NLCs…until a random white blood cell sees it and says “this doesn’t belong here” and then nom-nom

      That contaminant will elicit an immune response to clean up the trash. That immune response can be your arm being super sore, you getting a bit feverish, and so on. You know, that shit they tell you about when you get the shot. 99.(a whole lot of nines thereafter)% of the trash will get picked up this way. But your immune response isn’t super big because it’s just trash clean up, your body knows the difference between that and infectious agent. The latter is what kicks in that tiredness and feeling really icky that comes with a vaccine, which that’s the mRNA’s doing.

      Which by the by the preprint mentions.

      However, qPCR residual DNA content in all vaccines were below these guidelines … with qPCR and SAEs warrant confirmation and further investigation

      This is because the preprint measured DNA via one method and got that 509 fold measure and then did it with a different way to measure and found < 10ng/does (that would be value the preprint is indicated in folds).

      And the thing is when these two values are so different, that is typically called BULLSHIT. Which is why on the way out they indicate “warrant confirmation and further investigation”. Basically, “I know my numbers are bullshit, but still… We should be on the watch!”

      And guess that’s the short version of this really long comment. The preprint admits, it’s fucking bullshit. And that Ladapo is resting on this bullshit for an argument is even higher piled bullshit.

      Okay that’s all I’m writing about this.

      • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
        20·
        1 year ago

        Okay I lied. This.

        In an exploratory analysis, we constructed dose response curves by plotting (Figure 8) the mass of DNA for spike (red) and plasmid ori (blue) found in Pfizer (upper panel) and Moderna (lower panel) vials against the SAE reporting ratio (SRR).

        SAE means Serious Adverse Effect and this comes from VAERS data. The same database that had someone turning into the incredible Hulk from a flu vaccine.

        Accordingly, for our exploratory dose response analysis we only used VAERS data originating outside the USA to reduce this confounding. Additionally, we have noted some discrepancies in data obtained through the downloaded version of the VAERS dataset

        I mean. Fuck these people and their bullshit. They are literally indicating that “yeah what we’re saying is bullshit” in technical terms but then get on Twitter and say “make a logical argument!” You basis for trend data on SAEs is shit. If qPCR in lab shows nothing (values underneath the threshold by the FDA), taking SAEs and saying “Oh well SOMEONE died according to the VAERS therefore there must be a multiple effect that if we take the base value we have found in lab and multiply by that, then it’s got to be a gazillion fold increase in DNA fragments!!”

        It’s all fucking bullshit logic and it’s a fucking preprint from October! No one is picking this up except the nuts because anyone with half a brain can see this is bullshit from start to finish. If you look at figure 7 and figure 8 in that preprint, we’re about to get algebra here, figure 7 shows a linear curve for both Pfizer and Moderna and Moderna is so clean, it goes off the graph when kept to the same scale which is why it has a red box around it. Then look at figure 8 where he adds in his SAEs, it’s a graph that just fucking flies upward geometrically.

        How anyone can sit there and present these two graphs and say “yeah I stand behind this extrapolation” is … I’ve run out of words, but it’s stupid! It’s literally this. What a fucking fraud. I cannot believe that this is the fucking world we are living in. This even being a thing people are citing is just quite literally the antithesis of science. And the ultimate conclusion of the preprint.

        Our exploratory analysis of the relationship between the residual DNA content and SAEs reported to VAERS is preliminary and limited in sample size but warrants confirmation by examining many more lots and vials

        NO. Absolutely NOT. Pulling an R2 out your ass and saying, “Oh this warrants us to get more free vials!” is some bullshit logic. To be clear, so the person tested in lab that concentration and found all the vials to be mostly clean (detectable DNA but under the FDA’s guidelines). And then took the Lot IDs of those and looked up how many SAE reports came up. Then took some Lot IDs that had a lot of SAEs and based on the information they had came up with a number of how much DNA would have been in those lots.

        So say you buy yogurt and find out 2 people got sick off the yogurt for Lot ID A and found that Lot ID A had 1% bad stuff in your lab. Where recall for the yogurt only happens at 5% bad stuff. Then you look up reports that Lot ID R had 23 people report being sick, so you go, “Oh well 23 is 11 and some change times worse, so Lot ID R must of had 12% bad stuff in it! I have no proof that Lot ID R had 12% bad stuff in it, but it must of have that much to get that many people sick!”

        THAT’S NOT LOGICAL!!

        Now granted the person indicates that they took some things into consideration and what not, but none of that matters. You’re just pulling numbers out of your ass. If you haven’t actually tested Lot ID R, you cannot say anything about it, especially using a database that people routinely lie to. And admitting that “oh there are some problems” doesn’t mean those problems disappear.

        I hate myself that I read that bullshit. I cannot believe this is the conversation. Florida is seriously fucked and it’s going to hurt people who don’t support this bullshit.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        53·
        1 year ago

        So the reptilian shouldn’t be worried about his food supply going GMO?

        (Heh. Thanks for the thorough write up,)

  • Gazumi@lemmy.world
    20·
    1 year ago

    So many levels of stupidity. Lets take as read that Lapado is not that stupid that doesn’t actually understand how the vaccine is created and works. What we have is a die hard republican looking for his own path to fame and wealth. The great tragedy is that he is aware that republicans kill black people preferentially. In the UK his medical registration would be suspended and almost certainly removed following investigation. His defended would be only to provide the scientific evidence to support his assertions or to plead ignorance. Neither would keep him on the medical register. How does it work in the US?

  • Tobberone@lemm.ee
    201·
    1 year ago

    As opposed to the virus itself, which is might be DNA (or RNA), which breach the cell boundary, which highjack the DNA-replicating parts of the cell to do what the bacteria does in the description IHeartBadCode writes, using the same enzymes to do whatever it’s DNA code has randomly come up with.

    [/S] Clearly the virus is a much safer bet!

  • Nobody@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Conspiracy theories with zero charisma are just conspiracy theories. Desantis failed to watch Trump closely. Make it entertaining. Put on a show. The substance doesn’t actually matter.