Spike proteins confirmed 'toxic and pathogenic'
- For over a year, vaccine skeptics have been warning that the COVID spike protein (also referred to as S protein) produced by vaccination is toxic, only to be “fact-checked” and demonized
- New research on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein now shows it is indeed “toxic to heart muscle cells”
- Claims that vaccine-induced spike protein would act unlike its infection-induced counterpart were largely based on the different way they (supposedly) interact with ACE2 receptors, but the new research shows that S proteins “do not need ACE2 to injure the heart”
- Broad implications not only for cardiac health but also the brain and the central nervous system, as these are all places where pericytes (to which the S protein binds) are found
We thought the spike protein was a great target antigen – we never knew the spike protein itself was a toxin and a pathogenic protein.
Prof. Byram Bridle, May, 2021
We found direct evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic to heart muscle cells … What we suspect is that the spike protein has unknown pathological roles.
Zhiqiang Lin, Ph.D, July, 2022
Dr. Lin’s conclusions, based on studies in human and mice heart cells, were presented at the American Heart Association Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Meeting a few weeks ago. He and his team found that,
The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein inflamed the heart muscle cells, which can lead to heart injury … through the inflammatory process.
He explained that,
Heart muscle cells have their own natural immune machinery. Activation of the body’s immune response is essential for fighting against virus infection; however, this may also impair heart muscle cell function and even lead to cell death and heart failure.
From a comparison of the response to SARS-CoV-2 with a coronavirus with a different spike protein (HCoV-NK63), Lin’s team deduced that it is specifically the COVID spike protein that causes heart damage. No reference is made in the AHA’s article nor in any other of the summations of the research to the specific variant of COVID investigated by Lin in his research.
“The fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is activating the natural immune response may explain the high virulence compared to the other coronaviruses,” he added. “Besides directly damaging the heart muscle cells, the spike protein itself is very inflammatory and may cause systemic inflammation that indirectly causes heart problems.”
He also stressed that his research found that the COVID spike protein “does not need ACE2 to injure the heart.”
That the mainstream media has paid virtually no attention to this study is shocking but not surprising. What is perhaps surprising is that Dr. Lin and colleagues took the trouble to do the research in the first place, given that a study showing similar results that was conducted around a year ago (see below) also garnered no mainstream media attention. That study came out just after associate professor Byram Bridle made his comments on the toxicity of the spike protein, stating in a radio interview with Alex Pierson:
We made a big mistake. We thought the spike protein was a great target antigen – we never knew the spike protein itself was a toxin and was a pathogenic protein. So by vaccinating people we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin.
FactCheck.org immediately leaped to the rescue of Pfizer, Moderna et al, collecting a whole gaggle of scientists to refute Bridle and denying that there was any evidence to back up his assertions.
Jason McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, told FactCheck that,
The spike protein is not pathogenic. It is not a toxin. I have not seen any data to support what Bridle claims.
FactCheck also approached the FDA, which told them that there is no evidence that the spike protein in vaccines “is toxic or that it lingers at any toxic level in the body after vaccination.”
Spike proteins were the unfortunate victims of a smear campaign, was the universal response. In fact, they were absolutely “harmless” and only acted to “stimulate the immune system to produce protective antibodies.” This, from UNICEF.
A month later, however, a new study came out from the University of Bristol, with bad news for spike proteins (or rather, their hosts).
Researchers had found that,
In cells in a dish in the lab, the spike protein binds to cells called pericytes which line the small vessels of the heart … the spike protein alone was enough to disrupt normal cell function, and lead to the release of chemicals that cause inflammation … even when the protein was no longer attached to the virus.
This was bad news not just for human hearts but also for humans in general, given that “pericytes are found within small blood vessels all over the body, including in the brain and central nervous system. This latest finding may start to help explain the effect of the virus on organs away from the site of the Covid-19 infection.”
Naturally, the researchers only had SARS-CoV-2 in their sights and rigidly resisted making any adjustments. “This research only looked at the spike protein found on virus cells.” Thus, they were able to say with straight faces, that, “There is no evidence to suggest that spike proteins generated by the vaccine behave in a similar way.”
Insistence that vaccine-induced S proteins are harmless are almost entirely based on three claims:
- The S protein produced by COVID vaccine is modified to be different from the infection-induced version,
- This modification prevents it from attaching to ACE2 receptors, and therefore it will cause no harm, and
- Vaccine-induced S proteins do not disperse widely in the body nor are they to be found free-floating in the bloodstream; therefore, they cause no damage.
Claim (3) has long been debunked, although that doesn’t prevent numerous otherwise reputable medical journals from continuing to make it.
As for the first two claims, various studies have been made in an attempt to bolster them.
For instance, a study published in March, 2022 attempted to exonerate the vaccine-generated spike protein of all wrongdoing. It found that the Pfizer shot “causes a prominent increase in inflammatory markers, especially after the 2nd dose . . . that is almost entirely reversed in 48 hours. This reversal attests to nonsignificant harm by the vaccine.”
The study’s authors noted that, “SARS-CoV-2 uses angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) . . . as a receptor for its entrance into cells,” which has long been understood as one of the reasons why the infection can be so problematic. They then added that, “the spike protein resulting from COVID-19 vaccination . . . is genetically modified to enhance the immune response and prevent its binding to ACE2 receptors.”
Interestingly, the very same journal (Nature) published an article just several months prior in which the authors stated that it is “a major goal of all COVID-19 vaccines to present the spike . . . in a most native conformation for inducing a high proportion of potently neutralizing antibodies after vaccination . . . RNA vaccines contain fully functional mRNAs that can be translated directly into the S protein” (emphasis added).
Furthermore, “The two mRNA vaccines in current widespread application . . . contain codon-optimized sequences for efficient expression of the full-length S protein,” and “the constructs for all four adenovirus-vector vaccines contain the full-length spike protein.”
Another article, published in Science suggested a different reason why a spike by any other name (the vaccine-produced type) smelled much sweeter:
The viral infection process leads at the end to lysis of the host cell and subsequent dumping of a load of new viral particles – and these get dumped into the cellular neighborhood and into the bloodstream. They then have a clear shot at the endothelial cells lining the airway vasculature.
Compare this, though, to what happens in vaccination. The injection is intramuscular, not into the bloodstream … a good portion of the remaining dose [that doesn’t go into the muscles] is in the intercellular fluid and thus drains through the lymphatic system, not the bloodstream.
In other words, spikes actually are nasty things, but as long as they are injected into muscle and not a vein, there’s no need to worry:
The spike protein produced by vaccination is not released in a way that it gets to encounter the ACE2 proteins on the surface of other human cells at all: it’s sitting on the surface of muscle and lymphatic cells up in your shoulder, not wandering through your lungs causing trouble.
Except that it isn’t, and we’ve known this for a very long time. The author partially admitted this, adding that, “some of the vaccine dose is going to make it into the bloodstream, of course.” However, it’s apparently still not dangerous because the vaccines cause “cells . . . to express spike protein anchored on their surfaces [rather than] dumping it into the circulation.” (If that sounds like a contradiction, then maybe it’s because it is. In fact, a recent study has shown that the amount of spike protein found in the blood after vaccination is higher than that found after infection.)
He adds that the spike protein “has some proline mutations introduced to hold it in its ‘preconfusion’ conformation, rather than the shape it adopts when it binds to ACE2. So that should cut down even more on the ability of the Spike protein produced by these vaccines to bind and produce the effects noted in the recent papers.”
Summing up, the author writes that “reports of Spike protein trouble are interesting and important for coronavirus infection, but they do not mean that the vaccines themselves are going to cause similar problems.”
Perhaps he was right based on the state of knowledge at the time. But the latest research shows that “proline mutations” or not, it makes little difference, because those mutations are designed only to foil the S protein’s binding with ACE2 – but S protein “does not need ACE2 to injure the heart” in any case.
For Dr. Lin, whose team made that discovery, his findings also made little difference. His conclusion was:
That’s why it’s important to get vaccinated and prevent this disease.
