Are mRNA Vaccines A Form Of Gene Therapy?
Throughout the COVID scare, the public have frequently been told that these new mRNA vaccines are not gene therapy.
I suspect that when most people here that, they immediately assume that the shots cannot change your DNA. There is, in fact, a potential mechanism by which this could happen (although this has, of course, been denied by the usual suspects) – but that’s not the main thrust of this article.
To continue, then, the answer to the question posed in the title of this article is, “Yes“.
Who says so?
Well, the USA’s FDA, actually.
This is a screenshot from a page on their site called “What is Gene Therapy?”
(If that page can no longer be found, or they have changed the above definition, then try this archived version instead.)
In terms of the mRNA vaccines, it’s the second part of that definition that applies here: “to alter the biological properties of living cells for therapeutic use“.
Traditional vaccines (e.g., DTaP, MMR) contain, amongst many other ingredients, one or more antigens, those being (according to Merriam-Webster) “any substance (such as an immunogen or a hapten) foreign to the body that evokes an immune response either alone or after forming a complex with a larger molecule (such as a protein) and that is capable of binding with a product (such as an antibody or T cell) of the immune response“.
mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, do not contain any antigens. Instead, according to the CDC, they “use mRNA created in a laboratory to teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies.” The protein in question, with regard to COVID-19, is the so-called spike protein.
In other words, they alter the biological properties of living cells for therapeutic use. Which is exactly how the FDA defines gene therapy.
So when the media tells us that these mRNA vaccines cannot change your DNA, they are hiding the fact that while what they say may be true, they are a form of gene therapy.
