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> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15

> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Maybe then they would have gone through proper testing before unleashing them onto the world population.

epistasis 3y ago
They did go through proper testing. They had been going through lots of testing for years, incrementally, slowly, just like the vaccines in this article. It was only the pandemic that provided the money and urgency to do it sooner rather than later. Please do not let politics bleed into science.
- OCASMv2 3y ago
  A couple of months of human trials (that started before animal trials were finished) isn't proper testing. Each mRNA vaccine (like any other type of vaccine) is a standalone product. Testing the general viability of mRNA technology isn't the same as testing a specific mRNA vaccine.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Says who? Seriously? Some random paper taken out of context and copied onto lists that anti-backers uncritically copy and paste? And animal trials? That's not going to tell you much of anything about human safety! In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe. The only vaccine that has safety questions was the more traditional vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, and they are very very rare, if they exist. All this data is out there, anybody who has safety concerns has not bothered to educate themselves, think critically, and examine the data. We all have different risk tolerances, but along any possible health metric, not being vaccinated is far less safe than being vaccinated for the people the vaccine is indicated for.
    - OCASMv2 3y ago
      > In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe. Has it? What long term trials have been carried that show that?
      - epistasis 3y ago
        Yes, of course! It's required of every single drug. Earlier in the pandemic, the fear mongering was that the existence of these standard monitoring trials (phase 4) meant that the vaccine was inadequate tested before. See for example: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccine-monitoring-idUSKBN2AC2G3 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccine-monitor... Ongoing monitoring of complaints is a required part of all quality systems. The core of our regulation system requires the ability to detect subtle problems that can only appear after lots and lots of people have been treated. There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society. Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO.
        OCASMv2 3y ago
        You tell me they're monitoring the vacciness, but what I asked for is proof of your statement about proven safety. > Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO. These vaccines didn't go through well established safety practices. They skipped them to be put to use as soon as possible. People who pointed this out were outright called "antivaxxers." > There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society. There's no need for conspiratorial thinking. Basic institutions proved themselves to the general public to be highly incompetent and corrupt.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  That's unfortunately not the case. Yes, mRNA based meds had been going through proper testing. They kept failing due to severe safety problems that only appeared after multiple doses. https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ It never proved safe enough to test in humans, according to several former Moderna employees and collaborators who worked closely on the project mRNA is a tricky technology. Several major pharmaceutical companies have tried and abandoned the idea, struggling to get mRNA into cells without triggering nasty side effects. The problems were big enough that Moderna was being written up as an impending car crash. As recently as 2017 their drugs weren't safe enough to deploy in humans because the body reacted badly after being exposed to multiple doses. So what did they do? Well, unfortunately for us, they didn't know how to solve the safety problems and gave up. Instead they switched from drug development to vaccine development, and why did they do that? The indefinite delay on the Crigler-Najjar project signals persistent and troubling safety concerns for any mRNA treatment that needs to be delivered in multiple doses, covering almost everything that isn’t a vaccine, former employees and collaborators said. Oh dear. Safe only if you don't take it more than once. The reason no further mRNA tech has come to market since isn't because the pandemic made the same things happen faster. It's because the problems with mRNA drugs were never actually solved. The pandemic obliterated all standards and safety mechanisms, creating a mass hysteria that steamrollered any objections in its path. Now the hysteria has faded, the problems are reasserting themselves.

epistasis 3y ago

They did go through proper testing. They had been going through lots of testing for years, incrementally, slowly, just like the vaccines in this article. It was only the pandemic that provided the money and urgency to do it sooner rather than later. Please do not let politics bleed into science.

OCASMv2 3y ago
A couple of months of human trials (that started before animal trials were finished) isn't proper testing. Each mRNA vaccine (like any other type of vaccine) is a standalone product. Testing the general viability of mRNA technology isn't the same as testing a specific mRNA vaccine.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Says who? Seriously? Some random paper taken out of context and copied onto lists that anti-backers uncritically copy and paste? And animal trials? That's not going to tell you much of anything about human safety! In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe. The only vaccine that has safety questions was the more traditional vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, and they are very very rare, if they exist. All this data is out there, anybody who has safety concerns has not bothered to educate themselves, think critically, and examine the data. We all have different risk tolerances, but along any possible health metric, not being vaccinated is far less safe than being vaccinated for the people the vaccine is indicated for.
  - OCASMv2 3y ago
    > In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe. Has it? What long term trials have been carried that show that?
    - epistasis 3y ago
      Yes, of course! It's required of every single drug. Earlier in the pandemic, the fear mongering was that the existence of these standard monitoring trials (phase 4) meant that the vaccine was inadequate tested before. See for example: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccine-monitoring-idUSKBN2AC2G3 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccine-monitor... Ongoing monitoring of complaints is a required part of all quality systems. The core of our regulation system requires the ability to detect subtle problems that can only appear after lots and lots of people have been treated. There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society. Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO.
      - OCASMv2 3y ago
        You tell me they're monitoring the vacciness, but what I asked for is proof of your statement about proven safety. > Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO. These vaccines didn't go through well established safety practices. They skipped them to be put to use as soon as possible. People who pointed this out were outright called "antivaxxers." > There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society. There's no need for conspiratorial thinking. Basic institutions proved themselves to the general public to be highly incompetent and corrupt.
nvm0n2 3y ago
That's unfortunately not the case. Yes, mRNA based meds had been going through proper testing. They kept failing due to severe safety problems that only appeared after multiple doses. https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ It never proved safe enough to test in humans, according to several former Moderna employees and collaborators who worked closely on the project mRNA is a tricky technology. Several major pharmaceutical companies have tried and abandoned the idea, struggling to get mRNA into cells without triggering nasty side effects. The problems were big enough that Moderna was being written up as an impending car crash. As recently as 2017 their drugs weren't safe enough to deploy in humans because the body reacted badly after being exposed to multiple doses. So what did they do? Well, unfortunately for us, they didn't know how to solve the safety problems and gave up. Instead they switched from drug development to vaccine development, and why did they do that? The indefinite delay on the Crigler-Najjar project signals persistent and troubling safety concerns for any mRNA treatment that needs to be delivered in multiple doses, covering almost everything that isn’t a vaccine, former employees and collaborators said. Oh dear. Safe only if you don't take it more than once. The reason no further mRNA tech has come to market since isn't because the pandemic made the same things happen faster. It's because the problems with mRNA drugs were never actually solved. The pandemic obliterated all standards and safety mechanisms, creating a mass hysteria that steamrollered any objections in its path. Now the hysteria has faded, the problems are reasserting themselves.