Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by jonhohle on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @08:51PM (#38778207)

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...

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Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by pseudalopex on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @10:34PM (#38778821)

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...

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Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by snowwrestler on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @12:00AM (#38779241)

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.

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Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by beowulfey on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @10:12PM (#38778695)

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

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Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by labster on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @10:20PM (#38778732)

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

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Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by johncolanduoni on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @09:08PM (#38778304)

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.

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Re:Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought by ceejayoz on Wednesday December 27, 2023 @10:39AM (#38783031)

> 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.

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