Who knew what, and when, about the "frameshifting" issue?

...and could it explain some of the mRNA adverse events observed.

In response to the news about the possible (“frameshifting”) issue with the mRNA products (see here), I tweeted this:

I later received an email asking me to “provide a comment on how frameshifted products might explain immunological reactions and the potential mechanisms behind this”.

Here is my response:

Thank you for your enquiry.

In relation to the Nature paper on frameshifting.

Firstly, it is important to recognise that there is evidence of increased inflammatory and autoimmune conditions in the populations of heavily-vaccinated nations.  This can be seen in various adverse event databases, such as the USA’s VAERS system.

Proponents of the covid vaccines dismiss these datapoints claiming that “covid” is the cause, and what is really needed to test that hypothesis are comparisons between vaccinated and totally unvaccinated individuals; this has recently been provided in a series of papers out of South Korea.  These have not yet been peer-reviewed but notably they are based on a cohort analysis carried out on millions of subjects in the Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database.

These confirmed the quite alarming increases in inflammatory and immune conditions (in the vaccinated) which had already been reported to me and my HART colleagues by doctors on the front line. A third study found increases in haematological disorders.

Of course, there are good theoretical reasons why these increases might be linked to the findings in the paper, namely that we now know that (contrary to the story told to us by regulators around the world for years) the LNPs transport their cargo throughout the body, potentially to every body system, the protein production seemingly continues for an unknown duration (at least months), and that presenting foreign proteins continually will elicit an immune response as the body attempts to destroy what it sees as foreign material.

A further possible risk in relation to these proteins (and this applies to the intended protein – spike – as well) is that the codon optimization changes built into the vaccinal mRNA, intended to increase the rate of protein production, could well result in proteins which fold abnormally, known as “prion” proteins.  Prions - which can make adjacent protein molecules also fold abnormally - are the cause of a number of degenerative neurological conditions (eg Creutzfeldt Jacob disease), so the fact that the LNPs cross the blood-brain barrier (designed to protect the delicate tissue of the brain and spinal cord from toxins) is a major concern.

One of the (many) worrying things about the covid vaccines are that there are a number of reasons why the harms mediated may be difficult to spot using post-marketing pharmacovigilance systems in common usage – most notably that the adverse events caused are spread across many different disease categories (making signal detection harder) as well as developing gradually over a period of time, making it harder to link to the injections. In HART we wrote about that here (that article predates the frameshift revelations).

Of course, nobody knows for sure that the observations are linked to harms, but the fact they theoretically might be, and that regulators seem disinterested in investigating such a possibility, should be of huge concern to all – raising the question as to what other potential “features” have gone uninvestigated (such as the DNA contamination in Process 2).

It should be emphasised that the Nature paper was submitted for publication nearly a year ago, and presumably the work was carried out some months before then.  Moreover, the investigators weren’t some 3^rd rate university part-time academics, they were from the MRC Toxicology Unit, part of Cambridge University.

We should all be asking: who knew about this, when did they know it, and who did they tell?

Regards

In relation to that question in bold, I submitted this FOI request to Cambridge University, of which the MRC Toxicology Unit is a part:

Please provide the following in digital form. All emails received or sent since 1 January 2020 up till the current date by any authors of the paper cited below who are named as being linked to the MRC Toxicology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, which contain any of the following word or word combinations in either the subject line or the body of the email: “frameshift” “frame shift” “frameshifting” “frame shifting” “frameshifts” “frame shifts” The relevant paper is: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06800-3

As you can see from the response below, my request was unsuccessful:

This information, insofar as it is held, is refused under sections 22A and 43 of the Act. The emails in question comprise unpublished research information in relation to which further publications are envisaged, and in addition they contain information which would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the academics involved in creating and commercialising the intellectual property arising from the study in question. As these are qualified exemptions, the University has considered whether, in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exemptions outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. The University considers that, while there is an understandable interest in its research projects, the ability of academic researchers to formulate publications in the public interest, and to commercialise their intellectual property, without the enforced premature disclosure of their plans or intellectual property, is considered to be a decisive factor in favour of the maintenance of the exemption in this case. We consider any genuine public interest to be met by any current and future publications on the topic

Make of that what you will.

By the way, my comment was eventually incorporated, losing all its nuance in the usual journalistic manner, into this article.