Vaccine Safety:By Marjorie Taylor Greene(Part 3)

On November 13, 2023, Greene chaired a congressional hearing on vaccine safety.

On February 13, 2024, National Geographic Press will be publishing a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. In the next few months, I will be writing about various issues discussed in that book.

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Perhaps the most disturbing testimony in front of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “shadow” committee investigating COVID vaccine safety came from a scientist and physician named Robert Malone.

In 1981, Malone studied computer science at Santa Barbara City College, later receiving his Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis, and his Master of Science in biology from the University of California, San Diego. In 1991, he graduated from Northwestern Medical School followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

In the late 1980s, Malone published two important papers. The first appeared in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Malone and his coworkers had taken a piece of mRNA, put it into a fat droplet, then injected the combination into mouse cells in a lab dish. The mouse cells made the desired protein. Next, instead of inoculating mRNA into mouse cells in a dish, he injected it into the muscles of living mice, more closely mimicking the COVID vaccines that would be developed by Pfizer and Moderna thirty years later. The muscle cells also made the desired protein. These two studies have been recognized as among the earliest steps in the development of mRNA vaccines, which makes Malone’s testimony in front of Greene’s committee all-the-more difficult to understand.

At Greene’s November 2023 committee hearing, Malone claimed that the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna were contaminated with fragments of foreign DNA. He argued that these DNA fragments could alter our own DNA, causing cancers like leukemias and lymphomas as well as autoimmune diseases and a variety of other disorders. Even more insidious, these DNA fragments could be used by the federal government to monitor who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t. For pregnant women, these DNA fragments could cross the placenta and cause birth defects. According to Malone, the FDA, the CIA, and other government agencies knew about this DNA contamination but were covering it up. “The CIA has its fingers all over this,” he declared.

To understand the validity of Malone’s claim, we must first understand how mRNA vaccines are made:

· Researchers start with a small piece of circular DNA called a plasmid. This plasmid contains the DNA gene that is a blueprint for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

· Plasmids are then placed into bacteria, which multiply every 20 minutes with the plasmids inside them. Hundreds of bacteria become billions of bacteria containing billions of copies of the DNA plasmids.

· Chemicals then break open the bacteria to release the plasmids.

· Enzymes then cut the circular plasmids and separate the linear pieces of DNA that code for the spike protein. The remaining bacteria and plasmids are filtered out.

· A different enzyme then converts the DNA coding for the spike protein into mRNA.

· The mixture is treated with an enzyme called DNase I that cuts any residual DNA into tiny fragments.

Is it possible that even though the final mixture is purified and filtered, that small quantities of residual DNA could remain? The answer is yes. Indeed, it is likely that small quantities (nanograms) of fragmented DNA could be found in the final preparation (a nanogram is one billionth of a gram). But Malone had failed to educate Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee about why this quantity of fragmented DNA in the final product was completely and utterly harmless. Listed below are the reassuring facts that Robert Malone had failed to include in his testimony:

First, human cells hate foreign DNA in the cytoplasm. Even if small fragments of DNA did enter the cytoplasm, our cells have a variety of mechanisms to destroy them.   

Second, for trace quantities of fragmented DNA to affect our DNA, they must leave the cytoplasm and enter the nucleus of cells, where DNA resides. It is virtually impossible for foreign DNA to enter the nucleus of a cell that is not dividing. Even in cells that are dividing, it is extremely difficult for foreign DNA fragments to enter the nucleus.

Third, small fragments of DNA can’t insert themselves into our DNA without enzymes that first cut our DNA. mRNA vaccines don’t contain those enzymes. Therefore, it is impossible for these fragments to affect our DNA. It’s hard enough for researchers to alter our DNA when they are trying to do it using gene therapy.

Finally, we eat foreign DNA from plants and animals all the time. This animal and plant DNA enters our bloodstream and can be found in sizes large enough to serve as a blueprint for an entire protein, much larger than the trace quantities of small fragmented DNA likely found in mRNA preparations. Yet, we are unaffected by this.

At the conclusion of the meeting, after attendees and followers on YouTube had been massively misinformed about the safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines—as well as been subjected to an array of conspiracy theories regarding the CIA, FDA, and CDC—Marjorie Taylor Greene concluded, “This is the worst thing that has happened to this country in my lifetime and the role of the government cannot be denied.”

Our tax dollars at work.