Hippocratic Versus Technocratic Medicine
Many of our technocrats seem undeterred by the failure of public health policies and associated new technologies to mitigate the COVID pandemic. Consider, for example, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines. How successful was this technology in its first large-scale trial run in humans?A useful metric to cut through a lot of statistical noise is all-cause mortality. We can argue about the causes of death. Did this person die with COVID or from COVID? Was this fatality a vaccine side effect or a random temporal association? But we cannot argue about the body count. It is hard to spin death certificates. A recent preprint study in the medical journal The Lancet found that the mRNA vaccines showed no net benefit for all-cause mortality.
- 81 percent increase for 25- to 34-year-olds
- 117 percent for 35- to 44-year-olds
- 108 percent for 45- to 54-year-olds
- 70 percent for 55- to 64-year-olds
However, along with other concerned doctors and scientists, I’ve begun working with insurance industry executives and regulators who are keen on getting answers regarding vaccine safety and other potential causes of this dramatically increased mortality. But regardless of whether it turns out that vaccines caused net harm, it’s at least clear that the mRNA vaccines produced no net mortality benefits for the population. (It may turn out that an age-stratified analysis will reveal overall benefit for the elderly offset by overall harm to the young—the jury is still out. My read of the current data suggests that any benefits to some populations will remain short-term and will be offset by longer-term problems.)
We were reassured time and again by the health establishment that mRNA vaccines would not alter our DNA. The conventional dogma in genetics for many years was that DNA is transcribed to RNA which is translated into proteins: the arrow moved only in this direction, or so we thought. But we now know the direction can sometimes be reversed by enzymes such as reverse transcriptase, the mechanism found in HIV viruses. A recent study found that mRNA from the COVID vaccines was inserted into the DNA of human liver cells in the lab (in vitro).
This finding needs to be reproduced in animal models (in vivo), but this study suggests that the reassurances that these vaccines could not change our DNA may have been premature. We are learning as we go with this technology: shooting (or jabbing) first and asking questions later. Despite the lackluster performance of the mRNA platform in its first mass rollout, enthusiasts remain undeterred. According to advocates, this was merely an early experiment for these genetic therapies (one cannot plausibly call them vaccines any longer, even with the CDC changing its definition of vaccine last year to accommodate these products).
These are his words, not mine. Metzl explains, “The vaccines, in essence, transform our bodies into personalized manufacturing plants producing an otherwise foreign object to trigger our natural immune response.” The possibilities are endless, he waxes: “This approach will soon create a whole new platform for fighting cancers and other diseases, as well as for providing enhancements even more profound than vaccination.”
While these transformations were well underway before the pandemic, COVID “supercharged the genetics revolution,” which “will soon touch our lives ever more intimately.” This revolution will include not just enormous advances in agriculture, industry, and medicine, it will also “recast our evolutionary trajectory as a species.”
To Metzl’s credit—and here I agree with him—he advises, “The future of our species and world is too important to be left to a small number of experts and officials. We each need to take responsibility for educating ourselves on these critical issues. … We must all be informed, empowered citizens demanding accountability from our leaders at all levels.”
