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Can the COVID Vaccine Change Your DNA?
Curious - he never answers this question.
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I noticed that too. Iâm assuming it was an oversight, but he does create a bit of confusion when he mentions RNA retroviruses that actually do alter your DNA.
For those who are curious, the vaccine has an extremely tiny chance of altering your DNA. The human genome is littered with around 10,000 pseudogenes derived from mRNA (i.e. processed pseudogenes), and those are all that have accumulated over millions of years. Your cells are full of mRNA at any moment in time, and very rarely does your own mRNA insert itself back into your genome. The chances of a transient mRNA that lasts a day or two creating a processed pseudogene is exceedingly low.
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Why did it take over 3 minutes to say âNoâ?
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And even if one did, the result is a single cell in your body having the pseudogene, and it will likely eventually die and be replaced by a âwild-typeâ cell in the normal course of cellular replacement. Changing the DNA of a few random cells in your body is unlikely to cause any issues.
I wonder if a lot of laypeople imagine that the viral mRNA in the vaccine will somehow alter âtheir genomeâ, in the sense that somehow their unique genome will be changed, either by altering the DNA in all their cells or changing the âmaster copyâ that they might imagine they have somewhere. I donât know if everyone grasps that their genome isnât this one single thing that can be altogether changed.
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Well my guess is because he doesnât want to say no to something he genuinely doesnât know whether it can. And it probably can.
I am doubly vaccinated myself, and I even got the AstraZeneca vaccine for my 1st shot(all the way back in early March), which later was banned in Denmark due to fears of it being able to cause rare bloodclots. I got the Moderna vaccine for the 2nd shot.
Even though the odds of any one piece of mRNA getting itself inserted somewhere in the human genome following some accidental reverse transcription are exceedingly low, when so many hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated with so many hundreds of thousands to millions of copies of mRNA, it seems to me virtually guaranteed that a few years from now, someone, somewhere, will be found to have such an insertion originating from a mRNA containing vesicle that made it all the way to the nucleus in some cell, and most likely only in a somatic cell line, and probably in their deltoid muscle, where it sits inactive having no actual effect as just another piece of junk-DNA(it does not come packaged with a transcriptional promoter, so the odds it happens to insert somewhere and get expressed at appreciable levels are very low too, supposing it beats all the other low odds and manages to get inserted at all).
I actually commend Tour both for stating that he got the vaccine himself, and for appearing (to me) to try to downplay the perceived dangers it would be to find that something like one in a trillion of some rare individualâs cells will be found to have a SARS-Cov2 spike protein gene insertion, because there are many other natural viruses humans are exposed to, that leave completely harmless DNA insertions.
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Do they also grasp that the actual virus deposits way more RNA and a whole gamut of different RNA genes into their cells? Are they also aware that their genomes (in selected cells) have probably already been altered by retroviruses? Going even deeper, are they aware that 8% of our genomes are retroviral insertions?
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It is likely that the mRNA vaccines are poor reverse transcriptase substrates - see this, for example. So the possibility that the vaccine can change your DNA is much more remote than the chances that any old RNA might.
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And still he never said âNoâ.
Perhaps when the video was edited to add question text, the editor didnât pay close attention. Tour was cagey about recommending people get vaccinated, but I should think he knows enough to answer âNoâ if he was asked directly.
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He was 100% clear that most the antivax arguments are pure nonsense.
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I donât really have a problem with the content of the video, honestly. But the comments underneath are simultaneously hilarious and terrifying.
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Agreed. Thatâs why I speculated about how the video was edited. It makes perfect sense if he was never asked the title question.
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The comments on Tourâs video is a cesspool of stupid so thick if you could harvest it it would be a ground-breaking material for tank-armor.
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This might explain why Tour was so guarded in recommending vaccination - he knew how his audience was going to respond. After my initial concern about why Dr. Tour wouldnât answer the question directly, Iâm now thinking he acted very deliberately to try and reach this reluctant audience.
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Personally, I think there was an opportunity for a bit more education. For example, his reluctance to recommend the vaccine for children under 18 doesnât make much sense. If they are infected then they are getting the same mRNA for spike protein that they would get from the vaccine. An infection will also expose them to the other 20+ RNA genes from the rest of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. I personally think this information could change a few minds, but then again I donât share the same mindset as those who are hesitant about getting the vaccine.
In other news, full FDA approval for the vaccine is expected in the next few weeks. I wonder what the response will be out in the general public.
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I had the same thought. If he just came out strongly pro-vaccine, it would likely just turn even more of his followers off.
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At this stage I have strong suspicions the anti-vaccine sentiments of most of the abstainers have become so entrenched that they will just take that to imply that the FDA has somehow been bought. They now identify themselves with being anti-vaccine.
Rational people wonât care. The tin foil hat brigade will take it as more evidence of a conspiracy, that the vaccine was touted before it was officially approved.
Yes, and TBH I am surprised that they are almost unanimously anti-vax. Hopefully Tour will take that as a wake up call of how thoroughly he has bedded himself down with the science deniers.
I think this is exactly correct. In my view, this video will do a great deal of good, reaching a group many scientists canât.
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