A comparison with rabies vaccine may be useful here.

On the scope of the entire human body, the virus usually enters first, before the vaccine is used.

However on the scope of individual tissues and cells, the vaccine is often the first on the scene, prepping your cells before the (sneaky, slow) virus makes its main attack.

All of this is completely based on the individual case.

If the Rabies virus, or cancer, "beats" the vaccine on a significant scale, then it matters little what it is called because you will probably be dead in short order.

Rabies post-exposure prophylaxis is different because it's made up of several components: human rabies immune globulin (HRIG) and the vaccine. The vaccine takes a while to work so HRIG is the first line of defense that prevents the virus from entering the nervous system until the immune system is able to fight the virus.

From what I've heard it's still usually "preventative" because we can't confirm that the rabies infection will successfully infect until it's too late. So we vaccine anyone with (very) likely case.

This further redefinition of the term "vaccine" is a huge problem

by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe only Sterilizing immunity should be considered a "vaccine"

This is very important, because a "vaccine" in the US has legal protections other medical drugs, treatments, etc do not get, which is why there is a push to include alot of these things under the definition of "vaccine" so now they get the legal shield

>> by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe...

Hmm, I don't see the basis for this conclusion. This treatment is acting according to the common definition of a vaccine. Whether before or after disease activation is not part of the definition. As far as your personal belief, I understand that you may feel strongly, but I'm sorry to say that doesn't really enter into articulating an accepted scientific definition.

vaccine: any preventive preparation used to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific disease, ...

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vaccine

Could you be more specific about any particular legal shield? They all have to go through the same phased trials system. I don't see any reason to conclude this is a legal shenanigan. What they have created meets the well-known definition of a vaccine.

Without taking a side or another.. I just want to note that the definition you shared starts with "preventive" which is the point GP is focusing on.

I'm not taking a side either, but seeing as drug companies are shielded from liability w/ vaccines, if I was a drug company I would be motivated to lobby broadening the definition. it would just be good business.

Drug companies are only shielded for specific vaccines deemed necessary countermeasures. It isn’t automatic for all vaccines; the COVID vaccines had to be deliberately added to the list via a formal process.

> by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment

Umm. You have never heard of rabies or tetnus vaccines?

This is not a change in definition.

I am aware of them, these also should not be called vaccines.

This is a bullet you can bite, but it’s inconsistent with your original point: the tetanus and rabies vaccines have long been called vaccines, undermining any claim that we’ve somehow only recently redefined the word “vaccine.”

Edit: to be clear, this kind of argument is only slightly less asinine than arguing that a vaccine isn’t a vaccine unless it comes from a cow’s udder.

I mean the general problem is that the word vaccine has been merged with two meanings of "creating something so your immune system gets prepped to prevent disease".

Moderna here create something so your immune system gets prepper but it doesn't prevent it's used to fight.

I mean this word came from cow, you are right, it's time to redefine some of these terms.

That's not the definition of a vaccine. A vaccine is something that registers our active immune system against an antigen, so that our body detects and eradicates it upon detection. The timing doesn't really matter and there are a lot of therapeutic vaccines [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9729511/

It is now, it has been expanded over the years most recently in response to covid as to include mRNA in the definition of what a vaccine is explicitly to shield these big pharma companies from liability for any harm adverse reactions to mRNA may have to individuals

It is shocking to me that soo many people that normally at against large companies, and against even capitalism do not see the huge danger in classifying these things as something that gives the companies creating them an almost complete liability shield from harms caused by their products.

Once something is a "vaccine" in the US you lose all ability to sue for most harms caused by said vaccine.

Citation please? Here is the procedure for getting compensated for vaccine caused issues - https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation

It should not matter to you whether the compensation is paid by the government or a company, but you can file for compensation and if valid, get compensated for it.

there are all kinds of problems first and foremost is incentives if tax payers (i.e government) are paying for the losses why should they care if they injure anyone? removing product liability is universally a bad idea

Further there is all kinds of Due process issues that make filing a Vaccine claim problematic and very expensive to appeal, there are all kinds of horror stories out there about denied claims, and to appeal the denial is $$$$$$$$$$$$ and no lawyer will take it with out up front payment, and no class action is possible to spread the costs out...

That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place.

Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines. There are horror stories about everything and lawyers not wanting to take things up without upfront payment. But that does not stop those things. Marriage and divorce, child custody, DUI cases, police excess, companies overcharging for things, DMCA being used incorrectly, tech companies having too much power etc. are all problematic and very expensive to appeal. But we live with those. Similarly, there are trade-offs here.

>>That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place.

this is probably where the most of our different world view comes from, I believe the FDA is just a corrupt organization rubber stamping big Pharma, and serves no actual safety purpose. Given the revolving door between the major companies and top level positions in the FDA and the actions of the FDA during COVID I have lots of examples to prove my position.

>>Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines

Incorrect, the Vaccine process establishes an extra Judicial process where by a committee at the DHHS gets to choose if you were actually injured by the vaccine or not, skipping the jury process completely. if you are denied by the DHHS you have to jump right to the Expensive Appeals process, there is no way to fine a standard civil lawsuit and get a Jury of your peers.

Also there is no way to form a class if the FDA screws up and a vaccine causes harm to 100's. 1000's or 10'000s of people, each case has to go through the process individually

I understand that this point you believe the FDA is infallible organization that only cares for the individual, but the FDA has proven time and time again that to be false.

I think our worldviews are different. While I do not think everything is perfect with FDA, the world without FDA is much, much worse than the one with it.

Just because criminals break laws does not mean no laws should be passed. Just because corruption happens in FDA does not mean FDA is entirely corrupt and we should let everyone sell whatever drugs they can think of into the market.

I took it as the literal and previously accepted definition was uniformly changed by both government and secular organizations in near unison. As late as January 2021 vaccines were thought of as dead pathogens - https://web.archive.org/web/20210118194713/https://www.merri...

Merriam Webster's old definition did not exclude therapeutic vaccines. But it did exclude vaccines prepared from viruses.[1]

Probably you heard about diphtheria and tetanus vaccines before 2020. They are prepared from toxins.

Other definitions did not restrict what a vaccine must contain.[2]

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20190118214500/https://www.merria...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160402152957/https://www.dicti...

The word “vaccine” comes from the recognition that people could gain immunity against smallpox via infection with the less-deadly (and live) virus cowpox.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia

The definition has never been constrained to dead pathogens.

it started as live pathogens (cowpox) so it must have gone through many iterations if that were the case

Live poliovirus vaccine continues to be used, and continues to cause occasional active cases and transmission.

There were plenty of protein subunit vaccines and a few viral vector vaccines in use in humans prior to the COVID vaccines. Neither of these are dead pathogens.

> As late as January 2021 vaccines were thought of as dead pathogens

Oh, stop lying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine

"The first successful demonstration of a polio vaccine was by Hilary Koprowski in 1950, with a live attenuated virus which people drank."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine#History

> The technique of cultivating a virus repeatedly in artificial media and isolating less virulent strains was pioneered in the early 20th century by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin who developed an attenuated tuberculosis vaccine called the BCG vaccine.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html

> MMR is an attenuated (weakened) live virus vaccine. This means that after injection, the viruses cause a harmless infection in the vaccinated person with very few, if any, symptoms before they are eliminated from the body. The person’s immune system fights the infection caused by these weakened viruses, and immunity (the body’s protection from the virus) develops.

> The cancer vaccine: Moderna and pharma giant Merck are developing an mRNA-based cancer vaccine, mRNA-4157 (V940), for people who’ve had high-risk melanomas removed.

> for people who’ve had high-risk melanomas removed

This is still treatment. They aren’t administering the vaccine to healthy adults. The population is melanoma survivors with a high risk of recurrence.

Isn't this hair splitting on definitions? They are there for vaccinating against future instances of cancer after somebody is in remission from previous instances of cancer.

It's not a generally-distributed vaccine, but there are all sorts of vaccines that aren't generally distributed and instead applied only to populations likely to encounter the illness protected against (such as the battery one is exposed to if one travels to particular parts of the world).

They're treating the traces of cancer that are very likely left behind after the melanoma removal, that are likely to result in recurrence.