Vaccines aren’t scary. The process to approve them is as transparent and effective as anyone could reasonably expect. And those “bureaucrats” working at the CDC, NIH and other government agencies are actually devoted public servants who should receive more respect.
During a lengthy interview on the most recent episode of the Alabama Politics This Week podcast, renowned UAB professor and researcher Dr. Michael Saag broke down the process by which vaccines—and all pharmaceutical drugs—are developed and approved, and he went through the manner in which the vaccines actually work.
Vaccines, particularly mRNA vaccines, have come under fire of late with the appointment of Robert Kennedy Jr. as the head of U.S. Health and Human Services. During a U.S. Senate hearing last week, Kennedy sparred with lawmakers—including some Republicans—over the effectiveness of vaccines.
He also pushed wild conspiracy theories tying various government agencies and pharmaceutical companies together in a supposed effort to push ineffective, even harmful, vaccines onto American citizens in some sort of undefined scheme to make money. Even several Republicans in the hearing said Kennedy’s words were harmful and likely to push some people away from receiving life-saving vaccines.
“There is a segment of any population—but in our population in the United States for sure—people who don’t trust government—Big Brother,” Saag said of the distrust of vaccines that’s happening. “They think there’s a sort of a dark state, deep state, and conspiracies abound that everyone’s out to poison humankind. There’s not much we can do about that except keep providing information.”
Saag spent several minutes detailing the intricacies of the vaccine approval process and talking about the various well educated individuals who are part of it.
Saag also spoke about the mRna vaccines—specifically, the COVID vaccine—and how it is created and how it works within the average human. Far from mysterious, or even all that new, Saag said the mRNA vaccines, and especially the COVID vaccine, have been very effective and safe.
“The mRNA vaccine is an order of magnitude better (than traditional vaccines) for a couple of reasons,” Saag said. “MRNA, if you remember back to biology freshman year of high school or something, DNA, which is in our nucleus, produces a message, and that message is called mRNA—messenger RNA. So DNA codes and then mRNA comes out. And that’s what produces, ultimately, proteins that all of our bodies use.
“So viruses and other bacteria—things that we are interested in protecting folks against—all produce these proteins and they do it through mRNA. So they found the technology—and this has been worked on for 25 years and a Nobel prize went to Drew Weissman for this—they take the mRNA and they cut out a center part of it, and then they shuttle in the fragment of mRNA that they want to code for a specific protein. It’s basically a way to kind of make your own protein—a designer protein.”
In the case of COVID, Saag said the process was sped along by the fact that scientists and doctors had already been working on the SARS virus vaccine in an effort to cure the common cold.
Saag also said it has been incredibly difficult to watch his colleagues—some of the most educated, well trained professionals working in the medical field today—be vilified by someone like Kennedy, who has zero medical training and very little understanding of the complicated pharmaceuticals and processes that he’s criticizing.
“On a personal level, the people who have been fired, I know personally many of them,” Saag said. “Any one of them could have gone into private practice and made probably twice as much as they’re paid by a government salary. But they chose to, to go into public service. Just like people choose to go into the military to serve the country. They chose to go into the public health service to serve the country and they are bonafide experts.
“I do have deep concerns about what damage is going to be done. Florida is a good example currently, but that’s going to spread and we’re just going to suffer the consequences of bad appointments, full stop. This is what happens when the government goes to politics and prioritizes that over rational science. We’re going to suffer.”
Saag’s entire interview, along with an interview with Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, can be heard at the Alabama Politics This Week website. You can also download the episode on any of your favorite podcasts apps, or you can watch it on YouTube.
