Joe Wang: Nobel Prize for a Trojan Horse Development?

A screen at the Karolinska Institute shows this year's laureates Katalin Kariko of Hungary (L) and Drew Weissman of the U.S. during the announcement of the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Oct. 2, 2023. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Dr. Katalin Kariko of Hungary and Dr. Drew Weissman of the United States “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”

According to the Oct. 2 announcement, Kariko and Weissman “noticed that dendritic cells recognize in vitro transcribed mRNA as a foreign substance, which leads to their activation and the release of inflammatory signaling molecules.”

In common English, “in vitro transcribed mRNA” means foreign mRNA molecules introduced into one’s body; “dendritic cells” are part of the immune defence; and “inflammatory” reactions are signals indicating that the immune system is working against invaders.

In other words, Kariko and Weissman noticed that the human body would naturally consider any injected RNA as a foreign and harmful substance and would launch an immune defence against it.

Fooling the Immune System

What the two scientists had developed was a way to modify the RNA molecule by chemically replacing one of the four building blocks of RNA uridine with pseudo-uridine. The goal was to fool the human immune system (dendritic cells) to treat the modified RNA as non-foreign and non-harmful. The injected modified RNA can then escape the attack from the immune defence.

There are four building blocks—A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, and U for uridine—for any mRNA molecule.

This technology made it possible for the development of the RNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, as the modified RNA molecules from the vaccines could now survive in the human body (without being destroyed by the immune system) for a long time.

When injected into the body, the modified RNA would hijack the host cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The host cells would then have the viral S protein on their surface. The immune system would consider the S protein foreign and launch immune responses against it.

People who took the mRNA jab would hopefully have anti-spike T-cells and B-cells ready, so when infected by SARS-CoV-2, the protection would be there to prevent the disease and subsequent hospitalization from happening. At least this was the designed outcome of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines.

RNA and Messenger RNA

For people like me who have a Ph.D. in molecular biology, words like DNA, RNA, protein, etc., are very much part of our daily vocabulary. Even though DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and protein are common in our regular conversations, RNA (ribonucleic acid) is pretty much reserved for those working in the field, not to mention mRNA (messenger RNA), a kind of RNA that is normally single-stranded, with a function of carrying a message for the ribosome to read in order to produce proteins.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented vaccination efforts in the past three years, mRNA has now become a household word. But what is mRNA? Do the COVID-19 vaccines contain real mRNA?

The ‘Central Dogma’ of Molecular Biology and mRNA

For as long as human civilization, people had been wondering what is passed down from parents to a child that makes the child look like the parents. DNA’s role in heredity was confirmed in 1952 when Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase in the Hershey–Chase experiment showed that DNA is the genetic material of the enterobacteria phage T2.

One year later, in 1953, American James Watson and Brit Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, for which they won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This discovery laid the foundation for molecular biology. Crick declared that he and Watson had “discovered the secret of life.”

Then, how does DNA make heredity work? We know that proteins are the building blocks to sustain life. How does information flow from DNA to proteins?

In 1957, Crick discovered the “central dogma” of molecular biology, which is basically DNA makes RNA makes protein.

Simply put, our human chromosomes are made of DNA, which contains an estimated 100,000 genes. Every protein-coding gene contains information for the line-up of amino acids that make the protein. The following two steps are needed: transcription from DNA to mRNA, and translation from mRNA to protein.

In other words, mRNA is the messenger, the “delivery guy.”

Similar to a postman delivering a parcel, which shouldn’t take more than a minute at a door, typical mRNAs are short-lived, lasting only a few minutes before degradation. The four building blocks (A, C, G, U) are released and reused after the degradation.

When I initially heard that the COVID-19 vaccines used mRNA, the first thing came to my mind was, “Oh, it is mRNA. It will not stay in the body for too long.”

I was wrong.

On the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it claims that the following would happen after vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccines: “After the body produces an immune response, it discards all of the vaccine ingredients, just as it would discard any substance that cells no longer need. This process is a part of normal body functioning.”

Well, because uridines are now replaced with pseudo-uridines, we know that the modified RNA now lives in the body for months and can even find its way into babies through mother’s milk, according to peer-reviewed studies.

Since the modified RNA stays in the body and travels around the body, it may end up in many undesirable places. If the host cells (heart muscle cells, for example) carry the viral spike protein on their surface, the heart tissues could be a target by the immune system, resulting in autoimmune disorders. Could this be the cause for the unusually high myocarditis and pericarditis cases reported as a result of the jab?

The Trojan Horse Effect

Basic biology tells us that mRNA created in the body is meant to be short-lived, and the immune system would simply reject any RNA coming in from the outside. Foreign RNA would be considered harmful and our dendritic cells would launch immune attacks against them if they entered our bodies.

This system worked well for humans for thousands of years. Then came the invention of the modified RNA by Kariko and Weissman.

If the COVID vaccine RNA injected into the body is beneficial, as has been claimed by almost all official health organizations (World Health Organization, CDC, etc.) and now by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, then the work by Kariko and Weissman may have indeed helped saved millions of lives.

If, however, the RNA injected into the body is not benign and could cause harm, then this technology in effect plays the role of a Trojan horse by helping an enemy furtively enter the body and do damage.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.