>>410235>the poorly-explored mrna vaccines>>411386>protecting mrna from lawsuits>>411466>Willingly take part in phase 3 clinical trials of novel mRNA genetic modification "therapy" which will permanently alter your immune system>>411471>there's no way in hell I'm taking this immune-suppressing mRNA treatment1. No COVID-19 vaccine is a gene therapy, since they do not use [recombinant] rDNA to splice in and alter the genome of any human cells.
2. Several, e.g. Moderna/Pfizer, use [messenger] mRNA to encode for SARS-CoV-2 Spike-protein, but this can't modify a patient's DNA, since it never enters the cell nucleus where chromosomes reside.
3. Instead, in the outer part of the cell [cytoplasm], the mRNA gets translated by ribosomes into multiple copies of S-protein, before being broken down after a day or two.
4. Others, like AstraZeneca, use a non-replicating adenovirus vector to deliver a modified DNA snippet into the cell nucleus, however this is also not recombinant: it gets transcribed into S-protein mRNA which exits into the cytoplasm & then works as in #3.
5. In other words, all the genetic engineering is done in the lab, not in the patient's body. The human genome is not altered by any COVID-19 vaccine; they only use the cell machinery (one way or the other) to manufacture the S-protein against which the immune system responds to provide enhanced protection in advance of a real infection.
6. There are also COVID vaccines which use more traditional technologies, namely attenuated live virus, inactivated virus and protein subunit types, in use in various places around the world, however they are generally slower to develop & more expensive to manufacture.
7. To date the mRNA vaccines have achieved the best proven efficacy, after 2 doses eliminating around 95% of symptomatic COVID-19 cases caused by the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, and they (along with the DNA vector type) can also be relatively easily tweaked to better tackle later variants like Delta.
Sources:
Brief description of difference between mRNA & DNA vaccine (Moderna v AZ) by MedCram:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOq8-FR8s1E&t=38sIn-depth discussion of whole process of (Moderna v AZ) vaccine development, function & approval:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Idb_lCU4o&t=756s