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.
