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mRNA can be used as indirect vaccine, by manipulating cellular factories to produce a foreign object that draws the attention of the immune system. There is no

mRNA can be used as indirect vaccine, by manipulating cellular factories to produce a foreign object that draws the attention of the immune system. There is no known pathway of persistence in this mechanism, and there is good reason to believe such a mechanism cannot exist as it would be a highly versatile attack vector and viruses would have evolved to be much more virulent by using it. Retroviruses do complex work to infiltrate the DNA repository of a cell, if all it took is to drop some mRNA it would have been exploited and 'patched' a billion years ago.

mikewarot 3y ago
And if some of that mRNA happens to land in cells that don't readily get replaced, like heart muscle, what happens next? >There is no known pathway of persistence in this mechanism No known, and published in a paper, pathway. Engineering is about using things in practice we don't yet understand. They didn't know why suspension bridges kept falling down, so they just used a "safety factor" to decide how much to over-build a structure vs its theoretical capacity. We have no idea what the long term consequences are of this gene treatment. It's not possible to have 10 year or more data on something just cooked up in the past 3 years.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  >We have no idea what the long term consequences are of this gene treatment. It's mRNA for a start. So it isn't treating genes.
  - mikewarot 3y ago
    >mRNA can be used as indirect vaccine, by manipulating cellular factories That sounds like genetic manipulation to me.