Preclinical studies of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, showed reversible hepatic effects in animals that received the BNT162b2 injection. Furthermore, a recent study showed that SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be reverse-transcribed and integrated into the genome of human...
Liver trial
This laboratory study from Lund University, Sweden has generated excitement amongst the anti-vaxxers, who claim that the BNT162b2 (Moderna vaccine) can be reverse transcribed to DNA in a liver cell line known as Huh7.
The idea that vaccines can “permanently alter your DNA” is actually not new. It dates back to the time of the first smallpox vaccine in 1796.
Soon after its introduction, cows were caricatured growing from the human anatomy, suggesting that the human body had been altered by the vaccine.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines work by instructing our own cells to produce viral proteins, in this instance, spike proteins, which are then recognised by our immune system as foreign.
This in turn triggers the production of long-lasting antibodies, B and T cells that form a defence against any future infection by SARS-CoV-2.
SARS-COV-2 is an RNA virus which does not have the means to produce a DNA transcript, nor can it integrate itself into a host’s genome.
Likewise, it is not biologically possible for the mRNA from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines to be reverse transcribed into the human DNA.
Secondly, the vaccine mRNA and the human DNA reside in two different compartments of the cell. Our DNA stays in the nucleus, while the vaccine mRNA is only delivered by the nanoparticle into the cytoplasm, thus never entering the nucleus. There are no transporter molecules that can direct the mRNA into the nucleus.
Thirdly, the petri dish experiment used cancer cell lines (Huh7 was derived from a liver cancer) that behaves very differently from normal cell lines and are not representative of normal human cells.
The Huh7 cells used in this laboratory experiment produces an enzyme called the LINE-1 enzyme, which is a reverse transcriptase that converts mRNA into DNA.
Although normal human cells do contain the LINE-1 gene, it is not expressed. In other words, regular human cells do not produce the LINE-1 enzyme to perform the reverse transcription necessary to convert the RNA to DNA.
Furthermore, a laboratory study is not a clinical study, and cannot be extrapolated to make any conclusion about what would happen in a human body.
Fourthly, the Swedish investigators used abnormally high amounts of vaccine in their studies, which is non-physiological. They injected two micrograms for 200,000 cells, which is very excessive, when the physiological dose in the mRNA vaccine is 30 micrograms for the entire human body (30 trillion cells, or 30,000,000,000,000)
Finally, a close analysis of the study shows that the investigators did not provide any evidence of genome integration as claimed. No test was undertaken to confirm integration into the cell DNA.
In fact, in concluding the study, the authors pointed out that their study does not show that the Pfizer vaccine integrates with the liver cell DNA, or alters it in any way.