Onslaught Of The Sheep (Part 1)

Science is hard. This is not meant to dissuade anyone from going into the sciences. It’s just a statement of fact with which all scientists would probably agree, and it’s a sort of mantra we can repeat to ourselves to recalibrate our expectations once in a while. There is a paper that came out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (or PNAS) that I fear will be weaponized by anti-vaccine activists. It is not a study that should be casually dismissed, nor can its results be embraced and spun into catastrophic conclusions. Again, science is hard.

It has to do with the claim (and I must repeat, the claim) that the genetic material from the coronavirus could integrate itself inside our own genetic material, that the SARS-CoV-2 RNA could get turned into DNA and mingle with our own. Anti-vaxxers, who downplay the threat of COVID-19, don’t typically see this as a problem with the virus itself; rather, they use this claim (again, claim) to scare the bejesus out of people contemplating one of the COVID-19 vaccines. You see, the COVID-19 vaccines in use right now contain genetic instructions (either RNA or DNA) to tell our body to manufacture the coronavirus’ spike protein. What if, anti-vaccine activists will argue to stir up the flames of anxiety, the genetic material inside these vaccines shoves itself inside your DNA, disrupting the order of things and mutating you in unpredictable ways?

transhumanism, social and philosophical movement devoted to promoting the research and development of robust human-enhancement technologies. Such technologies would augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans.