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I was sent this recent Food For Thought YouTube video.

It contains a number of wild claims about vaccinations.

In particular, it contains snippets of edited, unsourced footage of Bill Gates saying:

one final way that's new and is promising is called the RNA vaccine. With RNA and DNA instead of putting that shape in, you put instructions in the code to make that shape.

The text description states:

Bill Gates caught on video admitting vaccine will CHANGE our DNA FOREVER.

Whether or not the Bill Gates was accurately quoted in context, can an RNA vaccine permanently change the recipients DNA?

Oddthinking
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Felipe
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    To be more specific and to address the comments in the (currently only) answer, you might consider re-wording the question to narrow the scope. Instead of "Can an RNA vaccine permanently change the recipients DNA?" - perhaps, "Can an RNA vaccine *as Gates described it* change one's DNA permanently *as the claim suggests*? Unless you really are after an incredibly broad, "Can **any** RNA vaccine, **now or in the future**, permanently change one's DNA?" – CramerTV Aug 04 '20 at 17:12
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    I can't see how Bill Gates' words are supposed to lead to the claim about them. – Loren Pechtel Feb 27 '22 at 03:54

3 Answers3

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Later in that video the claim is specified a bit more, mentioning that mRNA with CRISPR/Cas will modify our genetic code. You can edit DNA with CRISPR, but that is not what is in an mRNA vaccine. The mRNA in an mRNA vaccine alone cannot edit DNA. In the CRISPR gene editing method the actual act of cutting the DNA to edit it is performed by Cas9, which is an enzyme, not RNA.

The quote by Bill Gates doesn't have anything to do with modifying the human genome. It explains the basic mechanism of mRNA vaccines. In a classic vaccine you use an inactivated virus, or just one protein of the virus. In mRNA vaccines you use mRNA that encodes a virus protein, which is read by your cells and that protein is produced for a short time. The code for creating that protein is never incorporated into your DNA, mRNA is read directly by the cells and protein is produced from it.

Your cells are constantly producing mRNA similar to the one in an mRNA vaccine (just encoding different proteins). You have to constantly produce new mRNA because mRNA is temporary; eventually mRNA is degraded and recycled. For an mRNA vaccine, no new mRNA is produced besides what is injected. mRNA produced naturally in a cell doesn't modify your DNA, and neither would an mRNA vaccine.

user21820
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Mad Scientist
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    Reads pretty much like a theoretical A. Epigenetics, altered gene expression, gene-drives, germlines… it all ends in your unref'd assertion "neither would" and blind trust into "does what's said on label". It is imo also too simple to reduce this to 'rewritten DNA', as I read altered genome also in 'how it is re-read'. The theoretical threat model has numerous angles, too much too link, but https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/hidden-layer-gene-control-influences-everything-cancer-memory https://ccr.cancer.gov/news/article/a-novel-mRNA-modification-may-impact-the-human-genetic-code – LangLаngС Aug 04 '20 at 11:14
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    Numerous articles like the ones linked will be used (right or wrong) to bolster the claim and I suggest to expand this answer to address the currently known and unknown but envisioned possibilities? Realism, reality and potential are different from 'maker claims to use stuff & promises it does just 'this'.' – LangLаngС Aug 04 '20 at 11:17
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    @LangLаngС your link is about epigenetic modifications of mRNA that affect translation of that mRNA. I've no idea what that has to do with this topic. And I can't really answer this question without restrictions on what is in the vaccine, or I'd have to address 5G microchips that might be in there. – Mad Scientist Aug 04 '20 at 11:24
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    *2* links out of hundreds that touch the subject *and* associated vocab. Disregarding any RT in the shots (that will be claimed) mRNA encodes proteins, (say some, incl Cas9, which *is* a protein/enzyme etc?) Never mind the complexities and probabilities of such a bio-hack, a pundit-hack will simplify them and use this to sound much more comprehensive than this 'Cmon, basic science' refutation. You just claim 'no evil plan, *nor* any side-effects possible'. I agree that any 5Gates would be overkill here, but this looks not comprehensive enough. There is no *the* vaccine yet & Q asks "an mRNA". – LangLаngС Aug 04 '20 at 11:49
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    @LangLаngС I have to make the assumption that the vaccine contains an mRNA encoding a viral protein. The vaccine isn't distributed yet, so nobody can verify the contents at this point in time. If someone were free to put just whatever into it, of course the vaccine could do pretty much anything, but that is not a useful question to ask. – Mad Scientist Aug 04 '20 at 12:02
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    And yet you chose to answer just such a Q. I see neither a comment below Q to such effect nor such explicit qualifications in the A. This claim is broad and widely believed, alas based mostly on fears, wrongs and even intentional misguidance. But some aspects overlap or look like overlap with 'state of the art science and practice'. I'd prefer you illuminate that divider and explain what's being done, what's likely possible and what's likely not. I fear current votes reflect mainly "yeah, those stupids, show'em" HNQ attitudes. – LangLаngС Aug 04 '20 at 12:26
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    @LangLаngС it would be great to see your answer. I can tell you know a lot about this. (This is not sarcasm. I admire your comments and would appreciate your answer.) – Ross Presser Aug 04 '20 at 14:40
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    I believe it to be fair that, in the absence of a specific vaccine, a question about RNA vaccines as a category can be assumed to mean standard vaccines with RNA and not with some other, sinister additives. Could eating a cold pizza kill me? Well, yes, if it contains cyanide, or if it impacts my mouth travelling at 90% of the speed of light, but those are not due to the nature of the cold pizza. If you believe that it would be useful to answer that such a vaccine, if held above 5,700 Kelvin when injected, will damage your DNA, you can add such an answer. – Corrodias Aug 04 '20 at 16:32
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    @LangLаngС We can only answer the question that was asked. The question as presented by the OP is "can an RNA vaccine permanently change the recipients DNA?". This answer fully covers that. It doesn't cover questions like "could you inject malicious RNA that changes your DNA while claiming it to be a vaccine?" because that is only tangentially related to the direct question. – Kevin Aug 04 '20 at 19:58
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    Probably not directly relevant, but in the "even if that (the claim about the vaccine) is true, so what?" category is the fact that viruses can and do permanently alter our DNA. https://www.telegraphindia.com/science-tech/the-human-dna-is-littered-with-fossils-of-viruses-past-that-attacked-us-and-lost/cid/1760295 – PoloHoleSet Aug 05 '20 at 13:23
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    If I can try to sum up. A traditional vaccine injects virus proteins for your body to build up an immunity to. A mRNA vaccine injects virus protein factories (mRNA) to make the virus proteins for your body to build up an immunity to. In both cases, the proteins or protein factories will leave the body and your DNA is unaffected. – Schwern Aug 05 '20 at 20:14
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    @Schwern It's not even the factories, more like the recipes. All the replication machinery still comes from your cells. But the important part is that mRNA is used to move genetic information _from_ the nucleus (where the DNA is stored), not in the other direction - it's _as if_ the protein encoding was in your DNA (as far as your cells are concerned), but when the mRNA is recycled, it will not be made again. – Luaan Aug 06 '20 at 06:02
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    VG post. Thank you. Please, please can you put a full stop (or semicolon) between *The mRNA in an mRNA vaccine alone cannot edit DNA,* and * in the CRISPR gene editing method the actual act of cutting the DNA ...*. It kind of garden paths you as you read it. Thanks. – Araucaria Aug 06 '20 at 21:35
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    do note that CRISPR works on a per-cell basis. Modifying the genome of every cell in a human body using it is extremely unlikely to ever be possible. – jwenting Aug 07 '20 at 10:06
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It is currently unknown whether this occurs, though it is considered unlikely and unimportant. There is a plausible mechanism which could cause it, but as of February 2022, it seems no experiments have been done to prove or disprove whether this actually occurs.

The mechanism is LINE1-mediated retrotransposition, in which a retrotransposon (which make up 17% of our DNA) is translated into a reverse transcriptase protein and picks up the vaccine RNA to reverse-transcribe back into DNA and incorporate into the genome of the cell. (Normally these reverse-transcribe their own RNA, but they can occasionally integrate other RNA instead. This is known to have happened long ago with (non-retroviral) RNA viruses, for instance.)

Studies have tested whether this occurs with the coronavirus itself, and although one found that it did, it is not peer-reviewed in the usual way and is considered to be a false positive, an artifact of the test method. Follow-ups have found no evidence that coronavirus integrates into the genome. (However, the vaccine is not the virus, so this is a clue, not proof.)

Even if this does happen, it most likely will just result in the cell producing spike protein continuously, which will trigger the immune system to kill the affected cell.

While it is possible for retrotransposons to cause cancer, they already do this on their own, without needing a virus or vaccine at all, so you are already at risk of it just by being a mammal.

Flu RNA Vaccine: A Game Changer? (December 2020)

Then, even if the risk of genomic integration is widely considered as null and is not a biosafety concern, eukaryotic cells have been shown to be able to provide, to some extent, reverse transcription activity [25 –28]. Further research on that eukaryotic reverse transcription activity, in the context of RNA vaccination, might be of interest for the scientific community [14].

Do RNA vaccines obviate the need for genotoxicity studies? (November 2020)

The potential for exogenous RNA, viral or other, to integrate into human DNA from vaccination is at best theoretical at this time. The potential for any such RNA to fundamentally drive altered or oncogenic processes in human cells is also theoretical. Indeed, some may argue that the infections from RNA (DNA) viruses better present viral RNA (or DNA) into the cellular locations where integration or first-hit events occur more than any potential vaccine. Until any such hypothetical concerns are tested or observed from vaccination or natural infection, regulatory safety assessments of RNA vaccines should include genotoxicity studies.

mRNA vaccines: Why is the biology of retroposition ignored? (July 2021, preprint)

I conclude that is unfounded to a priori assume that mRNA-based therapeutics do not impact genomes, and that the route to genome integration of vaccine mRNAs via endogenous L1 retroelements is easily conceivable. This implies that we urgently need experimental studies that would rigorously test for the potential retroposition of vaccine mRNAs. At present, the insertional mutagenesis safety of mRNA-based vaccines should be considered unresolved.

This image of the process is from the above preprint:

enter image description here

endolith
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This is an open-ended question which invites speculative scenarios - most and hopefully all of which will have been carefully considered during vaccine development. In concept the vaccine could alter DNA in several very rare and unusual ways, such as if the recipient has HIV and the vaccine RNA became a substrate for the viral reverse transcriptase. More plausibly, the recipient might produce an RNA transcript (possibly produced by a transposable element of viral origin) which base-pairs with the vaccine RNA. This would set off cellular antiviral alarms that affect histone proteins, which tightly adhere to the DNA and can affect the activity of specific genes for a long period of time ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5651755/ )

While that sounds very serious, we have to bear in mind not only the balance of probabilities, but also that DNA can be modified in ways that may be permanent for an individual and even transmitted to children and grandchildren - by a vast and mostly unknown set of common environmental circumstances such as famine, obesity, pollutants, and smoking. Look up search results for https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=transgenerational+methylation+human and make up your own mind.

Anything is possible in biology. If you can't grow a warp drive in your belly, it's only because of physics. Yet many things that could happen are so unlikely that they never do, and we often need to make pragmatic choices between the known risk of death and debilitation on one side, and completely unproven scenarios on the other.

Note: per the question, we're not discussing the original conspiracy video's CRISPR idea, which describes a gene therapy product rather than a vaccine. You could put rat poison in a vaccine, but we wouldn't talk of the safety of rat poison when considering the safety of "vaccines".

Mike Serfas
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    The paper on RNA interference you cite is likely fraudulent (https://www.nature.com/articles/439514a). I haven't really followed this topic later, so I'm not sure about the current state of knowledge. – Mad Scientist Aug 05 '20 at 21:58
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    While I appreciate your disdain of absolutes, I'm refraining from a +1 because, as you said "we often need to make pragmatic choices between the known risk of death and debilitation on one side, and unproven scenarios on the other." - while a different choice, I question if it was pragmatic to post an open ended answer on a site like this, on this topic, where numerous readers will show up with their blinders on, looking for anything that ~agrees with them, and twist this answer into anti-vax "proof" without thinking through the very real and valid points you bring up – TCooper Aug 07 '20 at 00:42
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    @Mad Scientist: Thanks for pointing out that retraction! The paper I now cite and [earlier work](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15351733/) actually fairly strongly oppose the idea that siRNA can induce DNA methylation (rather than histone modification) in human cells, though there are also some continuing reports like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22647391/ ... really there was never any need here to specify the mechanism of silencing since the effect is the same. – Mike Serfas Aug 07 '20 at 10:54
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    @TCooper: I think we should strive for truth as its own purpose and have faith that it will work out best in the end. If we are patronizing, people will rightly ignore us. If we dismiss all risk, the risk increases. If we tell people nothing bad can happen and it does, vaccination could go the way of nuclear power. Every day people bite into hamburgers or salad vegetables knowing there are risks - what they need most is a sense of honest concern and attention to those risks. That sense of concern really does exist, and it's why we don't have vaccine now, so why not tell them about it? – Mike Serfas Aug 07 '20 at 11:05
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    I think it should be emphasized that the mechanisms you mention are exceedingly unlikely to be triggered by chance. A vaccine would have to be maliciously designed to do this. The HIV reverse transcriptase doesn't replicate just any sequence, and it is extremely unlikely that you'll have a matching complementary RNA in your cells that could produce double-stranded RNA out of the vaccine RNA. – Mad Scientist Aug 07 '20 at 11:32
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    An RNA can simply encode a protein that will edit the DNA –  Aug 07 '20 at 22:47
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    RNAi is pretty well known for off-target interactions. When I searched just now I found one abstract claiming just 11 base pairs of homology could do this: https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt831 I haven't accessed this but I assume several familiar mechanisms could be involved. I would feel confidence that a manufacturer will very carefully screen (not just by homology search but by experiment) to exclude such effects, which would cost them an astounding amount of money if the product failed in clinical trials or turned out to have harmful side effects. – Mike Serfas Aug 08 '20 at 00:34
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    @MikeSerfas RNAi is only triggered by double-standed RNA, an mRNA vaccine is single-stranded. And you don't accidentally make double-stranded RNA out of single-stranded one. – Mad Scientist Aug 09 '20 at 08:14
  • RNA almost always forms *some* kind of double-stranded structure (try playing eternagame.org). The question is whether some perhaps off-target association forms a structure regular enough that the cell treats it as viral. Consider [Moderna's appendix](https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483/suppl_file/nejmoa2022483_appendix.pdf) about what sounds like it might be an interferon response to my ears, including a 103-degree fever, in 1 of 15 participants in the 250 mcg dose group. (To keep things in perspective, this effect is routine for "common colds", but it bears watching) – Mike Serfas Aug 09 '20 at 13:55
  • RNA stem loops that are more than 20 nucleotides long don't just happen by chance, and they would be trivial to predict from the sequence. You don't want the immune system or the RNAi system to trigger on random mRNAs in your cells, if those systems would often be triggered by random mRNAs that would be really bad, but that is not what is happening. – Mad Scientist Aug 11 '20 at 13:54
  • @MadScientist An "RNA vaccine" can use a retrovirus as a vector, so it would modify the infected cells' genome. The correct answer to the Q would be "the video is nuts, but technically the answer is yes". You seem to be in the business of telling people what they want to hear instead. –  Aug 11 '20 at 23:48
  • It was time to put up or shut up. mRNA-1273 is Moderna's copy of the S gene from MN908947.3 with PP at aa 986-987 (not in this alignment). I can't format the matches here but it's all but two: Query 2381-TTAAAGATTTTGGTGGTTTTAATTTTTC-2408 Sbjct 1159-TTAAAAATTTTGATGGTTTTAATTTTTC-1132 (Threonyl-tRNA synthetase NM_152334.3 ). I have no idea what biological activity if any this has, but I think it is enough to demonstrate *plausibility* of some RNAi type interaction with an unspecified mRNA vaccine. – Mike Serfas Aug 12 '20 at 02:42
  • @MikeSerfas this really belongs into chat, it's a bit much for comments. But if I understand you correctly and you simply looked for similar sequences to the mRNA vaccine sequence in the human genome, that alone does not mean anything for RNAi effects. You need dsRNA for those. – Mad Scientist Aug 12 '20 at 07:23
  • I've never set up a chat here and it seems too late to start now... The Subject numbers run backward, so the [source mRNA](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/1370466171) is actually antisense to the query in this case. (The numbers are a little different - look at nt 1089 to 1118 here). Again, I don't *know* that would have any physiological effect ... I'd like to know it doesn't, though. A TARS3 expression study on some before and after samples would be informative. – Mike Serfas Aug 12 '20 at 17:01
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    @TCooper I'm surprised at your comment; it is the antithesis of skepticism. Your history on SE shows you're much better than that. – user53816 Aug 13 '20 at 04:12
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    @psaxtion I guess the antivaxers have me beat down and I'm afraid of fueling their fires. You're right though, it was uncharacteristic and arguably a foolish viewpoint I expressed. I meant what I said about excluding absolutes and looking at all possibilities; I think I would have just preferred a strong statement at the end to explain how modern vaccination in developed countries falls clearly onto the side of choosing to prevent risk of death and debilitation by all known and understood evidence. On a positive note I certainly didn't down vote the answer, and am glad it's here in general. – TCooper Aug 13 '20 at 22:06
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    Can eating a banana change your DNA permanently? Yes, there are scenario's where it can. At the same time it's highly misleading and doesn't put the information in it's proper context. – Christian Aug 14 '20 at 15:52