New Telegraph

Safety: Were warned against COVID-19 vaccination –Nigerian medical students in Harvard

Sequel to safety concerns, foreign medical professionals and scientists have warned some Nigerian medical students in the United States against partaking in COVID-19 vaccination until the safety concerns raised about the vaccines are credibly cleared. The situation is more hazy since Pfizer and Moderna, vaccines’ manufacturers have been granted immunity from liability should anything go wrong with their products. CHIJIOKE IREMEKA recalls that this contravenes all International Human Rights Protocols

 

•Pharmaceutical companies not taking liability for producing COVID-19 vaccines

•Immunity contravenes all International Human Rights Protocols –African Committee

•Vaccines may cause immune cells to attack placenta cells, cause birth defects

 

Some Nigerian medical students in Harvard University USA have come out to say that they were warned by their lecturers, who are mainly professors in different aspects of medicines, against taking any form of vaccination, saying that no one can, at this time, give full assurance that the vaccine will not cause harm to human body cells since they have not been properly tested.

 

The students were warned to stay off COVID- 19 vaccination in school (US) and at home (Africa), until the safety issues raised by medical experts and scientists have been cleared by the manufacturers of those vaccines which they said were hastily created without credible studies.

 

They were told that the vaccination is a good way of stopping the replication of disease-causing viruses and bacteria in the body, but it has to be properly evaluated by the World medical bodies and professionals, through well approved clinical trials before it will be accepted as a solution to a problem. According to a fourth year Nigerian Neurosurgery student in Harvard University, Chioma Okakpu, the warning came on the heels of contradictions and discrepancies in the data collected by different medical personnel for, and against the safety of the people after vaccination.

 

She noted that a number of people who were vaccinated in US and other parts of the world experienced different allergic reactions, which she said were normal but can be fatal when the allergy reaction is not immediately handled, saying that African will be worse off because they lack emergency response system in case of such allergy which may prove fatal. “There are so many inconsistencies on the side of these vaccines.

 

The information and data are not adding up. They are rather, hastily produced not because they have the mind-set of curing the ailment but making money from the regrettable situation. What should be going on now are the clinical trials of those vaccines and not a preventive vaccination,” she said. Corroborating her, a final year student of Medicine and Surgery at the same school, Martins Erhekeme, said: “My course director told us to apply caution whenever the issue of COVID-19 vaccination is raised as the vaccine is still an experimental inoculation.”

 

According to him, his Course director was being diplomatic about the controversy when he said: “You are medical students and you know what it means to say that a drug is an experimental drug.

 

So, I advise you to be careful especially when all the claims about the mRNA proteins content have not been logically substantiated.” His course director, who said neither he, nor his family would present themselves for the vaccination, advised his students to apply caution and wisdom regarding the vaccine, saying that nobody should coerce them (students) to undergo the vaccination, except they present themselves to be vaccinated.

 

“We are not being told all the truth about this vaccine, but something is not right somewhere. A vaccine such as COVID-19 should not be produced in a hurry, especially since the virus undergoes serious mutation on a regular basis (interval of two weeks). What we are fighting today is an improved variant of coronavirus,” he added.

 

Also, Chiagozie Patrick, who is studying Pharmacy in Ukraine, confirmed the position of his counterparts in the US, affirming that they were given such instruction, as the school will not be held responsible for anything that happened afterwards. Meanwhile, the Global Prolife Alliance for the Committee on International Affairs, Nigerian chapter, said it’s plausible that the new mRNA corona virus vaccines for Africa will likely cause immune cells to attack placenta cells, causing female infertility, miscarriage or birth defects in Africans.

 

The Committee stated that the vaccinations are expected to produce antibodies against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 but the same spike proteins also contain syncytin-homologous proteins, which are essential for the formation of the placenta in humans.

 

Sunday Telegraph learnt that it must be absolutely ruled out that a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 could trigger an immune reaction against syncytin-1, as otherwise infertility of indefinite duration could result in vaccinated women.

 

The Committee said: “The protein Syncytin forms the envelope coat of the virus and shares similar characteristics with the proteins in the human placenta. It is probable that antibodies against this Syncytin protein will also attack the human placenta causing miscarriages in African women of child-bearing age.”

 

Supporting this assertion, a study titled: “Syncytin is a captive retroviral envelope protein involved in human placental morphogenesis” has the scientific description of this placental morphogenesis. It insists that no one can, at this time, give any assurance that this possibility does not exist since the Pfizer vaccine and others have never been tested, saying it’s not sure that the type and constituents of the mRNA vaccines given in USA and Europe are exactly the same as that to be given in Africa.

 

Not long ago, the Chairperson of the African Union (AU), who doubles as South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, declared that the African Union had secured a provisional 270 million COVID-19 vaccine doses at $7 billion, on behalf of its Member States, through advance procurement commitment guarantees of up to $2 billion to the manufacturers by the African Export-Import Bank.

 

 

 

Sunday Telegraph learnt that Nigeria has written AU to request 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to supplement the COVAX programme and has allocated $26 million for licensed vaccine production. By the way, the COVAX programme is backed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which aims at securing fair access to COVID-19 vaccines for poor countries, and expects to receive its first doses in late early February, which they claimed that Nigeria’s NAFDAC has to ascertain its safety before use. It was learnt that under the COVAX facility, only WHO-approved vaccines can be bought    and so far, only Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine has been listed for emergency use by the WHO; the process to approve Moderna and Astrazeneza vaccines is on-going.

 

The option open to most African countries under COVAX is the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine even as the Seychelles, Morocco and Egypt are administering the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine and Guinea, the Russian Sputnik V. According to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in Practice, Africans are highly susceptible to allergies compared to other racial groups and the mRNA vaccines contain Polyethylene glycol (PEG) that cause allergy in Africans.

 

More so, a total of 70 per cent of people develop antibodies against this substance PEG, meaning that many people can develop allergic, potentially fatal reactions to the vaccination.

 

In a petition to Cyril Ramaphosa, the Global Prolife Alliance for the Committee on International Affairs drew the attention of AU to what was described as ‘very important scientific observations from available researches, regarding the mRNA Genetic Devices listed as vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

 

According to the Committee in its petition signed by its Chairman, Dr. Philip N., the mRNA vaccines are genetic devices carrying genetic codes for genetic engineering of the human body similar to the genetic manipulation in plants called RNA interference, saying that the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) molecules carry the genetic information needed to make proteins.

 

The petition reads in part: “In the human cell, mRNA carries the information from the DNA in the nucleus of the cell to the cytoplasm where the proteins are made. For COVID-19 mRNA devices, the mRNA carries the instructions needed to tell the body how to create a piece of the ‘spike protein’ unique to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. “In the same manner, the mRNA genetic devices can be coded to make amyloid protein in all Africans that receive it, which could result in mass dementia.

 

This form of mass genetic engineering must not be allowed. It is criminal and its mandatory enforcement violates the Helsinki Declaration. The pharmaceutical companies are not taking any liabilities for producing these COVID-19 vaccines. “Only the naïve would trust their sincerity. It must not be forgotten that, 25 years ago, in 1996, Pfizer used their experimental antibiotic Trovan that caused the death of Nigerian children in Kano during the meningitis epidemic that killed 12,000 people.

 

Right now, Pfizer and Moderna cannot be sued and the government cannot compensate citizens who die or experience severe side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “The United States government has granted Pfizer and Moderna immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with the vaccines, and that immunity extends to Africa, because we cannot sue them in their home country USA.

 

This contravenes all International Human Rights Protocols.” Sunday Telegraph learnt that for a vaccine to work, our immune system needs  to be stimulated to produce a neutralizing antibody, as opposed to a non-neutralising antibody. “A neutralising antibody is one that can recognise and bind to some region (‘epitope’) of the virus, and that subsequently results in the virus either not entering or replicating in your cells.

 

 

A non-neutralising antibody is one that can bind to the virus, but for some reason, the antibody fails to neutralise the infectivity of the virus. “In some viruses, if a person harbours a non-neutralising antibody to the virus, a subsequent infection by the virus can cause that person to elicit a more severe reaction to the virus due to the presence of the nonneutralizing antibody. This is not true for all viruses, only particular ones.

 

 

“This is called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), and is a common problem with Dengue Virus, Ebola Virus, HIV, RSV, and the family of coronaviruses. In fact, this problem of ADE is a major reason many previous vaccine trials for other coronaviruses failed.

 

“Termination of the so-called COVID-19 Vaccination Programme is a matter of Urgent National Security for All African Countries. We hereby request that the COVAX programme for Africa be terminated immediately. All African countries would review the available COVID-19 vaccines in the market and apply their use based on local indications to the most vulnerable groups.”

 

 

 

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