Medical Good or Evil: New electrical DNA driven synthetic flu vaccines, from company connected to Homeland Security

A company called Inovio Pharmaceuticals, has just received U.S. patent rights to  new synthetic flu vaccines, and their new vaccine delivery system.

The vaccines are “DNA-driven”, and operate by “electroporation technology”.

Electroporation, or electropermeabilization, is a significant increase in the electrical conductivity and permeability of the cell plasma membrane caused by an externally applied electrical field. It is usually used in molecular biology as a way of introducing some substance into a cell, such as loading it with a molecular probe, a drug that can change the cell’s function, or a piece of coding DNA.”Wikipedia

DNA-driven reaction: “A lab technique to mark highly repeated DNA sequences with a radioactive RNA tracer, by having a much larger amount of complementary DNA molecules than radioactive RNA tracer molecules.”Lexic

Inovio claims their vaccines increase immune response four times more than standard vaccines.  This is due in part to their use of synthesized versions of various flu virus proteins, but mainly by introducing the vaccine at the DNA level.

The vaccine is coaxed into your cellular DNA through some form of electrical stimulation on your skin. Inovio claims that you get a better immune response when your body is threatened at the DNA level.

They have a universal influenza vaccine, called INO-3510, as well as a vaccine for H5N1, called VGX-3400X.  INO is entering Phase 1 testing.  Inovio claims VGX was successful in Phase 1 testing, with what they consider positive results for 72% of the test subjects.

This sounds good; vaccines that will finally stop the common cold, or flues?  But think about the DNA-driven part of it. Scientists have come up with a way that could be used to alter your DNA!

Here’s something else to be suspicious about, Inovio is working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

The primary/official mission of the Plum Island Center is to prevent foreign diseases from entering the United States.  Inovio has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Homeland Security to create synthetic DNA vaccines for animals.

The following quotes, made in December 2007, are from J. Craig Venter, a DNA pioneer:

“…I will argue that the future of life depends not only in our ability to understand and use DNA, but also, perhaps in creating new synthetic life forms, that is, life which is forged not by Darwinian evolution but created by human intelligence.”

“The genetic code will give us probabilities about disease risk and the ability to understand environmental factors linked to genetics.  Will governments, businesses and insurance companies pay the smaller amount in advance to prevent disease?”

“Our ability to read the genetic code is changing even faster than changes predicted by Moore’s Law.”

“…we described the ability to take a chromosome from one bacterium and place it into a second bacterial cell.  The result was astonishing, the new DNA that we added changed the species completely from the original one into the species defined by the added DNA. You could describe this as the ultimate in identity theft.”

“Now they can happen not just by random chance but by deliberate human design and selection.  Human thought and design and specific selection is now replacing Darwinian evolution.”

“Right now extensively modified bacteria are being used to make food additives and industrial chemicals.”