> It’s changes your DNA, mRNA changes your DNA when if you have your DNA tested now, and you eat a bunch of this, lettuce take a bunch of these MRNA vaccines, and you go back and get your DNA tested again, it’s gonna be a little different. It’s not going to be the same as it was that you were born with that you got from your parents.
I am curious; if I was infected with a retrovirus and took an mRNA vaccine, could the reverse transcriptase of the retrovirus pick up mRNA from the vaccine and reverse-transcribe it into a cell's genome?
I suppose the lineage of that cell would already be doomed from the viral infection...
There are two reasons I can think of why that wouldn't happen: first, there's no primer to even initiate the reverse transcription. Maybe you might get unlucky and there's something close enough floating around. But integration machinery usually requires some specific sequence to identify the ends of the viral genome. Maybe that exists, it's not my field, but I've never heard of one.
Also, even if it did integrate, there would be no promoter, so the vaccine gene wouldn't get expressed. So the only danger I see would be if it integrated into something functional, but the virus was going to do that anyway. But this is so improbable to begin with I wouldn't worry about it.
I believe there is some Crisper work going on to remove retroviruses from DNA. I think there was a promising trial recently with trying to strip HIV from someone's immune cells?
TIL that researchers are working on edible vaccines.
> Edible vaccines are genetically modified crops that contain antigens for specific diseases. Edible vaccines offer many benefits over traditional vaccines, due to their lower manufacturing cost and a lack of negative side effects. However, there are limitations as edible vaccines are still new and developing. Further research will need to be done before they are ready for widespread human consumption. Edible vaccines are currently being developed for measles, cholera, foot and mouth disease, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C.
There already are vaccines you ingest orally, but they aren't well known in the West. They are much cheaper to product, but also not as effective (so much more common in developing countries).
Oddly that article doesn't mention polio, which has had an edible vaccine for a long time. I'd edit it in but I'm not sure exactly how it relates to these others...
It's pretty goofy, yes, but on the other hand, don't we always bemoan how legislation takes years to catch up to malicious practice and wish legislators would take initiative?
The entire bill seems predicated on nonsense masquerading as science.
> It’s changes your DNA, mRNA changes your DNA when if you have your DNA tested now, and you eat a bunch of this, lettuce take a bunch of these MRNA vaccines, and you go back and get your DNA tested again, it’s gonna be a little different. It’s not going to be the same as it was that you were born with that you got from your parents.
Whoever wrote that drivel doesn't even have a basic high school understanding of how RNA/DNA work, let alone what an mRNA vaccine even is.
I don't even think the law is necessarily bad. In vague terms, if someone combines a food and a vaccine, we probably should treat it like a vaccine rather than a food.
I don't know if the law reasonably defines the terms, that would be my only holdback. I fear that in their attempt to legislate away something that doesn't exist, they may cast an overly broad net and break mundane farming methods.
It might get really interesting when we get more modern farming developments that "vaccinate" against plant viruses or fungus or someone, which someone who doesn't understand RNA can then get confused about and call on this law to label otherwise-boring lettuce as a vaccine.
This is kind of what I was thinking about. Or even something less sophisticated; I vaguely remember a story about some plants that were cross-bred or spliced onto tobacco, because the resulting nicotine in the leaves kept plant-eating insects away (and I believe there was some biological reason the nicotine couldn't cross into the edible parts, but it's been forever so I don't really remember).
Frankly, I don't even know that "vaccine" is a useful categorization for this. Vaccines, as a category, are defined by their outcome and intent, not their constituent parts or methodology. A properly refrigerated mRNA injection for COVID is a vaccine. If you heat that same vial up to 100C, it's not a vaccine anymore, it's just some junk in a vial. At the same time, a properly-refrigerated mRNA shot and a deactivated virus shot are both vaccines, even though their method of action and production share little in common.
No, certainly not yet anyway, and I'd agree that wasn't a great phrasing on my part. I'm still not sure what the right phrase would be for whatever nonsense people/companies/governments get up to before anyone gets around to making it illegal.
I realize the specifics here are mostly insane (as I acknowledged in my original comment), I just don't think we should try to punish it too hard, since it's (very) abstractly a step toward something we'd like to see more of. And the resulting legislation even sounds like (what would be) a level-headed response to the threat (if it was real), which is pretty rare even on a good day.
> The entire bill seems predicated on nonsense masquerading as science.
Is this a cynical lie or just a reading comprehension fail? The bill isn't "predicated" on this comment. It's one comment that was made about the bill on the floor. Not the text of the bill. Not a comment by the author of the bill. Not a comment by a co-prime sponsor of the bill. Just one politician speaking in support of the bill.
The purpose of the bill is to ensure that consumers aren't unknowingly putting vaccines into their bodies. Do you think it is unreasonable to inform consumers about what they are putting into their bodies?
The comment was made about the bill on the floor, *by its sponsor.*
If that is the best justification for this law that he could come up with, then I'm left to believe that it must be the result of either sheer incompetence, or a malicious attempt to appeal to conspiracy theorist nutjobs.
“””
Actually I’ve been reading about data for a couple of years now and evidently with this new technology, they can raise this lettuce is what they’re talking about first. They can raise this stuff so cheap, and I’ve been reading about it talking about putting it in and lettuce and mass medicate everybody, like they do with fluoride in the water. I mean, who could control the dose? If you’re if you eat a lot of lettuce, you’re gonna get a lot of mRNA if you don’t eat any won’t get any.
…
it was voted on and passed in the Senate.
“””
You can’t make this up
Does it clarify that things like water or salt solution don't can't as "vaccine ingredients" somewhere? Or is that like a default legal standard of some kind?
That Wikipedia page goes into detail on why jet injectors are no longer used, but there is no mention of the scarring. It used to be common to see people with a circular scar on their upper arm where they got the injector shot as a child.
No, I remember getting a vaccine that way, and it was different from the smallpox vaccine which was a bunch of little needles that left a scar. I got it in elementary school -- I want to say 2nd grade. I don't think the spray thing left a scar.
I had boot camp vaccines with a hypospray. You would rather have the needle, trust me. It hurts less, and the needle doesn't gash your arm if you flinch.
There's been various iterations of jet injectors. Some are better than others. I distantly recall having a jet injector used on me, but the only thing I remember vividly is the peanut butter shot. That had nothing to do with the device though.
Obviously, these lawmakers are not the subject matter experts on the topic, but I don't think it is accurate to call this a conspiracy theory. NSF has awarded at least one $500,000 grant to study plants as an edible mRNA vaccine delivery method.
Tennessee also just passed law against Chemtrails. So think it might be safe to assume that an entire legislature has gone down some internet conspiracy rabbit hole.
> “So does the sponsor know of any instances of there being food offered in the state of Tennessee that contains vaccines and some kind of a retail or public forum?” Campbell asked."
Close enough; they're banning one specific application of GMO foods while the Euro bans are more sweeping. The research that prompted this ban is talking about injecting DNA into plants which makes the plants produce a vaccine. That is a genetically modified food if ever there was one.
> The project’s goals, made possible by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, are threefold: showing that DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate, demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot, and finally, determining the right dosage...
So what's my point? I'm not opposed to GMO food at all, I'm just pointing out that the origin of the law sets the tone for the discussion. If the law is European, the discussion will be about how the lawmakers are enlightened, but if the law comes from America, particularly a red state, then the conversation will be decidedly negative.
It could be that it’s the origin, and it also could be that one law is about thousands of products that are currently being sold, and the other is about something that a single project is trying to see if it’s even possible.
Seems kind of odd that the “party of small government” makes completely frivolous laws like this to prevent something that very likely will never happen. Should we also make sure “food with extra-terrestrial genetic material” is outlawed, just in case?
They're responding to research and articles that are publicly presaging and promoting this technology along with the idea that blind mass medical interventions are somehow ethical as long as it's a vaccine.
Finally.. how hard do you think it's going to be to actually implement this law? Would it require a new cabinet position? A new department? A single new hire? Then how did the government "get larger" as a result?
I think there's a lot of people reacting to this article as if "vaccines in food" is a "baseless conspiracy theory" when in fact it's in the study phase. The world moves fast.
While the science and engineering of it is interesting and all, it's bad medicine to put things in the food supply, no matter how convenient it may seem superficially. There's always someone who is going to have a bad reaction, and the more it becomes normalized, the more stuff is going to become worrisome. The entire idea of dosing populations with effectively no ability to control doses is insane. What happens to people who pair these with grapefruit? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit%E2%80%93drug_intera... (and I also highlight the "Mechanism" section)
Passing a pre-emptive law against just lobbing it into the food supply to see what happens is nowhere near as nonsensical as it sounds. It may not be a serious threat right this second, but the cost of a law of this sort is cheap too.
(The stealth mRNA vaccine concerns some people have are silly, though. Given how hard it is to even inject them, they're not about to be passing through the digestive system any time soon.)
Whatever the substantive merits, passing a law like this at the state level seems like a waste of everyone's time and legal fees: the food and vaccine supply chains are pretty much archetypal examples of interstate or foreign commerce, so it's really going to be the federal Congress and the federal executive branch that decide these policies. State policies running contrary to those federal decisions will get invalidated on constitutional grounds, no matter which level of government enacts its law first.
> I think there's a lot of people reacting to this article as if "vaccines in food" is a "baseless conspiracy theory" when in fact it's in the study phase.
Eggs are used to produce flu vaccines, but that doesn't mean those particular eggs can be sold as a food product. The same is going to be true for vaccine lettuce; as with any other vaccination, they'll fall under FDA regulation as drugs.
States have a similar setup patterned off the federal government, with most things falling only in the purview of the states. In this case they're correctly making sure that vaccines delivered as food are correctly treated as such under the framework here https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-tn/transforms/tn/octn/r7...
Considering the active development this is very forward thinking and timely
Again, under Federal law and regulation, these theoretical products are likely to already be deemed drugs (and this determination would almost certainly preempt any state decision in the opposite direction). The legislation is, at best, redundant.
Sigh.