The secrets of the Moderna vaccine are there for all to see, they run about two pages.

Stanford scientists saved drops of the COVID-19 vaccine destined for the garbage can, reverse engineered them, and have posted the mRNA sequence that powers the vaccine on GitHub for all to see.

  • HypnoGazelle [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Sorry for being a party pooper but science journalism is once again being science journalism, and I can never let it slide because journalists like this make me want to tear my fucking face off:

    They haven't "reverse engineered" a vaccine, they've identified and shared segments of the genetic sequence of two particular types of synthetic RNA which are becoming more prevalent in the population as vaccines are rolled out. It's going to be useful for the community sure and HUGE props to the Stanford team for sharing this to github, but for now it's mainly going to be useful on the analysis of biomedical data side of things.

    (sorry again for being a party pooper, but it's my job in a world of truly DOGSHIT science journalists)

    :kitty-cri-screm: pls make it stop

  • mwsduelle [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Stanford scientists have unfortunately taken their lives by shooting themselves in the back of the head, stuffing their lifeless corpses into oil drums, filling them with cement, and dumping them into the ocean.

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        This is huge for breaking the vaccine apartheid. Let's see if the UN allows sanctions and invasions of countries that use this data.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            That's just the "will it be really easy or kinda easy for the US to do assassinations over this" decision.

            The UN backing off and letting this happen is actually a very good thing for breaking the IP laws that still hold the global south in intellectual shackles.

  • cilantrofellow [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Pretty much any lab that can get their hands on the vaccine could do this with routine commercial reagents. It’s nice that they made it public but it’s a relatively straightforward process.

  • yang [they/them, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    They reached out to Moderna before publishing the sequence. Unfortunately, I think anything will come from it.