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.