I admit that the title of this put up could be straining an analogy a bit within the service of my love of outdated Monty Python sketches and films, however what can I say? I first encountered them within the Seventies on late night time PBS after I was a young person, they usually caught with me. Additionally, it form of jogs my memory of how antivaxxers preserve coming again many times to assault one thing about vaccines that they’ve mistakenly or falsely satisfied themselves to be a the enemy, one thing that (to them) makes vaccines horrifically harmful. The issue is that they don’t possess a Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch to destroy this specific killer rabbit, or, in the event that they do, they proceed to rely to 5 and blow themselves up, as an alternative of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. Such was my nostalgia-fueled take after I encountered yet one more antivax screed in regards to the dreaded “plasmid DNA in vaccines”—and SV40, too!—from probably the most inaptly named antivax Substack bloggers of all, the self-proclaimed 2nd Smartest Man within the World (or, as I wish to name him, 2ndSGitW).
The put up that caught my consideration was his Substack entry entitled Would You Like Plasmids with that?, and after I noticed it I knew I needed to dig into my information base of fundamental molecular biology and college whoever this idiot is on what a plasmid is and does. Extra importantly, this put up provides me a chance to display but once more how there may be nothing new below the solar in antivax world, as a result of it explicitly references antivax tropes about SV40 and plasmids in vaccines that date again years and years. Conveniently sufficient, I’ve additionally been writing about them for years and years. Furthermore, it seems that antivaxxers have been extra lively these days pushing the outdated “plasmid DNA in vaccines is making them harmful” trope has been extra “than within the current previous.
When final we encountered 2ndSGitW, he was resurrecting among the most mind useless claims about vaccines and repurposing them for COVID-19 vaccines. I’m speaking the false declare that vaccines trigger prion illnesses (an oldie moldy antivax declare), which isn’t shocking provided that his complete Substack promotes nothing however quackery, antivax pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories, together with the outdated most cancers quack declare that chemotherapy doesn’t work. This time round, let’s see what he’s as much as with respect to the dreaded “plasmid DNA”:
Most BigPharma injectables are intentionally contaminated with the extraordinarily cytotoxic and extremely carcinogenic SV40 promotor, which is a simian viral DNA sequence that induces cells to multiply and burn out or mutate into cancers.
SV40 is damaging to people, and serves no therapeutic advantages; this poison was first added into the wholly pointless and exceptionally unsafe polio vaccines and was additionally intentionally put into the gradual kill bioweapon C19 “vaccines.”
Is it any surprise then that ever for the reason that polio vaccine rollout the pattern in most cancers circumstances has been on an unrelenting upswing, and with the introduction of the PSYOP-19 “vaccines” oncology expenditures have gone parabolic?
Bravo! Not solely has 2ndSGitW managed to regurgitate antivax misinformation about SV40 in polio, however he’s performed it in a wholly ahistorical trend. You would possibly do not forget that I wrote in regards to the concern mongering about SV40 within the unique polio vaccine method, method again in 2013. Let’s clarify why this take is so ahistorical.
SV40 within the polio vaccine
Earlier than I transfer on and focus on extra of 2ndSGitW’s nonsense, which, it seems, is simply an introduction to a different Substack by an antivaxxer of whom I’d by no means heard earlier than, Dr. Ah Kahn Syed, previously @arkmedic on X, the hellsite previously often known as Twitter. (I had encountered him earlier than there.) Now he’s on Telegram, and a fast perusal of his feed revealed just about what I anticipated. Earlier than I get to the “meat” of Syed’s put up, first let me be aware what actually occurred with respect to SV40 and the polio vaccine. The lengthy model from 11 years in the past might be discovered right here, however I believe it value repeating a CliffsNotes model for many who don’t need to return to that put up.
Approach again within the late Fifties, batches of polio vaccine had been inadvertently contaminated with a monkey virus often known as SV40, which stands for “Simian Vacuolating Virus 40” or “Simian Virus 40.” The polio vaccines developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin within the Fifties had been developed after which manufactured by rising the polio virus in kidney cells derived from Asian rhesus monkeys. Salk’s polio vaccine was a killed vaccine, wherein the viral particles had been inactivated with formaldehyde and the killed virus injected to provide an antibody response towards reside polio virus. Furthermore, it contained little or no SV40, and what little was there was inactive, as a result of the formaldehyde additionally inactivated the SV40 virus. Sabin’s virus, then again, was a reside virus vaccine and was extra closely contaminated with SV40.
In 1959, a researcher on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being named Bernice Eddy seen that monkey kidney cells had been dying with out an apparent trigger that she may discover. (Observe that she was additionally a essential participant within the Cutter incident, wherein she found that the vaccines manufactured by Cutter Laboratories had reside polio virus in them.) She made extracts of the cells and injected them below the pores and skin of 23 new child hamsters; inside 9 months 20 of them developed massive tumors. In the meantime, vaccine pioneer Maurice Hilleman and his collaborator Ben Candy remoted the virus accountable after which discovered SV40 was present in each the Sabin and Salk vaccines. As an apart, one incident on this historical past that made conspiracy mongering a lot simpler occurred when Eddy introduced her findings and considerations to Dr. Joseph Smadel, chief of the NIH’s biologics division, who, it should be admitted, made an enormous mistake and dismissed the tumors as innocent “lumps.”
By 1961, there was important concern amongst U.S. Public Well being Service officers, because it has been discovered that as many as one-third of oral polio vaccine doses had been tainted. Consequently, though there was no proof on the time that SV40 was dangerous to people, it was ordered that producers discover a option to remove SV40 from all future vaccines, which, to their credit score, they promptly did. New procedures had been developed to neutralize any SV40 and SV40-free African inexperienced monkeys had been then used to provide the majority of the vaccine as an alternative of rhesus monkeys. Exhibiting that no good deed goes unpunished, a 3 many years later conspiracy theorists latched on to the African inexperienced monkeys because the vector by which the AIDS virus was introduced into the U.S. through the brand new polio vaccines. These actions had been all properly and good, however the authorities additionally didn’t recall the contaminated vaccine shares and didn’t notify the general public, as a result of authorities officers had been frightened a couple of panic that may jeopardize the vaccine program. In any case, by 1963, SV40 had been eradicated from the nation’s polio vaccine inventory. Nonetheless, thousands and thousands of individuals within the US had acquired oral vaccine contaminated with SV40.
However does SV40 trigger most cancers in people, as antivaxxers have been concern mongering about since at the very least the 1900s? In a phrase, so far as we are able to inform, no. I additionally mentioned the proof intimately in my put up on the topic and subsequently received’t recount it intimately right here, though this 2007 overview article summarizes the proof that there was no correlation between publicity to SV40-tainted polio vaccine and an elevated threat of most cancers.
None of this stops 2ndSGitW from citing Syed and ranting:
The next article is an absolute should learn because it additional exposes simply what sort of murderous sociopaths are working the Medical Industrial Complicated and their BigPharma partners-in-crime — we might conclude that no vaccines are protected and efficient, and that each one of them should be prevented just like the bioterror plagues that they’re.
I additionally wish to level out how a lot of a conspiracy idea that is. Bear in mind, what antivaxxers like 2ndSGitW are saying just isn’t that the federal government “coated up” that oral polio vaccine had develop into contaminated with small quantities of SV40 virus (though its not saying it to the general public was unforgivable and solely considerably comprehensible), however slightly that the federal government had deliberately contaminated the oral polio vaccine with SV40. In fact, this makes zero sense. On condition that nobody knew what SV40 may do or had any concept that SV40 injected in excessive concentrations may induce tumors in mice, what attainable motive may there be? And, then, why would the federal government inform vaccine producers to do away with SV40 contamination strictly on the idea of the precautionary precept based mostly on a slightly small animal experiment? As a result of they’re sociopaths?
One can also’t assist however be aware that, for all his pretensions of being smarter than scientists (and, I suppose, the typical antivaxxer), like most antivaxxers, 2ndSGitW conflates the SV40 virus with the SV40 promoter sequence in a plasmid. Let’s simply say that the 2 will not be the identical factor, as I’ll focus on. Not even shut.
However what about the remainder?
“Dr. Ah Kahn Syed” regurgitates a “biggest hits” of plasmid nonsense
So let’s go to the pseudonymous antivaxxer Dr. Ah Kahn Syed, or Arkmedic. Since I’ve been out of it for some time, attributable to private points and my having needed to prepare to provide a chat in Wisconsin on Friday (a chat that may properly find yourself being the idea for a paper, or at the very least an honest SBM weblog put up), I hadn’t seen that Australian antivaxxers had been dredging up the “SV40 DNA contamination in vaccines” declare to assault the Australian equal of our FDA.
In any case, Arkmedic (the ‘nym I’ll use as a result of it’s simpler to kind) first states:
Plasmids are DNA sequences utilized by laboratories to fabricate vaccines and biologics and include components that ought to by no means get to the human provide chain.
It seems that this has been taking place for many years, found following unbiased investigation into the COVID vaccines.
Revelations this week implicate each recombinant vaccine at present in use, on this main contamination scandal.
Inform me you don’t perceive fundamental molecular biology with out telling me you don’t perceive fundamental molecular biology. It’s, after all, true that plasmids include DNA sequences. In short, they’re small, round DNA sequences that may replicate exterior of the chromosome, mostly present in micro organism, the place they seem to have developed to be able to let micro organism cross helpful genes backwards and forwards, similar to genes encoding proteins that make them proof against particular antibiotics. Certainly, plasmids had been first found within the late Fifties after the invention that extrachromosomal antibiotic resistance (R) components are the accountable brokers for the transmissibility of a number of antibiotic resistance among the many enterobacteria. It wasn’t till the Seventies, nevertheless, that molecular biologists labored out how helpful plasmids may very well be to make use of as vectors to introduce genes into cells and induce the cells to make the proteins encoded by these genes, first in micro organism, primarily E. coli. Over the following couple of many years, scientists discovered to make use of restriction enzymes to introduce virtually no matter sequence they needed into plasmids, massive portions of which may very well be produced by introducing them into E. coli and rising the micro organism in nutrient broth, after which the micro organism may very well be lysed and the specified plasmid remoted. (I did numerous this as a graduate pupil within the early Nineties and was a analysis fellow within the late Nineties, in preparation to make use of plasmids in my experiments. Generally I can nonetheless scent the yeast from the liters of LB broth I used to make use of to develop up the micro organism.)
So what had been the 2 occasions that supposedly triggered Arkmedic’s concern mongering Substack? I’ll let him say:
The first of those occasions is the dramatic passage of the Port Hedland council movement1in Australia final week to
(1) recognise that there’s unacceptable ranges of plasmid DNA contamination of the “mRNA” COVID vaccines and
(2) to tell recipients of stated vaccines, and well being practitioners, of this contaminant.[The story is covered by the excellent Alison Bevage here including articles from Rebekah Barnett and Julian Gillespie with more details on the background to the vote here and Russell Broadbent MP’s letter to the Prime Minister here]
Of the 2 councillors that voted to proceed to maintain the residents at the hours of darkness on this challenge, one was the mayor who managed to get himself embroiled in a scandal of his personal in 2022 while on a video assembly with a college board receiving some Vietnamese strawberries in a slightly unorthodox method. There was no suggestion on the time of writing that Mayor Carter’s voting determination was in any method compromised by his vacation escapades. It must be recognised nevertheless that Mayor Carter did dye his hair for final week’s occasion (in case you don’t recognise him).
This could all sound very acquainted to any common reader right here, as I’ve been writing about American antivaxxers having claimed the identical factor, typically citing dangerous science by Kevin McKernan and Philip Buckhaults, sadly typically believed by professional scientists, together with a (former) scientific hero of mine, Dr. Wafik El-Diery, an oncologist and most cancers researcher who has performed numerous work on the tumor suppressor proteins p53 and p21 who, sadly, discovered Buckhaults’ dangerous science way more convincing than he ought to have. Certainly, Buckhaults himself testified in entrance of testified earlier than South Carolina Senate Medical Affairs Advert-Hoc Committee on DHEC in his lab coat, producing a viral video (language intentional) that promoted the false thought far and vast that COVID-19 vaccines had been contaminated with far more SV-40-containing plasmid DNA than the FDA allowed. On this, I thought of him a helpful fool for the antivax motion, a professional scientist maybe too all for making a splash on social media by selling a contrarian discovering that was incorrect.
Sadly, it appears as if Australian antivaxxers have been profitable in getting an area authorities to vote to name for the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and to warn all healthcare suppliers in regards to the vaccines inside its jurisdiction utilizing misinformation and dangerous science. (Sure, they cited Kevin McKernan’s terrible preprint that had been circulating for a lot of months earlier than this and whose dangerous science partly influenced Florida Surgeon Common Dr. Joseph Ladapo to challenge “steerage” filled with misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.)
In equity, it seems to have been a report by David Speicher in September that sparked Australian antivaxxers to behave:similar to it’s:
And right here’s a put up linking to an article that features the report, which yow will discover in a Dropbox hyperlink:
I be aware that David Speicher seems to be utilizing strategies just like those utilized by David McKernan. Furthermore, within the strategies part, I discovered that he examined solely three vials of vaccine, each of which had expired practically two years earlier, and for one of many vials the seal had been damaged, suggesting that the vaccine vial had been accessed. Critically, get a load of this:
On Might 14, 2024, I acquired three Australian vials of COVID-19 modRNA vaccines on the College of Guelph (Desk 1; from Left to Proper in Determine 1). These vials had been shipped on 15kg of dry ice, however when the package deal was acquired there was no dry ice within the package deal and contents had been cool to the contact, however not heat. Temperature of the package deal was not recorded. The vials had been instantly positioned in a laboratory fridge (+2° -8° C ) till examined. The Pfizer vials had been unopened had been untampered as they’d intact flip-off plastic caps with printed lot numbers and expiration dates. The Moderna vial didn’t have an intact flip-off plastic cap and seems to have been used because the septum seemed to be punctured, and the contents of the vial was at half quantity.
Does anybody see the issue with this instantly? One factor I’ve emphasised in my earlier discussions is how a lot much less secure RNA is than DNA. RNA degrades in aqueous resolution a lot sooner than DNA does. We do not know how these vials had been saved, and the longer they had been saved at a temperature that allowed for the degradation of mRNA, the upper the obvious DNA-to-RNA ratio would develop into. That alone ought to make you query the outcomes, no matter they’re. That is, in actual fact, a ineffective experiment. Unsurprisingly, I additionally seen among the identical methodological issues that McKernan’s work had, which I’d handle in a future put up, both right here or at my not-so-super-secret different weblog. Suffice to say that this examine isn’t any extra convincing than these of McKernan or Buckhaults, together with his discovering that by PCR, solely two runs of 1 vial barely exceeded the advisable 10 ng/ml quantity of DNA (the remainder didn’t) and his use of a fluormetric assay that supposedly discovered a lot greater ranges of DNA contamination, possible attributable to methodology. (I mentioned these issues within the older experiments right here.)
Subsequent up from Arkmedic is an actual blast from the previous, portrayed by Mary Demasi (an antivaxxer with whom we should always all be acquainted) as a brand new “bombshell”:
The second factor that has occurred is the bombshell exposé launched at this time by Maryanne Demasi of precisely the identical drawback within the Gardasil HPV vaccinations found all the way in which again in 2011.
Sure, these are the identical HPV vaccinations that you just had been advised had been protected when your daughter’s faculty despatched out flyers which simply forgot to say the residual plasmid DNA identified by the FDA to be a contaminant within the Gardasil vaccine (and others, which we are going to come to).
I’ll simply level out in passing that in that record is a lot of HPV antigen to absorb one injection – 270 micrograms. For comparability, the Hepatitis B vaccine (Engerix) has 20 micrograms. It’s equal to being injected with 13 injections of Hep B vaccine, every of a distinct pressure. In fact no one has ever checked out whether or not having that a lot antigen or having 9 strains of antigen on the identical time is protected within the brief or long run. The FDA’s Paul Offit (who has thousands and thousands of {dollars} of vested pursuits within the vaccine trade) stated so, however has thus far declined to take the 10,000 vaccines in a single go that he additionally claims is protected.
Do I really want to repeat how misleading that trope is about Dr. Paul Offit. He didn’t say that it was protected to take 10,000 vaccines at a time; he was merely debunking the “too many too quickly” antivax trope by mentioning that theoretically an toddler’s immune system has the power to answer 10,000 vaccines at one time, all within the context of mentioning how, although the variety of vaccines within the CDC-recommended childhood vaccine schedule has elevated, kids now encounter far fewer antigens within the vaccine schedule than they did previously.
Arkmedic even cites an outdated antivax chestnut from an outdated weblog pal, Sin Grasp Lee, who claimed to seek out HPV L1 gene DNA certain up in aluminum adjuvant. Bear in mind Lee’s use of extremely delicate nested PCR to seek out HPV DNA within the HPV vaccine Gardasil? Sure, that’s what occurred in 2011, the scandal that wasn’t however has been resurrected by Demasi 13 years later to bolster the false and deliberately misleading narrative that DNA contamination in all vaccines is extremely harmful? Right here’s the place having blogged about this form of factor for therefore lengthy is available in actually useful. I instantly acknowledge what antivaxxers are speaking about once they resurrect a decade outdated particular piece of misinformation in a method that somebody who has not been paying consideration as lengthy may not.
The identical factor with Arkmedic’s tackle adjuvants, which takes up a big a part of his put up. Principally, to boil it down, he factors out that a number of generally used adjuvants will also be used as transfection brokers; i.e., chemical compounds that facilitates the entry of DNA fragments into cells. Transfection brokers are sometimes utilized in cell tradition to introduce a plasmid into cultured cells to be able to induce the cell to provide the protein(s) coded for by cDNA(s) inserted into the plasmid. Certainly, the lipid nanoparticles used within the mRNA vaccines towards COVID-19 had been designed to do exactly that: To introduce the mRNA contained inside them into cells, in order that the mRNA can function template to provide the viral spike protein, which then serves as an antigen for the vaccines.
Get a load of this:
So which different brokers can be utilized for transfection, that aren’t generally considered transfection brokers?
Right here’s a little bit record to recollect – it consists of both transfection brokers that may act alone, or brokers which can be enhancers of transfection the place different brokers exist.
Polysorbate (Tween), which is a surfactant/emulsifier (reference) Metallic cations together with Aluminium, Zirconium and Cerium (reference3) Soaps similar to saponins used because the “novel” adjuvant in Novavax (reference) Histidine, a positively charged amino acid (reference) Do you discover something (other than the truth that every of these claims is referenced)?
They’re all adjuvants for vaccines, and just about each vaccine has at the very least considered one of these however some have a couple of. They’re in every single place.
The second me. Calcium phosphate transfection was once generally used…within the Eighties and early Nineties. It was extremely inefficient, normally introducing the plasmid into lower than 5% of cells. That’s why calcium phosphate was supplanted by lipid-based transfection reagents like Lipofectin or Lipofectamine within the Nineties. Right here’s the factor. These brokers had been extra environment friendly, however, even so, not significantly environment friendly. (Why do you suppose that virus-based strategies of introducing genes into cells, similar to replication-deficient adenovirus or lentivirus, had been developed? In fact, I ask once more: Why do you suppose that it was essential to package deal the lipids used within the lipid nanoparticles into microspheres containing “payloads” of RNA? Easy. It’s as a result of all these different strategies described by Arkmedic will not be very environment friendly in vivo (in a dwelling organism).
As for aluminum hydroxide, which is certainly typically used as an adjuvant, in my 35 years of doing molecular biology beginning as a pupil, I’ve by no means used (or seen AlOH used) as a transfection reagent. I be aware that the paper cited solely discovered that these strategies had been extra environment friendly than calcium phosphate, which is a mighty low bar. I additionally be aware that what we’re speaking about is the injection of a tiny quantity of adjuvant in a localized spot within the muscle. Even within the occasion that the adjuvant did perform as a transfection reagent, the DNA fragments are brief and don’t code for any protein due to how brief they’re. Furthermore, opposite to antivax claims, SV40 sequences haven’t been proven to get into the nucleus in important quantities and “combine” into the chromosomal DNA. Extra importantly, even when they might do that and, in uncommon circumstances, activate a cancer-causing oncogene (or any DNA fragment flip off a tumor suppressor), it will solely be within the cell entered. That will imply that the one most cancers that may very well be precipitated can be from the cell affected, on the website of injection. What number of experiences of this have we seen?
Hilariously, Arkmedic appears actually postpone by a 1999 paper that checked out transfection potential of varied compounds and adjuvants utilizing a plasmid and a reporter gene:
Arkmedic’s response? It’s hilarious to me:
The issue with this paper is that it’s brief, poorly written and reinforces the entire lack of expertise of the lead creator who had by no means written a paper earlier than and just about by no means touched the topic once more. The paper has no transfection graphs and we’re anticipated to consider that each vial examined with a plasmid had zero transfections. That wouldn’t occur. Even bare plasmids transfect a small quantity, so zero is an unlikely quantity.
No. For those who dump bare plasmid onto a plate of cultured cells, it’s unlikely that you’ll detect a sign out of your transporter gene indicating that some cells had been transfected. Bear in mind, within the context of any transfection experiment, a studying of “zero” doesn’t rule out that some transfection has occurred. It merely signifies that no matter transfection did happen produced a sign beneath the extent of detection. In any occasion, the creator used an outdated assay generally used within the Nineties, together with a colorimetric immunoassay that produced a coloured resolution, utilizing completely different options of the enzyme to provide a calibration curve. It was a superbly acceptable methodology to measure reporter gene output (and nonetheless is, though very dated).
Arkmedic additionally makes a lot of the cell line used, saying “Nobody makes use of that cell line” and noting that there are solely a few publications utilizing it in PubMed and claiming that the creator knew the transfections would fail. That’s a little bit of a conspiracy-mongering declare, for those who ask me, however right here’s one thing that, I be aware, antivaxxers appear to not have performed. They haven’t replicated the experiment in different cell traces that they may contemplate extra amenable to transfection and utilizing reporter techniques that don’t date again 25+ years. The way in which is open, though I’d remorse saying that given how misleading the experiments of Speicher, McKernan, and Buckhaults have been with respect to one thing as comparatively easy (conceptually) as measuring DNA contamination in a vaccine.
Run away! It’s DNA!
Every part outdated is new once more, as this put up by Arkmedic reveals. It’s truly for much longer, so long as or longer than even—consider it or not—the typical size of considered one of my SBM posts. Arkmedic goes on and on about SV40 and polio (already mentioned above) and cites claims that, opposite to all the great epidemiological science that didn’t discover a hyperlink between SV40-contaminated polio vaccine and most cancers incidence after the early Nineteen Sixties. It’s really what we within the biz name a “target-rich” surroundings that hyperlinks to different posts with misinformation that may take too lengthy to debate on this article and sure deserve posts of their very own, right here and/or at my not-so-super-secret different weblog.
The principle level is easy. The concern mongering about “DNA contamination” in vaccines one way or the other insinuating itself into your cells, then into your nucleus, after which into your chromosomes to be able to trigger most cancers or different horrible outcomes is outdated and appeared shortly after scientists began growing vaccines utilizing genetic engineering to provide the protein or peptide antigen used for a brand new technology of vaccines. It ought to subsequently shock nobody that this misleading narrative about vaccines “contaminating” or “altering” your DNA reappeared so quickly when a brand new technology of vaccines that use mRNA to drive cells close to the injection website to provide the protein antigen slightly than merely injecting a protein ± an adjuvant to be able to produce an immune response. Sadly, as promising as they’re and as protected and efficient because the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines have been, their know-how was mainly custom-made to impress such distortions of science and misinformation from antivaxxers like Arkmedic and 2ndSGitW.
You already know, in the long run, antivaxxers like 2ndSGitW and Arkmedic truly aren’t in any respect like King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They do exactly preserve launching frontal assault after frontal assault towards the killer rabbit.