I'm no medical professional but this seems like a bit of an over reaction given the article. The article doesn't make mention if there is anything particularly negative about this. More focuses on the behavior of the mRNA after a given time.

I imagine to know something like that would be useful for later itterarations or variations of mRNA applications?

Making cells in your body produce an antigen that stays rooted within those cells and causes them to be destroyed is risky business. There are reasonable applications, like products selectively taken up by cancer cells that cause them to be targeted for elimination by the patient's immune system, for these techniques. And wider applications for products that cause a patient's cells to produce non-antigenic materials. I'm a proponent of mRNA therapies.

The mRNA (and adenovirus-vector) covid shots, however, indiscriminately cause (healthy) cells to produce and display antigens (the transmembrane-anchored modified covid spike) and, intentionally, kick off an immune response that gets those cells killed. I'm not a proponent of this specific type of pharmaceutical product.

> kick off an immune response that gets those cells killed.

I am not a scientist but I was to ask if this was the case for every vaccine, yet I reflected that no in pre-mRNA vaccines the principle is different: You body cells are not primed to produce an antigen. The antigen is brought externally and T-cells recognize it. They kill only infected cells.

If I understand correctly in mRNA vaccines, all cells produce the antigen (the spike protein) so they are indiscriminately killed by T-cells.

Is my understanding correct?

There are plenty of vaccines that use attenuated viruses - these also force your cells to produce antigens, and in fact the virus reproduces in your cells and damages them on its own as well. You could think of an mRNA vaccine as kind of like an attenuated virus vaccine, except for the fact that it can’t reproduce itself at all, unlike a virus.

Thanks I was not aware of that

There's a good page on how the traditional flu vaccines are made at https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/how-fluvaccine-made.htm

One of the "this is concerning" things with the traditional chicken egg based version is that they are chicken eggs.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-vaccin... and an amusing video on it from Half as Interesting - https://youtu.be/F0qD5argOHE

The corresponding part is that they are chickens and you've likely heard about the price of eggs recently ( https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/as-egg-prices-soar-t... ).

There is good reason to be looking at alternative ways to creating vaccines.

JPLeRouzic's point about indiscriminate expression is significant though.

The tiny lipid bubbles used to introduce the (recent mRNA-)vaccines should introduce foreign nucleic acids (RNA,DNA) just on the basis of there being a cell membrane to merge into, whereas virions ('virus particles'), attenuated strain or not, would typically (always?) co-opt some receptor or other trans-membrane molecule, other than the membrane phospholipids, to aid their introduction of foreign nucleic acids.

In other words, the virions are at least somewhat restricted/targeted in what cell types they enter, and in many cases even the susceptible cells can in principle affect their level of susceptibility by regulating how much of those co-opted molecules are created, or allowed to be transported to the surface. (Innate immune response includes cells generally becoming more wary about how they transport materials and metabolize molecules we might describe as carrying information)

So it's a prefectly good description, in my opinion, that

> [for these] mRNA vaccines, all cells produce the antigen (the spike protein) so they are indiscriminately killed by T-cells.

although there are indeed aspects which are similar with live vaccines.

There is in fact a conventional vaccine for Covid, but most people are not aware nor do we have access to it. The inventors did not patent it but made it a gift to the world. Buy hey, money and "do as I say". Oh it's called Corbevax.

Thanks, but it came late in the game (end of 2021).

I think there was also a open source Covid vaccine from MIT but I can't find a reference.

Soooo are you a researcher by trade and talk about experience?

Or did you just skimmed the article added assumptions from COVID deniers and I can ignore your rant?

I'm a layman and I'm pretty sure I read articles like this before .

Why would a COVID denier be concerned about vaccine safety? They already didn’t take the vaccine. I think somebody who’d taken the vaccine might be concerned.

Because they are obsessed with being right.

Because they often aren’t rational people. Are you unaware of the conspiracy theory. Ring passed around that people who got the vaccine are now tainted?

https://news.yahoo.com/vaccine-misinformation-spawns-pure-bl...

I find it quite remarkable how virtually everything about the last 3 years has been built up using appeals to authority such as yours.

It’s kind of funny how so many supposedly open minded people who thrive on questioning authority seem to all just fall into line when it comes to Covid.

I really wish the “are you an expert? No? I well than shut up and fall in line” argument would die in a fire. It is essential to be intellectually curious. It’s essential to question authority. In fact, it is vital to for both to be encouraged. Both science and democracy depend on it.

The more people say “shut up and listen to ‘the experts’” the more I get skeptical. True experts don’t derive their powers through appeals to authority. They get their powers by being humble and knowing they barely know anything. The science is never settled. Question everything.

“Appealing to authority” when it comes to deeply technical topics is the only sane approach because otherwise the zone is just flooded with morons who don’t understand the first thing about the topic promoting ivermectin or other random snake oils.

Do you think there’s some forum deep in the bowels of academia where immunologist and virologists are neck-deep in discussions about cryptographic hash functions?

I’m sure these threads have a huge selection bias because they become so toxic so quickly, but the quality of discussion on HN for anything Covid is one of the most confidently wrong places on the internet.

The appeals to authority are a response to the flood of online discussions by people that are confused by what “doing research” means and suffer from Dunning-Kruger. I don’t want to read any “just asking questions” comments about COVID or the vaccines unless the people have years of experience working in the field prior to the pandemic, because it filters out the armchair experts that we have so many of.

What’s funny to me is that not everything evokes this much scrutiny as vaccines. Why do relatively few people care about what they’re putting into their bodies via the products they find at the grocery store vs a jab in their arms?

Products at the grocery store typically aren't novel.

When they are (GMOs, Beyond Meat) you do see a similar reaction.

They’re not novel in as in a box of cookies is a box of cookies, but you bet your ass that the manufacturers are constantly innovating new ingredients and processes to make their products ever more shelf stable and inexpensive. Same goes for cleaning supplies and similar things you can find in the grocery store.

I'm very thankful that I couldn't be memed into taking that vaccine. I feel bad for everyone who had it foisted on them and I have nothing but contempt for the people still defending it.

Your comment raises two main straw-men. Neither of which seem to be supported by facts.

What stay-in-the-arms gospel are you talking about? What reason do you have, besides Campbell's baseless assertion, that such large-scale studies of nucleic acid persistence has not been performed?

Not going to dig for a source, but we were told that the spike proteins only get produced at the injection site. There was evidence that the spikes do damage and people were told not to worry because they didn't float around the bloodstream - this seemed obviously false to me, but whatever. Turns out the RNA goes everywhere now.

The problem isn't these facts. The problem is health authorities and companies destroying their own credibility with some more critical people.

How are his two arguments straw men? You are fine to ask for references for his statements, but these are not straw men.

Maybe learn the meaning of these terms before using them?

Do you have reason to believe that Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer didn't do this research longer ago, since they worked on mrna before Covid was a topic?

Because they know already. Many patient died from these jab DIRECTLY. But of course everyone must ignored it. You can see many medical researchers hesitant to research on this topics let alone getting published and then peer-reviewed. Personally I've known people dying DIRECTLY of the jab within 2 days of it. And I know many knowing someone died and not hearing from someone else someone else story. And yet, here even medical doctors have been cautioned not to speak about it or will face consequences not only from pro-vac group but government or medical board displine. So at this point, we will just have to keep it quiet until #1 a lot of people been affected like thalidomide years ago, or #2 nothing happens, and those did died are just collateral damages.