Are mRNA vaccines, gene therapy, according to Bayer? Caution

For the public convinced of the danger of messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19, the video footage is only a validation of what they have taken for granted for a long time.

But it nonetheless remains, in the eyes of these Internet users, overwhelming proof, since it would be an admission from the German pharmaceutical company Bayer – which had planned to produce the anti-Covid vaccine in 2022 – 19 CureVac before this one
be abandoned last month.

“As a reminder: A Bayer executive admits in public that mRNAs are gene therapies and that without the pandemic, no one would have been willing to be injected”, thus affirms a tweet relaying a video sequence of about twenty seconds.

As a reminder: A Bayer executive admits in public that mRNAs are gene therapies and that without the pandemic, no one would have been willing to get them injected pic.twitter.com/ucwTEldRYB

– MAMMIE Bocock (@ Medic4allHuman) November 8, 2021

Stefan Oelrich says in English: “Finally, mRNA vaccines are an example of this gene and cell therapy. As I like to repeat, if we had asked public opinion two years ago: “Would you be ready to undergo gene or cell therapy and see it injected into your body?” had a 95% refusal rate. I think this pandemic has opened the eyes of many people to innovation, in ways inconceivable in the past. “

FAKE OFF

This sequence is authentic: it is taken from the speech given by Stefan Oelrich, director of the pharmaceutical arm of Bayer, at the opening of the World Health Summit 2021 (World Health Summit, WHS), held in Berlin from October 24 to 26. . We find this precise passage on the video replay from the official WHS YouTube account, starting at 1’37’40.

This annual event which, since 2009, brings together many scientists to discuss “global health challenges”, enjoys a great deal of political support, this gathering being placed under the patronage of Germany, France, the European Commission and World Health Organization (WHO).

If Stefan Oelrich has established a link, in his speech, between gene therapy and messenger RNA vaccines – as many opponents of the vaccine have been doing for months – the Bayer group tells 20 Minutes that it is “d ‘an obvious slip of the tongue’. “At Bayer, [les vaccins à] MRNA does not come under gene therapy in the sense that is commonly attributed to this expression, ”adds the company.

A major difference between gene therapy and mRNA vaccines

Gene therapies consist in fact, as explained on his site the National Institute for Health and Research (Inserm), “to introduce genetic material into cells to treat a disease”.

“Gene therapy was initially conceived as a therapeutic approach intended for monogenic diseases (ie linked to the dysfunction of a single gene), delivering to cells a” healthy “gene capable of replacing the” sick “gene. Today, the methods and indications are much broader, with 65% of clinical trials concerning the treatment of cancer, ”continues Inserm.

Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, such as those from Moderna and Pfizer, unlike “traditional” vaccines, grow “our cells [à] produce the virus protein, as is the case when the virus infects us ”, as explained a few months ago at 20 Minutes the specialist in RNA structures Nicolas Leulliot. What lead some to fear a permanent modification of our cells and therefore a serious risk to health.

An unfounded fear, according to the many scientists questioned on this subject since the rise of these vaccines. “We don’t touch the genome. We will simply provide a photocopy of a gene, in the form of RNA. This photocopy is not intended to modify our genome. We are not going to become genetically modified beings, ”explained Nicolas Leulliot, when the director of the Technological Research Accelerator in Genomic Therapy at Inserm, Anne Galy, for his part detailed to AFP Factuel : “With these vaccines, we bring in an RNA molecule which will cause immune cells to produce very transiently the virus’s Spike protein, which will encourage the lymphocytes to react, but this RNA does not persist and does not remain in the body. “

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