16. Discussion
There has been an unwavering message about the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 from the public health apparatus in the US and around the globe. The efficacy is increasingly in doubt, as shown in a recent letter to the Lancet Regional Health by Günter Kampf [215]. Kampf provided data showing that the vaccinated are now as likely as the unvaccinated to spread disease. He concluded: “It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission when deciding about public health control measures.”
In this paper we call attention to three very important aspects of the safety profile of these vaccinations. First is the extensively documented subversion of innate immunity, primarily via suppression of IFN-α and its associated signaling cascade. This suppression will have a wide range of consequences, not the least of which include the reactivation of latent viral infections and the reduced ability to effectively combat future infections. Second is the dysregulation of the system for both preventing and detecting genetically driven malignant transformation within cells and the consequent potential for vaccination to promote those transformations. Third, mRNA vaccination potentially disrupts intracellular communication carried out by exosomes, and induces cells taking up spike mRNA to produce high levels of spike-carrying exosomes, with potentially serious inflammatory consequences. Should any of these potentials be fully realized, the impact on billions of people around the world could be enormous and could contribute to both the short-term and long-term disease burden our health care system faces.
Given the current rapidly expanding awareness of the multiple roles of G4s in regulation of mRNA translation and clearance through stress granules, the increase in pG4s due to enrichment of GC content as a consequence of codon optimization has unknown but likely far-reaching consequences. Specific analytical evaluation of the safety of these constructs in vaccines is urgently needed, including mass spectrometry for identification of cryptic expression and immunoprecipitation studies to evaluate the potential for disturbance of or interference with the essential activities of RNA and DNA binding proteins.