covid vaccine

[curiosity]

Not sure I'm in the right forum to ask this, but here goes... Is there anyone on this site who can explain (in layman's terms.) what the ingredients of the Astra-Zeneca covid-19 vaccine actually are ?

The paperwork which accompanies the packaging of the vaccine lists the ingredients as follows...



This product contains genetically modified organisms. (GMOs)..

Recombinant, replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus, encoding the SARS - CoV 2 Spike glycoprotein. Produced in genetically modified human embryonic Kidney (HEK) 293 cells.

The other excipients are L-histidine, L-histidine hydrochloride monohydrate, magnesium chloride hexahydrate, polysorbate 80. Ethanol, sucrose, sodium chloride, disodium edetate dihydrate, water for injections.


I am extremely reluctant to have any genetically modified substance injected into my body. Am I being over cautious ?

[TheVat]

All vaccines have relied on the modification of genes. You've never had smallpox or diptheria or polio, thanks to modifying genes to make a weakened version of a pathogen that your immune system can handle easily.

Some covid vaccines use a newer approach, with messenger RNA...

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... cines-work

....but Atrazeneca makes a more traditional vaccine, based on a chimp adenovirus -- a weakened version of a common cold virus. All vaccines in the past have used weakened versions of a virus, and getting that weakened version requires... genetic modification.

https://www.biospace.com/article/compar ... sputnik-v/

There is a lot of nonsense out there about GMO, driven more by politics than scientific facts. Yes, there are problems with a few GM crops, and how they interact with wild species, but that has zero bearing on the kind of genetic modification that's been done in medicine for a long time and now gives most of us protection from disfiguring and crippling, or fatal, illnesses.