Vaccines are not gene therapy with unknown adverse effects

Vaccines COVID-19 they are not an experimental gene therapy nor does their administration entail unknown adverse effects, as stated by messages widely spread on social networks that warn about the risk of injecting these drugs into children.

A viralized photograph asks those who receive it about the advisability of vaccinating their children with “an experimental gene therapy whose adverse effects are unknown.”

This question appears in a table that compares supposed differences between those who have received the vaccine and those who have not been injected.

The message states that both those vaccinated and those who are not vaccinated can contract and spread COVID-19, as well as die from this disease.

However, according to these publications, those who have received the vaccines can suffer fatal adverse effects from the injection of these drugs, unlike those who are not vaccinated.

Facts: COVID-19 vaccines are not a gene therapy – not even messenger RNA (mRNA) – or dangerous, because their effects are controlled to minimize the risk of adverse reactions by health authorities, who guarantee efficacy and safety of these drugs.

Covid vaccines are divided into those that use mRNA – those from Pfizer and Moderna – or are based on modified versions of the virus that are innocuous, the so-called “viral vectors” – AstraZeneca and Janssen.

The argument that vaccines are gene therapy is used against mRNAs.

However, as health institutions and experts from the Collegiate Medical Organization (OMC) and the Spanish Association for Vaccination (AEV) explain, messenger RNA is unable to reproduce or insert itself into the genome and degrades shortly after being inoculated.

In addition, according to the extensive information provided by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on its website, the development of these vaccines has guaranteed compliance with the standards of “quality, safety and efficacy”, in a process that has included rigorous trials clinics with tens of thousands of participants.

After approval, the EMA “continuously” examines the safety of vaccines through its Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee, a review analogous to those followed by the different drug agencies, thus monitoring the results of the 6.8 billion doses administered so far worldwide.

Thus, possible links have been discovered between several rare cases of thrombi with life-threatening consequences and the AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines.

However, these serious problems are “extremely rare”, adds the European agency.

With regard to children, the EMA approved on May 28 the use of the Pfizer preparation from the age of 12 and on July 23 it authorized the use of Moderna between the ages of 12 and 17.

The European agency is currently studying the approval of the Pfizer drug for the 5 to 11-year-old age group, while trials with even younger children continue, with safety data “just as good or better,” according to Manuel Gijón, pediatrician at the Hospital Doce de Octubre.

“Very young children, even babies, have tolerated it very, very well,” says Gijón.

Madrid’s Doce de Octubre is one of more than 100 hospitals in Spain, Poland, Finland and the United States that are simultaneously participating in the trial launched by Pfizer to test its drug in 4,644 children from six months to 11 years of age.

Nor is it true that there are no differences between those who have received the injections and those who have not in terms of the danger of contracting and spreading the disease or dying as a result of it.

“The risk of infection, hospitalization and death is much lower in those who are vaccinated than in those who are not vaccinated,” explains the US agency of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In conclusion, the permanent vigilance of drug agencies guarantees the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, whose operation makes it impossible to act as gene therapy.