If there's a settlement, I hope it's in the form of a nice bottle of scotch, and a letter from Princeton apologizing and swearing not to do it again. I'm not out money; I'm out peace of mind.
I don't think this reaches the level of a cash settlement, personally. It is certainly shocking and would upset me. I agree that Princeton should try harder.
To be fair, if you work in marketing, you (or your work) more or less enables all of this garbage in the first place by funding it so I'd argue it's deserved.
>There are upper class Americans in particular who basically work extremely long hours (80-105 hour work weeks)
People in the upper class don't need to work because they're able to live off of, and build wealth from, their assets.
The lower and middle classes are defined by their economic precarity that hinges on their ability to sell their labor. If someone needs to work to "protect their status", they're upper middle class at best.
The aristocratic class in America is mostly gone, with a few notable exceptions. This is where the Meritocracy Myth comes into play, where wealth is "created based on merit" (when people are just gaming things to the extreme). Meritocracy is used as an argument for keeping things status quo, where working non-stop (and other practices) is justified. At least the aristocratic life allowed for a leisure lifestyle for the upper class. Now, it does not.
I agree with most of that but I would think there are probably more, per capita, aristocrats, socialites, celebrities, and otherwise idle wealthy people today than at any point in history.
No, it's only illegal for health insurance providers to discriminate based on genetic data, but other types of insurers are free to use it. The legislation that makes it illegal also doesn't apply if your employer employs less than 15 people.
This is the J&J vaccine, which is not mRNA-based. It's an adenovirus vector vaccine, which is also not gene therapy but is a (tiny) bit closer than an mRNA vaccine.
Right but they are still gene-based. No gene-based vaccine has ever received approval for human use, and the present coronavirus vaccines have not undergone preclinical testing as normally required by international regulations.
A potential danger of DNA-based vaccines is the integration of plasmid DNA into the cell genome (1). Insertional mutagenesis occurs rarely but can become a realistic danger when the number of events is very large, i.e. as in mass vaccination of a population.
We don’t have “long term data” for the next week or two, anyway. Phizer and Moderna’s chances of winning full use authorization this spring look quite good.
I'm not a biologist, so I could be completely wrong here, but I disagree with you.
First of all, plasmid != viral vector. That's why the Nature paper you cited had to use electroporation to introduce the payload. As J&J is a viral vector vaccine, I would not be confident in using this paper to make the argument that an adenovirus-based vaccine could modify a host's DNA.
Second, your article does not make the claim you think it does. Specifically, the discussion says:
> Using simple intramuscular injection, the vast majority of plasmid DNA that persists is extrachromosomal, and the frequency of integration, if it occurs at all, is negligible.
> However, even if the residual plasmid in the gel-purified genomic DNA did represent integrated plasmid, one copy... would be at least three orders of magnitude below the frequency of spontaneous gene-inactivating mutations...
That is, the delivered gene does not integrate directly into the genome itself, but rather stays in the cell. To detect whether the gene stays in the host cell, the article compares molecular weight and uses a PCR test. Both methods do not tell us whether the gene inserts itself into the host DNA; one way to detect that would be to sequence the subsequent DNA, which would be monstrously expensive (because the modification incidence is extremely low).
The only way that a gene might integrate itself into the chromosome is if during DNA transcription, an error occurs and the foreign DNA is merged onto the host DNA. But this would be incredibly rare because it would require most base pairs to match up between the host & foreign DNA; otherwise, the cell would attempt to repair itself or induce apoptosis.
And even if the resulting base pairs match up, the resulting DNA might not have any behavioral differences because it's (approximately) the same sequence of characters. (And you would need another transcription error later on that happens to reduce the non-modified strand by approximately the same length. That's also extremely unlikely.)
Fourth, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use a mRNA-based vector, which (in my limited knowledge) is very difficult to integrate into the genome. The most plausible mechanism I could imagine would be:
1. (Optional) an enzyme which converts a modified nucleoside mRNA strand into one that mimics the mRNA chemical structure that is compatible with a reverse transcription enzyme [1].
2. A reverse transcriptase to convert the mRNA strand into a (foreign) DNA strand.
3. A restriction enzyme that cleaves the host DNA suitably so that the foreign DNA can be inserted.
4. A matching ligation enzyme which actually inserts the foreign DNA into the the host DNA.
All these above enzymes do not naturally occur in humans, so DNA modification through this mechanism would be incredibly rare.
Ermm, the jnj uses an adenovirus to deliver the plasmid DNA(1). I'm only referring to the jnj/astra here not the mRNA ones. And I think that article I linked represents a real risk it's not like we've tested for this danger before going ahead with a mass vaccination campaign where even rare events can become a real danger.
Additional dangers of DNA vaccines include production of anti-DNA antibodies and autoimmune reactions(2). I think we should be communicating these dangers to the public so that healthy individuals at no risk can make a proper benefit-risk decision, instead of just saying "vaccines good" and brushing over concerns.
> I think that article I linked represents a real risk
The article you linked estimates the risk of DNA integration is three orders of magnitude times lower than gene deactivation through regular mutations. I think we're safe.
> Additional dangers of DNA vaccines include production of anti-DNA antibodies and autoimmune reactions
Sigh yes this is a well recognized risk which even the FDA has guidelines for: "The administration of a DNA vaccine exposes the patient to foreign DNA or its fragments that could be inserted into the host’s chromosomal DNA [70]. In the case of incorporation into an exon, an insertional mutation or a frameshift mutation occurs. Such mutations can cause a gene to malfunction or inactivate (i.e., a tumor suppressor gene). The insertion of foreign genes into the host genome could also lead to constituent expression of previously silent bacterial/parasite genes that have been inserted."(1)
To date, there is no licensed DNA vaccine for use in humans, which is my whole point we aren't testing for this and instead just using the whole US population as test subjects without informing them of the risk.
It’s slavery as a service. Great for saving costs because you only pay for the time that you actually use, and you can outsource the maintenance of the service to the provider.
If real slavery was still legal it wouldn’t even be used because the paycheque to paycheque employee model is so much more cost efficient.
I wonder what it is going to look like when finally every single dollar you have is sucked up automatically by the month. The scales tip by the year. People in major cities are already paying 50% of their wages to their landlord alone. That's a degenerate economy, not a productive one.
Eventually we will reach an equilibrium where there will be just enough vultures out there to eat exactly how many slices there are left in the pie. Complete extraction of 'disposable' income will be achieved this century. For working people in major cities, some are already being completely extracted like this, having to work multiple jobs to keep a roof overhead and bellies fed with no time to do something that isn't low skilled labor for capital.
Several insurance companies like UnitedHealthCare had to be sued into covering PrEP. Not many insurance companies are going to happily cover a medication that can cost ~$30,000+ a year to fill.
Even now, United is making it clear that they don't intend to cover new PrEP medication like Descovy even though the medication doesn't cause as much renal damage and failure as Truvada does: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/payer-issues/unitedhea...
If you have a high deductible insurance plan, it is not going to be fun to pay for your first few months of PrEP entirely out of pocket. Many people are priced out of PrEP because of that, as are the uninsured and underinsured.
