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COVID-19: Vaccination and Informed Consent
Tucker Carlson has launched a new show — Tucker Carlson Today — as part of the Fox Nation streaming service (subscription required). It is a long-form interview with a single person. It is much more satisfying and informative than the limited-time segments on broadcast television and cable shows. In his third episode, he talked with Dr. Hooman Noorchashm about the COVID vaccines, the good news and the not-so-good news.
Dr. Noorchashm is a thoracic surgeon but is, more importantly, an advocate for ethics, patient safety, and women’s health. This was borne out of a personal tragedy: His wife, Dr. Amy J. Reed, died of cancer. She suffered from uterine fibroids which were treated by the use of a surgical tool called a power morcellator to grind up the fibroid and extract it. Except that when a fibroid has even a minute amount of cancer cells, the morcellation process effectively metastasizes the cancer. Dr. Reed went from what was Stage 1 cancer to Stage 4 cancer as a result of the procedure. As reported in the New York Times:
Dr. Reed and her husband fought for years to ban the use of a surgical tool called a power morcellator, which has a spinning blade that slices up tissue so it can be extracted through small incisions. Though the device is regarded as a great boon to minimally invasive surgery, if a patient has cancer, as Dr. Reed did, morcellation can spread the disease.
Dr. Reed and Dr. Noorchashm (pronounced NOOR-chash) won some notable victories. Because of their efforts, the Food and Drug Administration studied morcellation and in 2014 recommended that it not be used in the “the vast majority” of women having surgery for uterine fibroids, a common tumor that is usually benign but that can hide a dangerous type of cancer.
This is by way of background to consider what Dr. Noorchashm is saying about the Covid vaccine.
He is very enthusiastic about the vaccine technology, particularly the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA approach. He thinks that getting a large percentage of the population vaccinated is a good idea, particularly those who are most at risk for serious disease. But he has real concerns about vaccinating people who are naturally immune or who have developed natural immunity in the process of recovering from Covid. The vaccine is wasted on the former group and may be a hazard for the latter group. This is because, according to Dr. Noorchashm, there is a risk that organs previously attacked by Covid will be opportunistically attacked again by the body’s reaction to the vaccine. This second attack may be more severe than the original attack with outcomes that are hard to predict.
Dr. Noorchashm has expressed this concern to the FDA. He has highlighted the fact that the Emergency Use Authorization is based on efficacy, but not safety, testing. We know the vaccine works, but we don’t know the extent of the hazard for certain patients. In his opinion, public health officials are discounting this risk and have made the decision to favor one minority group (the aged and vulnerable with comorbidities who may well die if infected — less than 1% of the population) over another minority group (persons who do not need the vaccine and who will have a fatal reaction to it — an unknown number but likely less numerous than the other group).
Dr. Noorchashm sought to allay fears about the vaccine: while mRNA vaccines are new, research on mRNA has been ongoing for 30 years; mRNA is an intermediary between DNA and proteins, the process is one-way, there is not genetic modification of human DNA involved. Nevertheless, the safety of the vaccine is not known for certain people, and the push for whole population vaccination must necessarily make some healthy people ill. This is not an argument against the vaccine, but it is an argument for individual choice and informed consent.
Dr. Noorchashm has received some pushback, as you can imagine, from his appearing on Tucker Carlson Today. No doubt most of his critics reacted to the excerpts played on Tucker Carlson Tonight which were necessarily condensed. As a result, Dr. Noorchashm published a follow-on in Medium to elaborate his ideas for his critics:
Here are the elements of my argument, for the record — I promise that I shall not deviate from them in my public discourse:
- The COVID-19 vaccines are some of the most powerful and effective ones we’ve ever created. The fact that America did so in under a year is a testament to our nation’s scientific ingenuity and technical prowess. The achievement of this vaccine by Operation Warp Speed was nothing short of a modern day scientific miracle.
- The COVID-19 vaccine, if administered efficiently to enough persons without immunity against SARS-CoV-2, will save lives, will induce herd immunity and will limit the evolution of new mutants by preventing natural infections.
- No persons should ever be forced to take any medical treatment, including vaccines. And no person’s civil liberties, employment or educational opportunities should be curtailed, because of their choice to refuse vaccination.
- Indiscriminate vaccination of persons with natural immunity or those with recent infections is unnecessary or potentially dangerous, respectively. We should not be doing it — and we should demand that FDA and CDC shift their recommendations to restrain vaccination of the recently infected or naturally immune. We should liberally use #ScreenB4Vaccine for safety.
I hope that all are able to see that adopting this strategy will bring sanity and serve to alleviate the concerns that make many Americans “vaccine hesitant”.
Americans are not sheep — Americans respond to reason and to rational choice. Americans want to benefit from effective products and scientific developments, but they also need to know that their individual choices are respected and that they can have a reasonable assurance of safety.
He makes a persuasive case for vaccination. He notes that one of the risks for simply letting the virus do what it does until the population develops natural herd immunity is that the “variants” of the virus are created by infected people. The fewer people infected the fewer variants that will be created. The fewer variants created the less likelihood of a strain of virus resistant to the vaccines that have been developed.
Recent “variant” reports may simply be a scare tactic to keep public health restrictions on personal liberty in place or not. But people should get vaccinated to reduce the potential for variant development. They just need to have a choice and be informed of what we know and don’t know.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
J&J is a conventional vaccine vs mRNA experimental gene therapy
full disclosure: I own zero shares of Moderna
I have had the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Finally I have realized that Windows is wonderful, Biden is a genius, and that Trump was icky. For some reason, I can’t identify my gender, but I am sure it is subjective and fluid.
Actually have had the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Felt hung over for the first few hours of the next day, but other than that I can’t identify any ill effects.
I like this.
(And at least it’s not slavery.)
mark of the beast
Oh?
Might not be a bad idea.
I don’t know how you’d say the one is gene therapy any more than the other.
None that I am aware of- I do have investments in stock funds that may include Moderna (or other big Pharma) but I haven’t looked closely enough to know. It is almost certain I have stocks in pharmaceutical firms thru such vehicles. Full disclosure, my father was in senior management at Pfizer and the parent company of Zeneca (now part of AstraZeneca)- but is deceased. I worked for DuPont doing medical research years ago and I have been a practicing physician for decades. That is the extent of my possible conflicts of interest. I post on medical topics when I feel I can clear up something or to refute mistaken concepts-as a physician, I am ethically bound to provide the best care and advice I can. I am aware the concept of being “ethically bound” is quaint but I am old school- I like to tell the young doctors that I am old school and the guys who trained me were old school before the old school was built.
As I understand it the J and J isn’t exactly a conventional vaccine. It’s closer to the Mrnas than it is to old vaccines in terms of how it works. It uses a virus to deliver genetic material instead of the way the mrna vaccines do it.
I guess that you’re kidding but for the record the Mark of the Beast will be clear and voluntary for everyone who receives it.
I think that’s about right.
None of the covid vaccines are true vaccines. Meriam-Webster just changed its definition of “vaccine” to account for this new process.
From what I understand, the J&J functions identically to the others, just more so. It just wraps DNA within a another virus, an adenovirus, and once the virus in injected into you, it delivers DNA into your cells, that then creates the mRNA in your cells, that then creates the SARS- Cov-2 pike proteins in your cells. Your immune system reacts to all these components.
both are gene therapies, one is conventional with a longer history, the other using mRNA is experimental with a shorter history
J&J is one shot
mRNA requires 2 shots
this is the definition of a ‘conventional’ vaccine, using dead or attenuated virus genetic material
But the genetic material it delivers is no part of the virus. It is created and inserted into the adenovirus, and the adenovirus itself is used only like the nanoparticles of lipids that surround other vaccines’ mRNA — it’s a delivery system for foreign genetic material. The mechanism of activating the immune system has nothing to do with the adenovirus, and all it does is insert the manufactured DNA into healthy human cells. Then this foreign manufactured DNA makes the foreign mRNA, which then makes the covid protein spikes.
This is in no way the definition of a conventional vaccine.
I keep hearing people say the new vaccines don’t fit the definition of vaccine. I wonder who is spreading that notion, because the people saying it certainly didn’t think it up themselves. They got that idea from somebody, who got it from somebody, who got it from somebody, and it can’t be turtles all the way down. Somebody started it, and that somebody is wrong. The new vaccines are vaccines just as much as vaccines using “dead or attenuated” virus material are vaccines. There already is variety in what vaccines consist of. Sometimes it’s chopped up pieces of viruses. Sometimes “traditional” viruses even contain genetic material that makes more viruses. The new mRNA ones include genetic material that produces specific proteins that your body then learns to respond to. That is new, but I fail to see how that should be different in a scary way in a world in which we’ve already accepted vaccines that consist of attenuated viruses, given that the genetic material of mRNA vaccines just produces virus proteins and not whole viruses.
Love this! :-)
I suppose that’s a lot like saying that all matter is made up of atoms, and so there’s no difference between H2O and H2SO4. More accurately it’s like saying that all diet and weight loss is nothing more than Calories in versus Calories burned. It seems reasonable and right, but that’s not quite true. Different foods require different catabolic pathways which require more calories than others to reduce the food. And drinking cold water on a hot day doesn’t just only reduce your temperature by the temperature of the water. It is better to drink tepid water on a hot day, because if you drink cold water the body actually actively burns calories to heat the body, just to heat the cold water.
Injecting a virus, with foreign, new DNA which makes foreign, new RNA, which makes old foreign virus spikes which match coded HIV receptor sites, is simply not the same as injecting an attenuated virus.
Traditionally a vaccine was an injection that contained the fully sequenced viral material that was of the same type as the infection for which immunity was desired.
We have only had the fully sequenced COVID virus for about three weeks.
The COVID vaccines contain snippets or “guesstimates” of what that viral sequencing is. Not at all the same thing. One researcher reported that a good deal of the snippet of the sequencing was basically some large percentage of any old corona virus. This is why so many of us refuse to consider that they are really vaccines.
It is important to remember that anyone defending these vaccines or the “their safety” or “the efficacy” is not only ignoring what the real experts on vaccination and America’s corrupt medical cabal, people like Jon Rappaport, have been saying for years. Plus given that the Major Number One Most Important Fact about this entire fraud perpetrated on us is that a 20 buck a month remedy HCQ plus zinc would have dropped fatality rates from COVID by 84%. Yet now the same people who want us to trust them as “health experts” for the safety and efficacy of these rushed into production items are the very people who denied us the remedies to begin with!
https://thecovidblog.com/2021/04/06/joshimar-henry-27-year-old-chicago-resident-doctor-dead-three-months-after-experimental-mrna-shot
Dr. Joshimar Henry was a resident doctor in the PGY1 program (pharmacy) at Humboldt Park Health in Chicago, according to his Facebook page. He was among the first Chicago residents to get the first dose of Pfizer’s experimental mRNA shot on December 15, 2020. The surreal, creepy video of the event features a presenter calling the shot recipients “the lucky ones,” followed by rounds of applause after each shot.
The Russians are actively spreading disinformation on the “Western” vaccines so be careful where you get your information. They are trying to use their vaccine to spread their influence. Also, in the news are reports that some high ranking Chinese are refusing their vaccine and trying to get the western vaccines b/c they don’t trust the safety information provided by their government- gee that is hard to fathom.
-the J&J vaccine is a “traditional” vaccine.
-none of the vaccines use genetic material as that term it is commonly used. None of them alter your DNA (as that term is commonly used).
-their are other mRNA vaccines besides the COVID ones-but these are the 1st widespread in public use.
trivial facile stupid idiotic metaphor
please try again
This is probably a good time to remind people how I use “likes”: I “like” all comments on my posts to let the commenters know I have seen the comment and appreciate their taking the time and thought to engage. I may or may not agree with the ideas expressed but it is always useful to hear from commenters that express thoughtful, humorous, or passionate prose.
Good approach!!! :)
No, I think conventional vaccines use a weakened version of the target virus itself to induce antibodies against that virus. J and j uses another virus as a vehicle to deliver DNA which causes cells to create the target virus protein which then induces antibodies.