![]()
The world’s first AI Covid DNA vaccine was tested on humans and researchers found it to be “safe and well tolerated.”
Those aren’t exactly the most reassuring words in medicine. “Safe and well tolerated” does not mean risk-free. It means the researchers did not identify safety problems serious enough to stop the trial.
What is an AI vaccine? It means that researchers used artificial intelligence and computer modeling to design a vaccine intended to protect against multiple members of the sarbecovirus family, including SARS-CoV-2, SARS, and related bat coronaviruses that scientists believe could potentially infect humans in the future.
Obvious question: why are scientists developing vaccines for hypothetical future spillover events? Did the AI identify a specific threat, or are researchers simply trying to build a broad-spectrum animal scenario vaccine before the next outbreak occurs?
The vaccine was tested on 39 people who had previously been vaccinated for Covid. Researchers can’t tell us it was “effective” against all of those possibilities because they have not occurred…we hope! All we know is that those 39 people were fine for at least six months after their two doses.
Well, we don’t even know that. The research paper says that Adverse Events were monitored but it doesn’t tell us what kind of Adverse Events they were. It assures us that none of them were serious so we just have to take their word for it.
And about that DNA part. This means that researchers injected a circular piece of DNA (a plasmid) that contains genetic instructions for making the vaccine antigen.
So AI is prepping to inject us with DNA for a wide variety of animal-virus breakouts. Great.