mRNA Based Vaccination Therapy

The Epoch Times thrives upon holding governmental authority accountable. We should expect such an ethos, given the journal’s history with the Chinese Communist Party. Its anti-communist stance is needed today but sometimes generalizes into an anti-government stance with mixed results. Its reporting and editorials about COVID-19 vaccines are a good example. On the one hand, the journal reports on adverse COVID-19 vaccine effects that are not widely reported elsewhere, advocates that patients be heard, and tells the difficult family stories lived out among our neighbors. Its editorial page provides a strong voice for those who oppose government mandates. On the other hand, it sometimes discredits the vaccines themselves.

For example, this article attempts to show that the vaccines produced using mRNA technology are not really vaccines at all. This is misleading. In fact, vaccines produced using mRNA technology are simply a new form of vaccine. Scientific and technological advancement always produces new forms of existing technologies. Gasoline engines are real engines that, historically, followed steam engines, and they are both engines. Similarly, it makes no essential difference whether a pharmaceutical company uses an older method, such as using inactivated particles of the actual virus, or a newer approach, such as mRNA technology, to produce COVID-19 vaccines. Both are vaccines. Science and technology have simply expanded the kinds of available engines and vaccines.

There are a variety of legal and medical definitions of vaccination using a wide range of terminology. They rely on a philosophically complete definition of vaccination includes 1) a therapy that provokes the body’s immune response to a particular pathogen, 2) by introducing into the body a substance that is not the pathogen but fools the immune system into reacting as if it is, 3) given in advance of contact with the pathogen, 4) to produce antibodies that will fight that pathogen if and when the body has contact with the pathogen.

Both inactivated and mRNA vaccines meet all 4 criteria but operate by different mechanisms. In the case of mRNA vaccines, the mRNA instructs some of the person’s cells to produce a spike protein that resembles one on the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Thus the mRNA vaccine triggers the person’s immune system into reacting as if the body has contact with the coronavirus. As a result, the person’s immune system will be primed to produce antibodies to fight off the actual coronavirus in the future when the person comes into contact with it. The familiar inactivated vaccines do the same thing using a killed version of the virus.

The ET article also argues “that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines aren’t vaccines in the medical and legal definition of a vaccine [because] They do not prevent you from getting the infection, nor do they prevent its spread. They’re really experimental gene therapies.”

mRNA vaccines are not either vaccines or gene therapy; they are both: real vaccines based on gene therapy. In general, mRNA technology part of a growing gene therapy industry that has seen some notable failures but some successes as well.

Moreover, vaccines do prevent or lessen infection, depending on a person’s circumstances. Whether vaccinated or not, if a person comes into contact with the coronavirus, and the person’s immune system destroys the virus before it causes the disease COVID-19, then the person’s immune response has prevented infection. Vaccination strengthens the immune system’s ability to prevent it. Whether vaccinated or not, if the person’s immune system cannot prevent coronavirus contact from becoming the disease, it still fights and may lessen the gravity of the disease and its symptoms. Vaccination strengthens the immune system’s ability to lessen them.

It is simply not accurate to claim that mRNA vaccines “do not actually impart immunity” and that “they are not designed to keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2.” They are, but they do not always work perfectly.

A person could have immunity and still become sick. How well this or that individual’s immune system responds to an actual coronavirus infection depends upon many factors. How much coronavirus entered their body? Are they immunocompromised? What other underlying medical conditions increased their vulnerability? Depending on the circumstances, some individuals may have some immunity but still contract COVID-19 and experience its symptoms.

The Epoch Times has proven itself to be a defender of freedom, but in this case people need an accurate understanding of vaccines—pro and con—in order to make decisions in a free and informed manner.