Radio Munich talked with German Professor Dr. Stefan Hockertz, is a biologist, pharmacologist and toxicologist, who has raised the alarm about a number of unanswered questions surrounding the current coronavirus crisis, challenging lockdowns, and also pharmaceutical interventions – specifically regarding ethics and safety of the new experimental mRNA vaccine. According the Dr Hockertz, lockdown have never been proven to work, and the rushed nature of new mRNA vaccine may pose an unnecessary risk for countless people. All this and more.
Dr. Stefan Hockertz was director and professor of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Toxicology at the University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf from 2003 – 2004, and was on the board of directors at Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Environmental Medicine in Hamburg from 1995 – 2002. From 1986 to 2001 he was a researcher at the Fraunhofer Society in Hanover, and has also worked at the University of Hanover. He completed his first training as a biologist in 1985 and is appointed eurotox-registered toxicologist, and qualified as a professor in toxicology and pharmacology at the University of Hamburg, and professor for molecular immunotoxicology at the University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf. Today he is managing partner of tpi consult GmbH, a leading toxicological and pharmacological technology consultancies in Europe.
Listen to this informative discussion with Dr. Hockertz here:
First published in German on July 17, 2020
Translation and speaker: John JJ Jones
Interview: Eva Schmidt
TRANSCRIPT:
“Prof. Hockertz warns of a million times willful bodily harm”
RADIO MUNICH: Finally, SARS-COV-2 immunity through a saving vaccination, that is what large parts of the population and those in power would like. The pharmaceutical companies receive considerable support in order to advance the goal of a corona vaccination as quickly as possible. But how quickly is ethically justifiable? How many risks are hidden due to the speed? The biologist, pharmacologist and toxicologist Professor STEFAN Hockertz points out a number of unanswered questions and warns against deliberately committing physical injury millions of times if these are not answered in advance.
DR HOCKERTZ: Have a nice day, Ms. Schmidt! I have been a toxicologist and immunologist for 30 years. I originally learned immunology and then went into toxicology. I’ve been in drug development for 30 years, and that includes vaccine development for one. That means, I advise companies that are active in the field of vaccines and develop new vaccines there, but I also work very closely with the Paul Ehrlich Institute, which is responsible for vaccine approval in Germany, so that I am very good at regulating I’m familiar with vaccines, and have been for 30 years.
RM: Very good. We can hardly get a better one. Can you explain to us in a simple way how the current concept of vaccination can be described?
DR. HOCKERTZ: Yes. From my point of view, vaccinations are, and I would like to start off by saying, one of the greatest medical achievements that we have in modern times. They saved us from many, many diseases. We were able to eradicate these diseases as far as possible, like smallpox, for example, by convincing many people to get vaccinated. Seen in this way, my basic attitude towards vaccinations is positive. Up to now, vaccines have been killed or weakened bacteria or viruses; I now call them “pathogens” that should infect a person. With the smallpox that I just mentioned, it was cowpox, a pathogen that was somewhat “attenuated” by an animal, as we say, that is, was weakened. In the case of influenza, it is influenza viruses that are attracted to the chicken egg and then also weakened, to then infect us. When we are vaccinated, we become infected with a weakened pathogen so that our immune system can safely “learn against it” in order to be able to protect us quickly and actively if we are really infected. So far it has been consistently changed, weakened pathogens that we and our immune system have been able to cope with relatively well. This is the principle of vaccination as we have been doing it for many years, and we are doing it successfully. that we and our immune system could cope with relatively well. This is the principle of vaccination as we have been doing it for many years, and we are doing it successfully. that we and our immune system could cope with relatively well. This is the principle of vaccination as we have been doing it for many years, and we are doing it successfully.
RM: With the Sars-Cov-2 vaccination to be developed in a very short time, the pharmaceutical industry is now breaking new ground. What is the new vaccine supposed to do in humans, if it works at some point?
DR. HOCKERTZ: I have to admit that making a vaccine can be very difficult. You will have noticed, if we ever specialize in influenza, that the influenza vaccine from the year 2020, which you have now been given, is roughly from the information in 2018, at most 2019. It’s not because the researchers didn’t know what the 2020 influenza virus looks like, it’s because it’s so difficult and it takes so long to make the vaccine. I was just saying: It’s about the chicken egg, that’s where it has to be dressed. In other words, a very, very tedious and costly, especially lengthy production that takes 1 to 2 years to complete – just the production. That’s how you are, a long time ago, by the way, came up with an alternative method – the German company Curevac has been working on this topic for 12 years (without having obtained successful approval so far) – namely a system that only imitates the genetic information of a virus. And this genetic information – in this case it should be messenger RNA, i.e. 1-stranded RNA – is transported into the cell via a vector system or carrier, similar to a truck that I put on it. It’s a completely new approach. And that is now very important information: There is not a single vaccine worldwide on this basis that has been approved. So there is not a single vaccine based on virus mRNA or virus DNA that is transported into a human cell via a vector in order to be read there. It’s a completely new vaccine. For whom research is worthwhile – there is no question about that – because it makes it relatively easy to produce genetic material. It’s easy and it’s quick.
And now I speak as a toxicologist. The question that arises is: if I want to develop such a new vaccination strategy (and that’s it), then I have to know very well about that vaccination strategy. I need to know about the distribution of this vaccine in the body, about its function (pharmacodynamics), and especially about any side effects that may occur. And they are varied when I transport genetic material from a virus into a human cell. Ultimately, this can be done via enzymes – there is, for example, an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase – which is able to reproduce these ribonucleic acids, which I have now received virally from the laboratory table into my cell. That is possible. And this would then lead to
And that needs to be checked. And now we have the situation with this new vaccination strategy that we have been informed about Sars-Cov-2 for about 3 months, and that around this time, in these 3 months, development work was carried out that all of these We are told that already has risks under control and eliminated. Because the Paul Ehrlich Institute, together with an ethics committee of the University of Tübingen, has allowed 168 people to be treated with this vaccine on a trial basis. I do not think that this is right, ethically unjustifiable, because in these 3 months it was simply not possible to collect the necessary data for the safety of this vaccine.
RM: I was just about to ask whether there are ethics councils on the agenda, not just from the University of Tübingen but from the Federal Republic of Germany and worldwide, to discuss this – yes, genetic manipulation. In Germany we are not even so generous with genetic manipulation with plants and animals. Or are we not talking about genetic manipulation here?
DR. HOCKERTZ: If I may go into this question, I am confronted with a tremendous mystery, and ultimately it also completely calls into question all of our work in the area of regulatory affairs, the approval of vaccines. Yes, the question arises: under what ethical aspect was this clinical study even approved? And there I know a statement made by a member of the Tübingen ethics committee who actually only said: “Well, when I eat a steak, I also ingest genetic material from the cow. That doesn’t hurt me either. ”
RM: Oh.