No. It’s not a political stubbornness. It’s not personalities or ideologies. Not everyone thinks the way you do. Choosing to take or not to take the COVID-19 shot is simplistic for some. For most, though, it is a complex and difficult decision. Some choose to get the vaccine “just to get along”. Others make the decision after multiple iterations of cost-benefit analysis. Just as some choose to not get the vaccine after multiple iterations of cost-benefit analysis.
Allow me to offer the following three particular areas that are necessary to address when making important decisions. Well, in fact, for making decisions we would deem less important, too. With regard the COVID-19 shot, most would place the decision to take or not take it as an important decision.
These three areas are also helpful in mitigating judgmental attitudes. They are my explanation for my decision. If, after reading and considering them, you disagree with me and decide to take another path, do so with my blessing and be at peace. I will not judge you. I do ask that you reciprocate the same humanity to me, too.
For those who are struggling, and those who are not but need to understand more, please allow me to offer the following reasons why some individuals are not ready to take the vaccine. The following thesis is a beginning. Not a final treatment.
Theological
Artificial Enhancement as a Theological Issue
Life is at the pinnacle of God’s creative work with humans as the crown on the head of this creation. For that reason and more, Christians place humans in a particular class as requiring particular and special treatment. Mankind is not in the same theological, moral, or personal class as animals. The bodies of deceased humans are not treated as waste or trash. We don’t dispose of humans as we do other animals for an important reason. All this is true whether we are considering taking aspirin or treating a fatal disease with solid organ transplant. Therefore, there are lines in medical treatment we have drawn and determined should not be crossed. I include behind that line the purposeful changing or modifying of intact, healthy, designed normal processes of the body. For the sake of this discussion, we may need to switch “purposeful” with “artificially”.
Before the current batch of COVID vaccines, traditional vaccines introduced a non-virulent part of the wild pathogen into the body with the purpose of triggering the body’s intact, healthy, designed (normal) immune response to produce protection against the disease. The body reacted in the same way it would if it encountered the wild virus. Immune protection came from the processes God designed. These traditional vaccinations used the normal, operative, existing processes to do what the body would already do and often produced the same protection as if the body had been exposed to the wild pathogen.
Unlike traditional vaccination, the primary COVID vaccines employed in the United States use cellular information molecules: messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). These information molecules then enter the cell and hijack the body’s cellular-level processes to make an artifact similar to something found in the pathogen. This artifact is subsequently identified by the body as “foreign”, and the body responds to produce an immunity. It is an artificially created immunity produced by hijacking the cellular information systems. It forces the cell to do something it would not naturally do. The purpose (we can discuss if it successful or not) is to use the cellular protein production systems in a process that is could be compared to gain-of-function in adjusting the function of a pathogen..
My first theological concern (not in priority, only in presentation) is we should not use artificial enhancement of the human body. Traditional vaccines are not artificial in that they use the existing normal processes to provide the targeted protection. There is a very important difference.
Theological Nature of Cellular Information and Processes
The second theological concern is the tampering with the body’s information systems. By information systems, I am referring to the encyclopedic information stored and used in DNA and RNA, both as function and processes.
The eugenics movement of late 19th and early 20th centuries had at its heart the concept of improving human DNA through selective breeding. Those desires for changing the information systems of the persons through external control are similar to using the mRNA and DNA medical devices. Hijacking the information processes inside the cell are based in a common technology that would allow for direct modification of our genetic code. Direct modification by genetic manipulation takes the eugenics objectives to the next level by making genetic modification instantly available. Once humans achieved the capacity to manipulate DNA easily it is too small a step to also think we should.
DNA contains the “blueprint” of an individual. More than that, it is a unique genetic picture that includes the genetic genealogy and history of that person. It can be used, and has been used, for unambiguous identification of a person’s remains. Better than dental matching, facial recognition, or fingerprints. Your DNA is, more than any other physical part of you, a unique marker of you as a specific, distinct, and unique person. It is perhaps the only piece of you that is uniquely you. As a person, it is the address that only you own.
At the nuclear information level, a male will forever be a male, and female forever a female. Your gender is fixed here. Your cellular makeup, protein manufacturing and reproduction systems all fixed here. While it is true that your cellular information will change as you are exposed to life events (like a wild virus invading your body to reproduce itself), the body’s response is what it was designed to do. A normal immune response.
We should not modify the body in any manner that has as its purpose an artificial gain of function. This includes artificial manipulation of the informational processes of the cell. Cellular information processes, including the processes of protein synthesis and of genetic material should be hands-off.
Moral/Ethical
Artificial Enhancement as a Moral Issue
This artificiality of programming an immune response has similarities to gain-of-function work that produced the problem to begin with.
Let me be clear. It is not only acceptable but in many cases necessary to use medical treatments that do not fall within the body’s normal systems. Using prosthetic devices to replace a missing or damaged part or life-preserving capability is very different than attempting to enhance or improve existing, working, operating body function. Intervention to replace or repair something damaged by disease or other event is not the same as adding functionality.
We should recognize a moral difference of using a bovine heart valve to replace a damaged human heart valve from using lab designed and created cellular information to artificially induce a process in a normal healthy cell. We wouldn’t cut off a person’s legs – or, let me say morally we shouldn’t – just to give them artificial legs that provide better function. This is morally repugnant.
It has been suggested that this virus came from gain-of-function research. Not just research about gain-of-function, but attempts to create additional functionality. In this case, taking a normally infectious agent and making it more deadly, more contagious, more “bad” from a disease perspective.
Why would we do that?
No. Seriously. WHY WOULD WE DO THAT?
Not all my readers know that my background includes biological/chemical weapons intelligence. I have both done extensive research and work in this area, but I have also been a consultant to research and law enforcement related to this topic. I have been at Biosafety-Level 4 (BL4) facilities in the United States, and been in chemical weapons handling facilities. It is hard to forget MOPP-4 training once you’ve had it. MOPP stands for Mission Oriented Protective Posture. When you are at MOPP-4, you have the full chemical/biological outer clothing and respirators. And if you don’t, or make a mistake in putting it on, or wear it improperly, or take too long putting on all the pieces, you’re a casualty. In certain circumstances, also known as dead.
So, I am not unfamiliar with the reasons we do gain-of-function research from a national strategic and defensive standpoint. However, I take exception to gain-0f-function research for any other reason. And believe we all should.
I believe there are too many similarities between gain-of-function research and the science and technology related to this COVID shot. There have been some recent reports that the current shots were created in parallel to the work that produced this monster.
Personhood
Any medical treatment is inextricably linked to the concept of person and personhood. Identification of a person, and confessions of the status of personhood is at the foundation of understanding why slavery, abortion, and human subjects research are not normal everyday things. Or shouldn’t be. And, before anyone misrepresents me, let me state unequivocally that I am not equating any of these three. Chattel slavery is reprehensible because it takes a person and claims they are not. Abortion is wrong because it claims the person is not. Human subjects research requires that we treat persons as persons, and that full informed uncoerced consent be given prior to any research in which humans are the subject. And, by extension medical treatment.
Although definitions of person have been controversial, at the historic and modern center of most common definition of a person is the ability to reason. More precisely, the possession of rational thinking ability and ability to understand and participate in rational discussions of oneself.
The necessity of “informed consent” is anchored in this concept of a person. Animals cannot give consent. Only persons. Only humans. If a person is deemed unable, western legal systems have developed a system of protection for them. Because persons require protection. Medical treatment should only be in the best interest and with full consent of the person.
These moral concerns are closely aligned to theological outlined above. As they should be.
Scientific
Science has always overestimated it’s comprehension of what is known. One of the hallmarks of science is that it is never “settled”. We expect to learn more. The history of science is filled with examples of scientists claiming they know more than they actually know. The hubris of science and scientists should always be an important component in determining the level of trust given to their claims. For example, the now-rejected identification of “junk DNA” that was once settled science. If anything should truly be drawn from the history of science, it is that scientists most often do not know the real limits of their knowledge. That alone must be sufficient reasons to pause when scientists claim they are settled in their knowledge of manipulating any cellular information material. This includes the processes that are designed to transmit, protect, reproduce, use cellular information processes.
At the start of the treatment regimen, scientist claimed this process of using the cellular systems to produce spike proteins would be constrained to the injection site, and that spike proteins produced would not leave the site. We know now this isn’t correct. Spike proteins are found in other places in the body and have been isolated from the urine of individuals following injection.
From the original claims this vaccine would provide an individual with immunity from the disease and that the spike proteins would remain in the injection site and be rapidly destroyed, we find that at best, this shot is only therapeutic. It is not a defense against becoming sick with COVID. At best, it only reduces the severity of the disease. It is another therapeutic.
Tragically, this shot was treated as if it would provide immunity and thus build a firewall to stop the spread. Yet, individuals who have had the shot are known to carry a higher viral load than those who have not taken the shot.
Trusting science because it comes from scientists is a common problem. Actually a common danger. C. S. Lewis called this type of devotion “scientism”. There are many interesting phenomena associated with the COVID-19 epidemic. Among those is the large-scale worship of “settled science” which is really a rush to accept political agenda masquerading as science. One pastor has described our modern view of science as “whatever Dr. Fauci proclaims tomorrow”.
Exhortation
Those who are making different decisions than you did about the shot are humans, people. And some of those you are throwing hate at are your brothers and sisters in-Christ. Some of those the Government is forcing into a bad place by forcing the treatment are your brothers/sisters in Christ. Tell the Government they aren’t allowed to abuse people like that.
Already people are loosing jobs for choosing to not be treated. We have crossed a social and political line that is doing grave damage to our culture and to real, living, feeling humans. Our brothers and sisters. To fellow humans.
coda
Please help me discuss and develop these thoughts. Therefore, only reasonable and useful comments will be allowed. Comments that are flippant or off-topic will be summarily deleted. Abusive commenters will be blocked.
Why Six Days? 