Thanks. Interesting piece about Alex Azar, would like to get more details. Further down into the piece he touches on the problems with getting bioreactors to deliver the exact proteins you want at scale, and that the mRNA platform is a way to get the body to be your own in-situ bioreactor. I’m guessing that this last bit will not be reassuring to the Vax Covidian contingent, but it’s a good analogy for this layperson.
But Azar seems to have forgotten or overlooked asking Malone for his advice. Wonder if that’s how Malone got his nose all out of joint at the beginning there?
And Fauci is always talking through his hat, which isn’t news. But he does come close to discussing the “why” of using only the S protein in the first generation of vaccines. I always figured that at least one of the reasons was that the guys who were developing these had heard of SARS-COV-1 and the ADE problems with the whole-virus vax that had been started from that, and decided they would like to avoid that whole problem. He kinda sneaks up on that, but then backs away, and alludes to getting some other antigens for the next generation of vaccines.
“But Azar seems to have forgotten or overlooked asking Malone for his advice. Wonder if that’s how Malone got his nose all out of joint at the beginning there?”
There would be no reason for Azar to have asked Malone for advice. Malone’s contribution to mRNA research occurred back in 1989. He proved that wrapping mRNA molecules in lipids, fats, protected them from getting destroyed by the immune system before they could enter cells.
It was an important discovery, Malone likes to call this “inventing mRNA vaccines” but it was at least ten years before anyone built an mRNA vax and I don’t think that he was involved. Malone feels that he hasn’t been properly rewarded for his discovery. He may want patents or a Nobel prize.
“the mRNA platform is a way to get the body to be your own in-situ bioreactor”
It was a clever insight. Our own DNA generates mRNA all of the time and that mRNA instructs our cells to build proteins. mRNA is similar to software. Researchers knew that with the right piece of mRNA they could get our own cells to build specific useful proteins that are hard to make in the lab.
“I always figured that at least one of the reasons was that the guys who were developing these had heard of SARS-COV-1 and the ADE problems with the whole-virus vax that had been started from that”
That’s what I’ve suspected as well. Whole virus vaccines were created for SARS-1; the vaccinated test animals generated antibodies to SARS-1; but when the test animals were challenged by the wild virus they died. VADE or some similar problem.
Researchers never figured out how solve this problem with the whole virus SARS vax and since SARS-1 had disappeared by then they simply abandoned the project. SARS-1 was no joke, the death rate was 9% but fortunately not many people caught it. It mostly affected China. I’m sure that the Wuhan lab must have been messing with a SARS-1 vax at point. Whether that directly led to Covid 19 we may never know