Gent. Director, we read with interest the intervention of the esteemed colleague prof. Giancarlo Cesana, appeared in the monthly “Tempi” directed by her, entitled “You have to live with Covid. There are no valid reasons to be against vaccines “. The ideas that the text provides are many, but we would like to dwell on the affirmations on which the thesis that gives the title to the article is based. The author states:
“The side effects of vaccination have been shown to be severe in extremely rare cases, with far less harm than that produced by the disease. The future risks, malformations, tumors and the like, feared due to the inoculation of gene material, mRNA, on the basis of current knowledge do not have a biological plausibility (explanation) and in any case the experience of billions of vaccinations constitutes a timely monitoring system and reliable for any eventuality. “
We are sorry to point out that, in the light of the advances in scientific knowledge of the last forty years, the above three statements are incorrect.
“There are no compelling reasons to be against vaccines. The side effects of vaccination have been shown to be serious in extremely rare cases, with far less damage than those produced by the disease. ” The text speaks of the “side effects” as a fact that has now been acquired, whereas, on the other hand, their real significance, especially in the medium or long term, is still to be evaluated and quantified. Incidentally, this assessment is strongly affected, in Italy and in most countries, by the almost total lack of an active pharmacovigilance procedure. In particular, in Italy the Ministry of Health, in deciding not to activate an active pharmacovigilance commensurate with the widespread diffusion of vaccine therapies against COVID19, contravened all the conventional international “good practices” on drugs and medical treatments of new introduction. In fact, to date there is only a passive pharmacovigilance activity, which is known to strongly underestimate the adverse events related to any drug. This choice made it practically impossible to reliably monitor based on scientific evidence and / or statistically indicative of the effective safety or absence of harmful effects of mRNA or DNA vaccines, today the only ones proposed in Italy against COVID19. We also remind you that these “vaccines” are used for the first time and are very different from traditional vaccines known to all (protein vaccines or vaccines with inactivated pathogen). The author’s apparently reassuring statement also forgets the general concept of balance between risks and benefits inherent in every therapy. When the latter surpass the former, as for example in an elderly person with other pathologies, the vaccination choice appears justified. However, when the benefits are canceled out, as in healthy young people, then the incidence of even remote toxicity of the vaccine (such as, for example, myocarditis) outweighs any benefit of the same. Similar considerations should be taken into serious consideration for all situations in which there is no evidence of an effective advantage of the vaccine, including the vaccination of children and already immune people and the use of a third dose (on which, we recall, not there are scientific data from anti-alts studies).
“The future risks, malformations, tumors and the like, feared due to the inoculation of gene material, mRNA, on the basis of current knowledge do not have a biological plausibility (explanation).” Unfortunately, there is more than one serious error here: 30 years of research and studies on DNA and RNA show that more than plausible biological mechanisms for the generation of even serious pathologies exist and are numerous. These mechanisms are today they were unknown until the 70s, while today they are taught in all university courses of medicine and biology. It is well known to all involved in the field (or at least it should) that molecules such as DNA and RNA are capable of triggering genotoxic processes through interference and recombination mechanisms, mechanisms which, as far as we know, have been completely neglected. in evaluating the safety of vaccine therapies currently proposed in our country. This interference could already occur at the cytoplasmic level, where mRNA can interfere with normal cellular and nuclear functions. It has also been amply demonstrated by decades of research that, for example, mRNA (messenger RNA) can be back-copied into DNA within our cells (thanks to the presence of transposons) and then be permanently inserted into the genetic code (a process known as “Insertional mutagenesis”), causing damage that in the worst cases can lead to the generation of cellular dysfunctions, tumors, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases; all of this has been experimentally demonstrated in gene therapy clinical trials. For DNA vaccines, this mechanism would be even easier. On the other hand, having protein vaccines, that is of the traditional type, would represent a huge advantage compared to the current approach, in which there are conditions for potential even serious damage.
“And in any case the experience of billions of vaccinations constitutes a timely and reliable monitoring system for any eventuality.” In this regard, we first of all note that the vaccines used in the past have never contained RNA, mRNA or DNA viral vectors, such as those proposed today to combat the COVID19 pandemic, and therefore the safety of past vaccination experiences cannot be translated to the current situation. with so much superficiality. Furthermore, unfortunately, a “reliable monitoring” is not in place, as already underlined for the first point, since the observation of immediate side effects has unfortunately not been seriously and adequately conducted. We would also like to point out that the statistics on the number of cases are completely independent of the time statistics. This principle is also learned in the introductory courses: it is absolutely not justifiable to affirm that, since a certain result has been obtained in “many” cases, the same result will be obtained after “a long” time. Consolidated studies conducted on biological organisms, considered in the field of so-called “complex systems”, have further confirmed that it is not possible to make predictions of the temporal evolution through a simple statistics on the number of cases. Still with regard to statistics, we must reluctantly recall what has already been said in point 1), namely that the observation of immediate side effects has not been seriously and adequately conducted. Therefore, the experience to date does not have sufficient information and data to establish the effective safety of COVID19 vaccines administered in our country: the time elapsed since the beginning of the vaccine testing is completely insufficient to claim to have had a monitoring of the long-term side effects. Finally, we do not know that any study has been carried out on either the genotoxicity or the carcinogenicity of the COVID19 mRNA vaccines currently used, which, moreover, can be easily found through a quick search on the databases of medical publications (we mention only the most famous, PubMed) and also communicated by the vaccine manufacturers.
Finally, we point out that the use of the word “serums” to define vaccines is, from a medical point of view erroneous, denoting a carelessness that sincerely amazes us.
Therefore, dear director, allow us this rigorous intervention, based on in-depth and up-to-date knowledge of scientific topics that many of us deal with in our daily research and teaching work, as professors, lecturers, researchers in universities and research centers. Research. For this reason we considered it only right to point out, “on the basis of current knowledge”, the scientific groundlessness of what was stated in the text, showing our disappointment at the superficiality manifested in not basing judgments pregnant with important consequences for the health of all Italians on the actual “Current knowledge”.
Marialuisa Chiusano
Leonardo Vignoli
Daniele Perrotta
Carlo Gambacorti-Passerini
Lorenzo Maria Pacini
Critical Consciences Association
He answers Giancarlo Cesana: “Billions of vaccinations” refer precisely to those against Covid. For the rest, the entire article published on Times already responds to the objections of the letter, very predictable in their origin from no vax environments.
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