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Comment by anonunivgrad | Hacker News Reader

Is this also an mRNA vaccine like the Pfizer? No genetic vaccine has ever been widely deployed. As a young healthy person who could yet have more children, I’d rather get covid than take a genetic vaccine that might affect me or my offspring.

DNA vaccines have never been deployed because of serious concerns about the patient’s genes being modified by the vaccine. Scientists are saying they’re “sure” that mRNA vaccines can’t do that, but that seems overly sanguine. There is still so much we don’t know about genetics. How can you possibly have that certainty when observed epigenetic effects, for example, challenge many of our preconceived notions about the body’s genetic machinery but are so poorly understood. It seems that at least some processes currently thought to be “one-way” are actually not.

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> "DNA vaccines have never been deployed because of serious concerns about the patient’s genes being modified by the vaccine."

This is a false statement.

Here's an article debunking these kinds of claims: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-covid-19-vaccin...

From the article: "Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, debunked the idea that a DNA vaccine could genetically modify an organism. Lynas told Reuters that no vaccine can genetically modify human DNA.

“That’s just a myth, one often spread intentionally by anti-vaccination activists to deliberately generate confusion and mistrust,” he said. “Genetic modification would involve the deliberate insertion of foreign DNA into the nucleus of a human cell, and vaccines simply don’t do that. Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a pathogen when it attempts to infect the body - this is mostly done by the injection of viral antigens or weakened live viruses that stimulate an immune response through the production of antibodies.”"

>Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a pathogen when it attempts to infect the body - this is mostly done by the injection of viral antigens or weakened live viruses that stimulate an immune response through the production of antibodies

Not great for that guy’s credibility that he doesn’t even know what a DNA vaccine is. He’s described the kinds of vaccines in wide use. Not genetic vaccines, which work by introducing genetic sequences that encode the antigen, as opposed to introducing the antigen itself.

Key word being "mostly" in that quote. If you want to hear his description regarding DNA vaccines, just read the next paragraph of the article - quoted below:

“The DNA [in DNA vaccines] does not integrate into the cell nucleus so this isn’t genetic modification - if the cells divide they will only include your natural DNA. But this approach is incredibly promising for COVID because it can be scaled up very quickly, and is very versatile - it is easy to synthetically produce DNA sequences that match the required bits of viral genetic code.”

We can’t rule out reverse transcription in the human body. It’s a very real possibility that introducing RNA results in longer lasting genetic change. Probably not! But I’d rather risk covid myself. So should all fertile people. At least until we know more.

An mRNA vaccine slips into your cells via some lipid nano particles, a ribosome binds to it manufacturing and releasing COVID spike proteins. This provokes an immune response. Does not enter the nucleus, or touch your DNA.

Reverse transcription is a real biological process. We can’t rule it out in the human body. We don’t have enough experience to be sure. If this was the Black Death, the risk would be justified. It might be justified here for people above child rearing age. But fertile people need to be more careful with their genetics.

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