Dr. Robert Malone - "The Inventor of mRNA Technology" - now going rogue?

The Quarantine Zone
1

I’m opening this thread to get a little help in thinking about what Dr. Robert W. Malone has been putting out there lately. Not much of a profile right now, but your friendly neighborhood anti-vaxxer will have his name on the tips of their tongues before long.

Here’s a summary (original article, terrible source acknowledged):

The public was led to believe by regulators and vaccine developers that the spike protein produced by mRNA COVID vaccines stayed in the shoulder where it was injected and was not biologically active — even though regulators around the world had a copy of the study which showed otherwise.

The biodistribution study obtained by Bridle showed lipid nanoparticles from the vaccine did not stay in the deltoid muscle where they were injected as the vaccine’s developers claimed would happen, but circulated throughout the body and accumulated in large concentrations in organs and tissues, including the spleen, bone marrow, liver, adrenal glands and — in “quite high concentrations” — in the ovaries.

The mRNA — or messenger RNA — is what tells the body to manufacture the spike protein. The lipid nanoparticles are like the “boxes” the mRNA is shipped in, according to Malone. “If you find lipid nanoparticles in an organ or tissue, that tells you the drug got to that location,” Malone explained.

According to the data in the Japanese study, lipid nanoparticles were found in the whole blood circulating throughout the body within four hours, and then settled in large concentrations in the ovaries, bone marrow and lymph nodes.

Malone said there needed to be monitoring of vaccine recipients for leukemia and lymphomas as there were concentrations of lipid nanoparticles in the bone marrow and lymph nodes. But those signals often don’t show up for six months to three or nine years down the road, he said.

OK. So Malone is taking advantage of his credentials as he does the conservative anti-vaccine “alternative media” circuit of podcasts, YouTube videos, quasi-scientific websites, etc. Thing is … I know it’s all BS but I don’t have a great counter to use against those who’ve posted this stuff on another board. Here’s my tack so far:

Science is not done by whipping out credentials. No matter what Malone “invented”, his pronouncements have to stand up to the scrutiny of his peers and the experimental results of other researchers. If Malone is on the right path, others will corroborate his research (or whatever research he’s citing) and a new consensus will be achieved. Meanwhile, no one study or finding – no matter the credentials of whoever presents it – is enough to overturn the existing consensus.

My first thought was to check to see if Dr. Malone really didn’t “invent mRNA technology”. I mean, of course he didn’t – but is there a germ of plausibility? I checked into this superficially and found his name on a lot of mRNA-related publications circa 1989-90. That seems to be way too early in the game for him to claim special knowledge about what’s going on in present-day mRNA vaccine research. Am I off-base here? I don’t think I am.

2

It seems that Dr. Malone feels he was snubbed by his employer (The Salk Institute) early in his career. He has since set up a self-promoting website to tout himself as the “RNA Vaccine Inventor”. I’m going to go out a limb and say that if someone is a legitimate innovator in a field, that others in the field will recognize them so that they don’t have to beat their own drum about it.

https://www.rwmalonemd.com/mrna-vaccine-inventor

3

I believe Malone “invented mRNA technology” as much as I believe Shiva Ayyadurai invented e-mail.

*coincidentally, Ayyadurai’s Wikipedia entry describes him as a “promoter of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and unfounded medical claims”.
**conspiracy theorists who embrace isolated Brave Mavericks as unquestionable experts are at the same time scornful of the vastly greater number of equally or more qualified experts who strongly disagree.

4

Is it just me? I’ve never once heard any claims that the spike proteins were supposed to stay in your shoulder.

5

Same here.

…

Sad thing is, I’m finding it hard to sweep this guy aside in online debates. Malone’s got an irresistible combination of (a) apparently legit credentials and (b) saying EXACTLY what anti-vaxxers want to hear.

The first two creases in Malone’s armor that I’ve been able to find so far are that (1) something clearly went down between him and the Salk Institute though details are hazy and (2) he backed Pepcid (famotidine) back in February 2020 as a promising remedy for COVID.

6

Here’s the paper. Malone is simply second author. So, at best, he contributed to the “mRNA technology” in that paper. But really, it’s hard to say which paper is the invention paper of that type of technology because it was all over the place in the early 90’s. He doesn’t appear to have contributed to anything recently, particularly the lipid nanoparticles that are part of the mRNA vaccines. He certainly didn’t contribute any kind of mRNA vaccine research.

Meanwhile, I can’t find any papers that say that lipid nanoparticles accumulate in organs and the blood when they’re not supposed to.

7

Neither have I. I’ve heard the similar but distinct claim that a lot of it does wind up staying in the muscles in your arm, near the injection site, but nothing about saying it won’t go anywhere else.

I wonder if this is another one of those situations where someone who knows a bit about how things work is coming up with weird theories, and claiming that there were “tests in Japan” that confirmed them. I remember this guy who said that the way to cure/prevent COVID-19 was to use nasal steroids, and he also claimed that there were studies in Japan that backed him up.

He also pushed the idea that there was this coverup. Does this Dr. Malone also believe that the reason this information was hidden was due to some political conspiracy?

That, BTW, would be my main rebuttal. The idea that there would be these widely known dangers and no one would have talked about them is unlikely. You’d need a lot of people who were in on this conspiracy.

8

Reuters did check on the alleged danger of the spike protein.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-cytotoxic/fact-check-covid-19-vaccines-are-not-cytotoxic-idUSL2N2O01XP

And Reuters uses as an example a video where Three Stooges three guys (Including Dr. Malone) talk about false alleged dangers.

Reuters Fact Check previously debunked a similar claim (here) that spike proteins created in response to mRNA vaccines are harmful or toxic to the body.

“So far, there is no scientific evidence available that suggests spike proteins created in our bodies from the COVID-19 vaccines are toxic or damaging our organs,” experts at the Meedan Digital Health Lab (Digital Health Lab) said. (here)

Research shows that spike proteins (here) remain stuck to the cell surface around the injection site and do not travel to other parts of the body via the bloodstream, they added. The 1% of the vaccine that does reach the bloodstream is destroyed by liver enzymes.

VERDICT

False. There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are cytotoxic (toxic to cells).

Here one has to remember that there are many examples of doctors and professors that did great works before, but ended their emeritus lives as proponents of stupid or dangerous crap because it was either economically beneficial to them or that it stroke their egos.

9

ditto.

There was decent data for that. I am no longer obsessively following that stuff, but famotidine was nearly as well documented as vitamin D as a thing you could do to reduce your risk of serious covid. My doctor even mentioned it when encouraging me to add famotidine to my stomach-acid reduction regimen.

10

I know. The quote in the OP talks first about the spike proteins and then lipid nanoparticles are accumulating throughout the body. Well, which one is it?

If it’s just the spike proteins getting out of the arm muscle, how would it be any different than the coronavirus itself? If it’s lipid nanoparticles, then using them for drug delivery would also be off the table. Anyway, those are two completely different substances. Sounds pretty goofy to me.

11

The lipid nanoparticles get broken down by the body, i would have guessed. Anyway, a quick Google search pulled up some studies of just the lipid package, testing the safety of infusing a bunch of it into the blood of rats and monkeys at et al.

12

Politifact interviewed the experts, and the agreement was that Malone and others are grossly wrong.

13

Ooh, good catch. For some reason, I mentally replaced “spike proteins” with “mRNA.” That would at least make some sort of sense, as the lipid nanoparticles are carriers for the mRNA, both protecting it from breaking down before the cells get it, and allowing it to be absorbed into the cells. I could at least understand an argument that, if we see the nanoparticles, then we know the mRNA was there, too.

I pulled up the article to see if it made more sense with more context (It didn’t.) but got sidetracked into reading the paper itself. And it does not say what he claims it says.

There is indeed an experiment in the paper that tests for “lipids” after injection. And there are some organs that seem to get a higher amount than others over a 48 hour period. However, the test was in rats, not humans as he claimed.

I did find what is purportedly the clip where he made his argument, but I did not check it. However, I will include it below (albeit not as a link or embed).

​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du2wm5nhTXY

If anyone chooses to watch it, I suggest you do so in Incognito mode, or log out of YouTube, so it doesn’t mess up your Recommended videos. Or you can do what I did when I copied the URL, and delete it from your YouTube video history.

14

My understanding is the that the lipid nano-particles used for the vaccines have been extensively researched over the last 10 years, and chosen for low toxicity.

But I would be totally non-surprised if they did eventually turn up on the California list of “known carcinogenic substances” It took longer than that for some of the other stuff on that list to get there, and sometimes the effects are small or debated.

The lipid nano-particles are bio-active, react with the cell wall, do the kind of thing that might potentially cause cancer. I confess, I’m much more relaxed about getting the injection myself than I would be about giving it to a kid. I’ll be dead before I have to worry about any slow rare cancer.

15

What is not really surprising is that antivaxx groups are furiously pushing for that lipid nano-particle angle and misguiding others.

My response? I told her that, when it comes to the antivaccine movement, there is nothing new under the sun and that none of its propaganda and disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines is new. It’s the same old antivaccine misinformation, tropes, misrepresentations of science, and propaganda, just repackaged for COVID-19 vaccines. I’ve already written about a number of examples. The most frequently used example thus far has been to weaponize anecdotes of death after the vaccine that likely had nothing to do with the vaccine, much as, pre-pandemic, antivaxxers had weaponized anecdotes of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) after vaccination, all to demonize vaccines. Other examples include claiming that vaccines cause female infertility; that they “damage” or “alter” your DNA, or that COVID-19 is not dangerous (or isn’t even real at all) in much the same way antivaxxers used to claim that measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases aren’t dangerous (the implication being that vaccines are unnecessary). Then, of course, there is the ever-popular strategy of fear mongering about reports made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, implying that they indicate causation. All techniques antivaxxers used extensively pre-pandemic. So it should be no surprise that antivaxxers are also using a variant of a longtime favorite trope, the “toxins gambit“, the claim that vaccines are loaded with horrible “toxins“, a variant being the claim that vaccines have “fetal cells” or “fetal DNA” in them and are thus horrifically contaminated. Heck, that last one has even been used by antivaxxers about COVID-19 vaccines!

Which brings me to lipid nanoparticles, which appear to be the new mercury in vaccines to antivaxxers.

Unsurprisingly, after having tried to misrepresent the mRNA-based vaccines developed and marketed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech as “gene therapy” or something that will corrupt your DNA, it’s no surprise that antivaxxers are now resurrecting a version of the “toxins gambit” to use against these same vaccines and that the target of the gambit are the lipid nanoparticles in the vaccines. Unsurprisingly, über -quack Joe Mercola last week decided to do what he does so frequently and summarize the latest COVID-19 conspiracy theories, this time the “toxins gambit” applied to the lipid nanoparticles, in the form of an article entitled “How Safe Are the Nanoparticles in Moderna’s Vaccine?” And Joe Mercola isn’t the only quack trying to demonize lipid nanoparticles.

Certain antivaccine canards never die, no matter how many stakes you stick through their heart or how many silver bullets you shoot them with or how many headshots you’ve pumped into them (depending on whether your favorite metaphor is a vampire, werewolf, or zombie, of course). One such canard is what I like to call the “toxins gambit”. Over the years, we’ve seen it used by such antivaccine “luminaries” as Jenny McCarthy and many other antivaxxers. Basically, it consists of listing all sorts of scary-sounding ingredients that are found in vaccines and then trying to argue that vaccines are horrific cesspits of toxins because they contain trace amounts of formaldehyde, for example. It’s a truly stupid, brain dead gambit, but no matter how many times it’s slapped down, there will always be some ignorant antivaccinationist who will resurrect it. (It’s like a lot of antivaccine misinformation that way, actually, but even more so.)

Because the “toxins gambit” is such hoary old bit of antivaccine misinformation, it should surprise no one that it’s been resurrected, much like slashers like Jason, who, after seemingly having been killed at the end of the last movie, always find a way to come back to kill again in the next. Demonizing lipid nanoparticles in the most recent crop of vaccines is just its latest iteration.

16

Reacting with the cell membrane doesn’t cause cancer. Mutations in the genome are the only things that cause cancer. The only way that lipid nanoparticles are carcinogenic is if they result in chronic inflammation that causes mutations that give rise to unregulated cell growth and division. The lipids either fuse with cell membranes or are metabolized by the body (just like natural lipids throughout the body), so they’re not going to cause a chronic issue unless someone can show that they accumulate in the body for some bizarre reason.

The lipid nanoparticles are mimicking lipid-enveloped viruses except they don’t have fancy things like spike proteins. Otherwise, they fuse to the cell membrane, are taken into the cells in things called endosomes, and are released from the endosomes. Only viruses that mutate DNA (directly or through chronic inflammation) cause cancer.

They’re sneaky about suggesting cancer because that wouldn’t come up in regular toxicity testing in clinical trials. People can also confuse these with nanoparticles in consumer goods or industry, some of which may cause cancer. In fact, I bet it’s these nanoparticles that they’re hinting at. Completely different beasts.

17

Of course the spike proteins are biologically active. That’s the whole point. They wouldn’t work if they weren’t.

They probably also wouldn’t work if they stayed in the muscle, because so far as I know, the immune system mostly isn’t based in the muscles.

18

And the mouse and monkey studies i found with a quick Google search said that in large volume they caused minor inflammation that resolved in a day or two. Lipid membranes are pervasive throughout the body. This seems very unlikely to be a problem.

19

Yeah. Now I suppose there could be an issue if you needed the nanoparticles to deliver a drug on a daily basis. But those are going to be much smaller quantities than required for the vaccines.

Malone really was doing research on this back in the 90’s, but “inventor of mRNA vaccines” is bullshit. His Linkedin page suggests that he is struggling as an entrepreneur. His push for famotidine provides a conflict of interest because successful vaccines will remove the need for a weak covid treatment like famotidine. The fact that he’s tweeting that the spike protein is toxic shows that he’s nuts or purposely defrauding the public. If the spike protein produced by the vaccine is so toxic, the vaccines would have never made it out of clinical trials. Old people would be dying all over the place from cardiovascular events.

20

It’s not only unlikely to be a problem, but is actually why they are useful for vaccines. If they cause inflammation, that means they are activating the immune system in that area, making it more likely to notice the spike protein.