Alex Kasprak is an investigative journalist and science writer reporting on scientific misinformation, online fraud, and financial crime. The author's predictions are compelling and indicate that Nature will correct this mistake, but at a substantial cost to human lives in highly vaccinated countries. Its hard for me not to believe that hes grifting, and this demonization of existing COVID-19 vaccines based on speculative science and no strong data yet is a sales pitch. Because his proposed solution appears to be a fantasy, its effect would be to stop vaccinations completely and replace them with nothing. Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, PhD, independent virologist and vaccine expert, . As any chicken farmer knows (or any veterinarian like Dr. Vanden Bossche should know), vaccinating against Mareks disease has population health benefits in that it prevents mass death due to the disease, even if the vaccine can allow more virulent strains to evolve. Please try again. SOURCE: Geert Vanden Bossche, Children's Health Defense, The HighWire. After three years of hearing all kinds of explanations and mixed messaging, this book finally brings clarity to what's been going on. Follow. One answer is, why not? Vanden Bossche: COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Campaign Must End And maybe, at some point, Dr. Bossche validates a new kind of vaccine that works in a completely different way and it eventually allows us to curb the pandemic. The author delves into the impact of mass vaccination on individual and global health, and explains how powerful organizations, institutions, and industries lacking an . The ongoing phase 3 trial of an adenovirus-vectored spike-based vaccine (Johnson & Johnson, NCT04505722) in South Africa, where the 501Y.V2 (B.1.351) strain with the Glu484Lys substitution is rapidly replacing pre-existing variants,11 might provide an opportunity to examine this question. With antibiotic use, the bacteria that have developed a mutation or acquired a gene that gives them protection from the antibiotic will escape death and soon become the dominant strain. ), lets just review what Wakefield claimed about the MMR vaccine back in 2019. If you claim to be not antivaccine but your message is so attractive to a rabid antivaxxer and leader of the antivaccine movement like Del Bigtree that he spends an hour promoting it, you are either deluding yourself about being not antivaccine, or youre a useful idiot for the antivaccine movement, possibly both. Please read and share: https://t.co/0Fupw9JInP #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/I24mSjpVKM, Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche) March 6, 2021. Some QUOTES: " mass vaccination campaigns may have a beneficial short-time effect .. but will. Quote: Selectve viral immune escape is, for example, known to occur when the neutralizing capacity ofAg (antgen-)specifc serum antbodies (Abs) does not sufce to fully eliminate highly . Medical Op-Ed: Mass Vaccination Creates "Excellent Breeding Grounds Find Geert: https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/ https://twitter.com/GVDBossche Since 2014, however, he has been trying (apparently unsuccessfully) to develop his so-called universal vaccine. Its here that his LinkedIn profile helps, specifically, his entry under Univac: I founded Univac as [sic] inventor of a new vaccine technology which I subsequently further developed as CSO of the Company. More recently, he set up his own website to publicize his letter: We've put together a website to gather all information, scientific documents and interviews I've posted on this public health emergency. Seriously, as a vaccine expert, how is it that Dr. Vanden Bossche does not know this? While scientists dont yet know exactly what levels of antibodies are needed to ward off disease, the approved vaccines do elicit the production of neutralizing antibodies. COVID-19 mass vaccination will select for more virulent variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, which will escape vaccine-induced immunity and cause more severe disease. This book provides a thought-provoking analysis of the complex interactions between the virus and the host immune system that underlie the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. He claims that its because theres so much coronavirus circulating and so many people might produce suboptimal levels of antibody to the virus that, as is the case when antibiotics are used at levels too low to eliminate bacteria and thereby result in strong evolutionary selection for resistant strains of bacteria, a mass vaccination program is doomed to result in resistant variants of coronavirus, particularly when the vaccination program has started out targeted: As if this was not already heavily compromising innate immune defense in this population segment, there comes yet another force into play that will dramatically enhance morbidity and mortality rates in the younger age groups: MASS VACCINATION of the ELDERLY. Renowned Belgian virologist and vaccination expert Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche served as head of the German Center for Infection Research in Cologne as Head of the Vaccine Development Office. And if we are concerned about the anti-vaccination movement, we should wonder why they were so quick to prop up the portentous letter of an alleged pro-vaccine scientist. . It won't be easy for everyone to to hear their mistakes. Please use a different way to share. A certain friend of the blog has written about this (at least twice), as has Skeptical Raptor. The author delves into the impact of mass vaccination on individual and global health, and explains how powerful organizations, institutions, and industries . "There can be no doubt," Vanden Bossche asserts, "that lack of exposure due to stringent containment measures implemented as of the beginning of the pandemic has not been beneficial to keeping peoples innate immune system well trained. And so am I. I searched PubMed for what I expected to be an extensive publication record on vaccines and foundeight publications, the most recent of which was from 1994 and none of which have anything to do with vaccines. On March 6, 2021, a Belgian veterinarian named Geert Vanden Bossche published an open letter"to all authorities, scientists and experts around the world" asserting that, in his expert analysis, the current global COVID-19 vaccination program will "wipe out large parts of our human population." Hence, it also offers unprecedented advantages in terms of safety, convenience and cost-effectiveness. To use an analogy, if a gaggle of invaders is coming but you have only managed to round up a few soldiers, be prepared for a long siege during which the enemy might learn a thing or two about your defences and adapt. Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible - Nature Theres even grift likely involved! In my new book, The inescapable immune escape pandemic, I am sharing my insights and perspectives on how the Covid-19 pandemic continues to evolve. Racing against the clock, I am completing my scientfic [sic] manuscript, the publication of which is, unfortunately, likely to come too late given the ever increasing threat from rapidly spreading, highly infectious variants. Moreover, as Nirenberg points out, there is an increasing body of evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine is not leaky. While mutations to SARS-CoV-2 would be happening regardless of any human intervention, the notion that vaccination might apply evolutionary pressure toward variants that can escape current vaccines is not untenable. Therefore he has zero credibility when it comes to advising the public or anyone else about how to avoid negative effects of mass vaccination. Hes also conflating innate immune responses with specific immune responses induced by either infection or vaccination. Basically, innate immunity is a bit like Dory the amnesiac fish from Finding Nemo. Meanwhile, a small study published in The Lancet showed that giving people who had never had COVID-19 a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine resulted in them making similar levels of anti-spike protein antibodies as individuals who had had COVID-19 but had not yet been vaccinated. ", While a universal vaccine that could eradicate virtually any disease certainly sounds great, no evidence exists that such a vaccine has ever successfully been developed. Interview With Vanden Bossche: Should Mass COVID Vaccinations Be (Indeed, thus far, it appears that this is the case.) [Editors note: Scott Gavura had circumstances pop up that prevented him from producing a post for today. (Vanden Bossche did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent by Snopes on March 23, 2021.). Evidence exists that they achieve this effect even against the variant strains of SARS-CoV-2. The Inescapable Immune Escape Pandemic: Nobody Can Conceal The - Amazon This particular coronavirus happens to have a proofreading mechanism that results in a low mutation rate compared to that of a lot of other RNA viruses, such as, for example, the influenza virus. Geert Vanden Bossche is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who has specialist expertise in virology and vaccinology, Geert has worked in industry in the construction of vaccines, and in the non profit sector working to bring immunity to larger numbers of people. Specifically, Im referring to the abuse of evolutionary theory by antivaxxers to claim that vaccines select for more deadly variants of pathogenic viruses and bacteria, making mass vaccination programs dangerous or even potentially catastrophic. Its a very interesting question. This fallacy is one of the anti-vaccine movement's favorites, and as such his claims have been amplified extensively by the biggest names in that movement. His argument sounds a lot like an argument Andrew Wakefield once made for MMR. Thankfully, there is a vaccine against it, but over time, newer and more virulent strains of the virus have been detected, and this made scientists think it was because the vaccine was leaky, that it did not allow the chicken to mount a good enough immune response. But, he said, Vanden Bossche's arguments "take a little bit of truth and then add a whole lot of misrepresentation.". Its a rationale for developing reformulated booster vaccines that cover variants not well covered by the currently-used COVID-19 vaccines. A BBC fact check of Vanden Bossche's claim was deemed "false" with multiple vaccine experts saying large scale vaccinations were more likely to weaken the COVID-19 virus, not cause it to mutate to to a morte lethal variant. Interestingly enough, the use of this seemingly leaky vaccine in chickens led to a reduction in the incidence of Mareks disease by 99%. Nirenberg goes further and notes that the antibody titers induced by vaccines are MUCH higher than those seen after infection, and we see hallmarks of memory responses induced by these vaccines from even a single dose, suggesting that, even though there is a decrease in neutralization by vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, that might not portend a loss in protection. (Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plan) Director, Research Program Leader and Head of Adjuvants . If you are a potential patient and found this page through a Google search, please check out Dr. Gorski's biographical information, disclaimers regarding his writings, and notice to patients here. Edward Nirenberg, a science blogger who addressed Dr. Bossches claims in great detail, points to Mareks disease. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2023. This will, indeed, require large vaccination campaigns. This is what COVID-19 vaccines do, and their ability to reduce the opportunities for the virus to mutate is why rapid vaccination is imperative. In fact, I basically said the same thing in 2019 when writing about Andrew Wakefields invocation of the same argument regarding the MMR vaccine and measles variants. How long can one ignore the problem when there is at present massive evidence that viral immune escape is now threatening humanity? So its not surprising that Dr. Vanden Bossches letter reminds me of Andrew Wakefields warning about the MMR vaccine. There is a reason why a new flu vaccine is made each year: the influenza virus drifts and shifts and the vaccine needs to be reformulated to be a better match for the specific viruses that are predicted to be common during the next flu season. By educating these cells in ways that enable them to durably recognize and target Coronavirus-infected cells, our immune system could be perfectly armed for a targeted atack to the universe of Coronaviruses prior to exposure. However, this type of prophylactic vaccines [sic] are completely inappropriate, and even highly dangerous, when used in mass vaccination campaigns during a viral pandemic. Geert Vanden Bossche on Twitter: "New Q&A (and predictions) on how mass Vanden Bossche's claim that COVID-19 vaccination would suppress a vaccinated individual's natural immune response against future infections with COVID-19 or other coronaviruses is incorrect. This makes no sense, Yale's Omer told us. He does apparently have some history working on vaccines. He invokes the discovery of variants currently in circulation that have altered portions of the spike protein the target of COVID-19 vaccine implying that these observations lead credence to his hypothesis. What Ill do instead is to point out that Dr. Vanden Bossche, whether he realizes it or not, is supporting the conventional argument with respect to COVID-19 vaccination. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club thats right for you for free. Geert Vanden Bossche, PhD, DVM - Oregon Legislative Assembly I noted then that there was no evidence that mass vaccination with MMR had produced variants of the measles vaccine resistant to the immunity produced by the vaccine, just as I note now that there is as yet no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 variants are resistant to the immunity produced by current COVID-19 vaccines. Countering Geert Vanden Bossche's dubious viral open letter warning Basically, Dr. Vanden Bossches open letter is a mess that directly channels Andrew Wakefield. He has a long list of companies and organizations he's worked with on vaccine discovery and preclinical research, including GSK, Novartis, Solvay Biologicals, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Vanden Bossche asserts that COVID-19 vaccines pose a unique risk of producing dangerous variants in part because people who are vaccinated will be spreading the mutations while asymptomatic. When this happens, the immune system has to rely on more specialized effectors of our immune system (i.e., antigen-specific Abs and T cells) to fight the pathogen. 'Mass vaccination campaigns conducted on a background of high infectivity rates will dramatically increase the likelihood of previously asymptomatically . Visit Geert at https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/ and stay updated on his latest blogs, projects, and videos. . Ive attached the slides of the keynote that I held yesterday at the Vaccine Summit in Ohio ( ^Why should current Covid-19 vaccines not be used for mass vaccination during a pandemic? Dont you see? An example of a leaky vaccine is the vaccine against Mareks disease, highly contagious and deadly viral disease of chicken that is a major problem in the poultry industry, and Dr. Vanden Bossche relies on this precedent, as Nirenberg explains: For a moment though, lets entertain the notion that the vaccines are leaky. Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, Ph.D., has nothing against vaccines. GEERT VAN DEN BOSSCHE THE LAST POST He is a super expert in vaccine development. To all authorities, scientists and experts around the world, to whom this concerns: the entire world population. The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted a swarm of vocal contrarians like little else in the recent past. combined with stringent public health measures will not be effective in mitigating the course of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. PDF Covid-19 Vaccination Policy Risk FAQ - WordPress.com Word Wise helps you read harder books by explaining the most challenging words in the book. Hes selling his idea of a vaccine designed to activate natural killer cells. Even if they dont prevent all transmissions, it looks like they can drastically cut the transmission chain and also reduce the amount of virus that can be transmitted in these cases. One of his topics is labeled, "Why mass vaccinaton amidst a pandemic creates an irrepressible monster." Vanden Bossche's scientific argument in broad terms is that the current COVID-19 vaccines, through a mechanism analogous to antibiotic resistance, will create mutant variants of the virus that escape the protection of those vaccines. American Conservative University: Meeting of the COVID-19 Giants with Its been accompanied by a video interview posted towhere else?antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.s Childrens Health Defense website. The second benefit to Vanden Bossche's claim is that it places his purported invention as the miracle solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are ready to for the truth, this book will be painful but finally make sense out of it all. "The food you eat isnt sterile, he explained, the dust you inhale isnt sterile, the water you drink isnt sterile.. Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a world-class certified expert in microbiology and infectious diseases. WHO and UNICEF warn of a decline in vaccinations during COVID-19 Dr. Vanden Bossche received his DVM from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. Without vaccines, the virus is allowed to jump from person to person and make imperfect copies of itself, and this flawed replication process is like a worldwide game of Russian roulette. The situation is just too urgent! This brings us to our topic, a misinformation-filled open letter by a scientist named Geert Vanden Bossche that went viral over the weekend. If Dr. Bossche fears the current vaccines so much, what is his solution? "Natural infection kills. Dr. Vanden Bossche has become world famous for warning Humanity against the health danger of conducting mass vaccination programs during a pandemic. It is precisely this type of highly specific, high affinity Abs that current Covid-19 vaccines are inducing. 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, The Kindle title is not currently available for purchase. As I noted when Andrew Wakefield explicitly used the example of Mareks disease to claim that a leaky vaccine to MMR would cause a global catastrophe by selecting for deadly measles variants, yes, a leaky vaccine changes the selective pressure and permits the evolution of highly virulent strains because the virus retains the ability to continue to spread among vaccinated populations, leading to the vaccine selecting for the most virulent mutations. If new variants of concern that escape from the protection granted by the vaccines emerge, scientists reformulate the vaccines. Claims that Belgium has the best fries in the world! The more aggressively mass vaccination progresses, the more obvious the number of cases will decline. These assumptions come without scientific studies or data to support them and indeed are not always reasonable. The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org. Enhanced typesetting improvements offer faster reading with less eye strain and beautiful page layouts, even at larger font sizes. Dr. Come to think of it, the similarities between Dr. Vanden Bossche and Andrew Wakefield strike me as stronger than ever now, given that, as well documented by Brian Deer, Wakefield basically published his fraudulent science to support the claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism in order to make a market for his own single vaccine against the measles. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Read full document here: https://t.co/DPDFlg4U45 pic.twitter.com/TISexYqyTq, Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche) March 13, 2021. The role of the innate immune response in COVID-19 infections is not fully understood. This book is extremly well researched. If they are exposed to the virus during this time, their immune response may be too weak to effectively fight it off. One such claim that I hadnt yet seen is another favorite antivax claim, although admittedly its a rather niche claim in that you dont hear it too often. I think that grifters recognize fellow grifters, and Frei recognized that Dr. Vanden Bossche is stoking fear of existing COVID-19 vaccines to produce a sales rationale for his own NK-based vaccine, just as Andrew Wakefield stoked fear of the MMR in order to support his own measles vaccine. If the virus manages to do so, it can benefit from the (momentarily) suppressed innate immunity, thereby causing disease in an increasing number of these subjects and ensuring its own propagation. In the first two letters alone, he uses some variation of the phrase "it is reasonable to assume" at least seven times. Maybe. He reminds me of another doctor who spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination based on an unbending principle of immunology to justify his concerns, without any clinical or epidemiological evidence to support it. Where do we plant our next step? His LinkedIn profile lists several jobs in upper management positions, including a three-year stint as the senior program officer for vaccine discovery at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. PDF Geert Bossche: Halt All Covid-19 Mass Vaccination (Open Letter to WHO As stated, I am not against vaccination. Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre. You should pick up on his apocalyptic language (there is no time to spare, if we are committed to perpetuating our species) and turns of phrases that would be more at home in a superhero movie (guardians of mankind). In scenario #1, you get rid of vaccines and lockdowns and allow the virus to spread, practically unimpeded, through the population, killing more and more people and leaving many with long-term health consequences. Heres the crux of his concern, in which he likens escape from vaccine immunity to antibiotic resistance: THE key question is: why does nobody seem to bother about viral immune escape? While there is no doubt that current vaccines will become less effective over time due to genetic drift, this is not something that vaccine science is unaware of or unprepared for. This book provides a thought-provoking analysis of the complex interactions between the virus and the host immune system that underlie the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite taking Vanden Bossches assertions extremely seriously, these high-profile alternative-media figures dont even do basic due diligence such as looking into McMillan, whos the man who interviewed Vanden Bossche, or the company McMillan is apparently affiliated with, Vejon Health. . The classic example of a leaky vaccine is actually the one for Mareks disease, caused by a herpesvirus that infects chicken and causes lymphoma among other illnesses. As I like to say, if you ever write anything that channels Andrew Wakefield, you really should reconsider your life choices. They do not. See | 71 comments on LinkedIn Very interested in spirituality. This is a very confused argument. _). But if you have a full and overpowering army at your command, the invaders wont stick around for long. "The underlying fallacy," Omer explained, is that a natural infection is better than a vaccine. It makes things a lot clearer, even if I cannot understand everything. David Gorski on March 18, 2021 Tweet "Mass vaccination with leaky Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants." Geert Vanden Bossche, PhD degree in Virology, University of Hohenheim . My statements are based on nothing else but science. Mass vaccination during pandemic historical blunder: Nobel laureate . As the innate immune system cannot remember the pathogens it encountered (innate immunity has no so-called immunological memory), we can only continue to rely on it provided we keep it trained well enough. (Truly, those were simpler times.). This material may not be reproduced without permission. After his career in Academia, Geert joined several vaccine companies (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay . Thus if evidence emerges that particular variants do appear to influence vaccine efficacy, it should be possible to periodically reformulate the vaccines so that they better match the circulating strains. Whats particularly dangerous about Dr. Vanden Bossches misinformation is that, on the surface, he appears to be a vaccine expert, whom antivaxxers touting his open letter (and all the follow-up science hes been Tweeting and posting to his website) have been describing as a worlds expert in vaccines. This is only going to be possible provided it escapes to the S-specific Abs that are momentarily raised in previously asymptomatically infected subjects. NK cells have increasingly been described to be endowed with the capacity to acquire immunological memory. Its not an instantaneous solution, as massive vaccination campaigns require manufacturing and deployment at scale, but its a fix we know well and have implemented in the past. You can read the links if you want to know more, but the short version is that the acellular pertussis vaccine works but its immunity wanes (as it does after natural infection); this can be corrected with additional booster shots.