Two embryonic cell lines have been used to develop COVID-19 vaccines: human embryonic kidney cells called HEK 293 and human embryonic retinal cells called PER.C6. The PER.C6 cell line is from an elective abortion in the Netherlands in 1985, and the HEK 293 cell line comes from an undisclosed source (either spontaneous miscarriage or elective abortion) in the Netherlands in about 1972.
Johnson & Johnson used PER.C6 cells in their COVID-19 vaccine development, and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine used HEK 293 cells. CanSino Biologics and Gamaleya Research Institute’s Sputnik V vaccines have also used HEK 293 cells.
Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech used HEK 293 cells in their proof-of-concept tests to see effectively take up the genetic instructions contained in these vaccines and produce the required spike protein. But human embryonic cell lines were not used to make either company’s final vaccine.
HEK 293 and PER.C6 cell lines have been genetically altered to include the part of the adenovirus instructions that trigger replication of adenoviruses. This allows the production of a large amount of the final vaccination product and allows the removal of the adenoviral replication instructions in the vaccine.
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- Potential toxicity
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Altered microbiome
- Rise in other infections
- Environmental effects
A critical factor that makes the elderly more susceptible to infectious diseases is what immunologists call “immunosenescence”: the decline in the immune system’s functionality as people age. This is also associated with an increase in the incidence of inflammatory diseases, because an elderly body tends to be in a state of chronic low-grade inflammation. This “inflamm-aging” is one reason why older people have tendencies to develop more severe forms of respiratory diseases.
The key problem with SARS-CoV-2 infection is inflammation in the respiratory tract, which can be exacerbated in individuals predisposed towards potent inflammatory responses.
Immunosenescence also results in diminished responses to vaccination. Indeed, annual flu vaccines are notoriously less effective in the elderly. This phenomenon is very important in the context of the massive efforts and funds being invested worldwide into the ultra-rapid development of vaccines for COVID-19.
The fact that elderly people do not respond well to immunizations has largely been ignored in most discussions of COVID-19 vaccines, despite this being the group in greatest need. Most of the scientific community’s experience with vaccine development for any disease has been focused on vaccinating the relatively young.
In short, far more people will receive false-positive results than true-positive results. Up to 60% of those released back into the workforce could be at risk of infection themselves and unknowingly spreading the disease to others, sparking a second wave of the epidemic. If the true prevalence of the disease in the population is as low as 1% then this figure could rise to 80%.
Understanding the startling rates of false positives and false negatives for tests that seem, on the surface, to be quite accurate could have profound consequences for health policy as we travel deeper into this pandemic. Failing to do our mathematical due diligence has the potential to take us past the tipping point beyond which the epidemic starts to grow again, leading to even more avoidable deaths.