This mRNA technology has been in development for 20 years and deemed unsafe for humans. What made it suddenly safe?
Exactly!
“This mRNA technology has been in development for 20 years and deemed unsafe for humans.”
What’s your source for that claim? The University of Alabama says otherwise.
“the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 is no overnight success. In fact, they have a remarkable back story stretching back decades. Without one researcher’s determination, two companies with vision, a longtime network of university labs, and decades of taxpayer funding in treatments for influenza and HIV, particularly by the United States’ National Institutes of Health, COVID-19 vaccines might still be years away. Even then, it took a massive, unprecedented investment by the U.S. government to get these shots from labs into arms faster than ever before.
“The remarkable success we have seen over the past few months in slowing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States can be traced back to these four parallel stories and one big bet from the U.S. government.
1. mRNA vaccines: an idea more than 30 years in the making
When Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., came to the United States from Hungary in 1985, she brought with her a passionate determination to work on mRNA. Messenger RNA is fundamental to life: sets of blueprints, spelled out using four nucleotide “letters,” for building every protein in every life form on Earth. Karikó’s big idea was to produce proteins at will by injecting mRNA into cells, but her experiments did not work for a long time. Lack of success forced her to rely on one senior scientist after another to support her work, while she made only meager wages.
In 1998, Karikó partnered with Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania. Weissman was interested in developing an HIV vaccine based on mRNA. After many failures, Karikó and Weissman learned that natural mRNAs use small amounts of slightly modified nucleotides, in addition to the four standard nucleotides. When the scientists inserted the modified nucleotides into the mRNAs they were using in their research, they began to find that these modified mRNAs produced proteins efficiently without causing undesirable side effects. They began to publish their findings, starting in 2005. By the time the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 showed up in 2020, Karikó and Weissman were already working on an influenza vaccine based on their mRNA technology.
More deeming. If it can be deemed unsafe, it can be deemed safe, too.
Yay!