7 January 2022 Oak Tree House

This morning I came across this – On 1 April 2020, ‘HORIZON: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine’ carried an article about the mRNA vaccines – first developed to fight cancer in humans, by the way.

It stressed the fact that only now (less than two years ago) are these vaccines beginning to be tested in humans, and that there are a lot of fairly basic unknowns which can only be answered through human trials. The following professor of microbiology was quoted many times in the piece:

Professor Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding –

Chair of the IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) Scientific Committee

Head of Microbiology at Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines, Langen, Germany

Fields of expertise

§ Immunology of infection & host-pathogen interaction

§ Clinical microbiology and infectious disease

§ Pharmaceutical microbiology

§ Regulation of vaccines and biomedicines

In relation to our innate immune response system, as humans, to the mRNA vaccine, Prof Isabelle said, twenty-one months ago:

1

“There is still a lot of work to be done to understand this response, the length of the protection it could give and whether there are any downsides.”

II

“What is really the current challenge, I think, is to understand whether these vaccines will really be able to mount a sufficiently protective immune response in the human and to understand, for example, which quantities of mRNA will be needed to do this.”

Prof Isabelle also stated that the mRNA is ‘easier and faster to produce” (than traditional vaccines) and is a “very unique way of making a vaccine and, so far, no such vaccine has been licenced for infectious disease.”

I am not a conspiracy theorist neither am I anti-vaccines. The C19 emergency vaccine has helped save the lives of many of the most vulnerable in our society. We owe medical scientists, from many countries, a huge debt of gratitude, for the research, started many decades ago, that is still on-going, into the SARS virus.

As a practitioner of the ‘cura animarum’ (cure of souls), or in today’s language, the ‘care of the whole person’ (with a lifetime of research into the human condition, especially its vulnerabilities), I am a firm believer in the sovereignty, nay sacredness, of the freedom of choice that we have the privilege to exercise.

It is a gift that lies at the heart of ‘the human,’ as Professor Isabelle calls us.  

Whatever your opinion about, and health response to, SARS-Co-V-19, or Covid-19, as it is more popularly known, I believe it’s worth making time to reflect on Professor Isabelle’s words at the start of this new year.

It may help some of you as you struggle with the pros and cons of a third jab, or  ‘that booster’ as our politicians call it – and possibly a fourth jab in the Spring, by which time two years will have passed since  Professor Isabelle shared her opinions with us, as an expert in microbiology and infectious disease.

A Blessed and Better New Year to you all. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

(Rev’d Geraint ap Iorwerth BA MPhil (University of Wales, Cardiff)