Covid-19, experimental vaccines, and vaccine strategy: interview with geneticist Christian Vélot

Interviewed by Laurent Mucchielli, first published on July 8, 2021

Source: Covid-19, vaccins expérimentaux, stratégie vaccinale : entretien avec Christian Vélot, le blog de Laurent Mucchielli, 2021/07/08

Translated by Dennis Riches

Translator’s introduction

“Follow the science,” they said. So I read a 6,000-word explanation of the Covid-19 global vaccination experiment given by Dr. Christian Vélot, Université de Paris-Saclay, specialist in molecular genetics and biotechnologies. Unfortunately for the crowd that likes to chant, “Just listen to the science” and “Don’t do your own research” (when they really mean obey and ask no questions), this expert’s analysis indicates that the vaccine policy followed by the WHO, and all who followed the WHO, may have opened the door to a catastrophe. The interview is long, and it goes deep into some of the complexities of virology, so the listen-to-the-science types may not have the patience for it. They prefer the soundbites of MSNBC and Dr. Fauci’s prevarications, or condescending, snarky memes that punch down on people who would like to have access to affordable drugs to treat viral infections.

For those who don’t have the time to read the entire interview, here are the highlights.

Just as historians of today know the axiom “Don’t invade Russia in the winter,” future historians may say, “Don’t mass vaccinate in the midst of a pandemic.” This interview was held in early July, 2021, just before the delta variant Sars-cov-2 pandemic swept through the world the next month. The way the delta variant played out seems to confirm Dr. Vélot’s warning that variants would escape vaccine coverage and that the act of mass vaccination would accelerate this process. What actually happened with the delta pandemic makes it clear that the better policy would have been selecting the most vulnerable people for vaccination rather than vaccinating as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

Dr. Vélot described the lack of precision in the vaccine makers’ reporting on their Covid-19 vaccines. He concluded that “the authors of these studies rely on the collective imagination for a positive overinterpretation of the meaning of the results.” Afterward, when the vaccines were given to millions of people in an ongoing experiment, the sloppy data collection continued.

He also lamented the obvious political and economic motivations behind the policy of putting all our eggs in the vaccine basket, while doctors who discovered successful treatment protocols were suppressed and slandered.

He stressed throughout the interview that the Covid-19 crisis is really the last stage of the chronic illness “pandemic” that has been caused over decades by environmental pollutants, particularly pesticides.

Dr. Vélot finished by decrying the present censorship of dissenting views in science, public policy, and mass media. His personal experience of being vilified and misrepresented led him to conclude that journalists no longer bother to practice the fundamental aspects of their trade. He concluded by stating, “We are in a dictatorship of thought, and this worries me much more than Covid-19.”

This brief introduction doesn’t do justice to the full interview. Many other dissenting experts have made the same points, but this is a long read that is worth the effort for anyone who is serious about following the science.

__________

About the interviewer, Laurent Mucchielli: Sociologist, research director at CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), Centre Méditerranéen de Sociologie, de Science Politique et d’Histoire.

Translator’s note: The original text has many hyperlinks to the sources mentioned, but these have been omitted in the English version as most of the hyperlinks go to sources in French.

TRANSLATION

In this exclusive interview, geneticist Christian Vélot explains exactly what the various vaccines used against Covid consist of. He disputes some of Alain Fisher’s remarks and warns in a very well-argued way about the dangers of the vaccine strategy of the WHO and the pharmaceutical industries that has been adopted by most governments of the world.

Laurent Muchielli (LM): Hello, Christian Vélot, can you introduce yourself quickly for my readers? What is your education, your professional status, and your field of scientific competence? If you have any conflicts of interest, what are they? (Question 1)

Christian Vélot (CV): I have a PhD in Biological and Medical Sciences. I am a lecturer at the Université de Paris-Saclay, and more precisely at the scientific center of Orsay where I lead a research team. My area of expertise is that of molecular genetics, and therefore biotechnologies and their products. It is in this capacity that I am particularly interested in vaccines, and, in particular, in the latest generation of vaccines known as genetic vaccines, which are a branch of biotechnology. I have no conflict of interest.

LM: You are also President of the Scientific Council of Independent Research and Information Committee on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), where I also met several well-known persons from the world of scientific research who study ethics in the life sciences, such as Jacques Testart (honorary research director at INSERM) and Pierre-Henri Gouyon (professor of biology at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, signatory of my collective tribune of September 2020 entitled “We no longer want to be governed by  fear”). It is an association created in 1999 which has become known in particular for its criticism of genetic engineering products (GMOs) and related substances such as pesticides and endocrine disruptors—criticism based on the effects of these technologies on health, in particular the development of certain chronic diseases that you consider to be real environmental pathologies. Can you tell us a little more about these technologies, these pathologies, and their evolution? [Question 2]

CV: The vast majority of agricultural GMOs are designed to accumulate one or more pesticides in their cells. These are either plants genetically modified to produce one or more insecticides to control one or more insects of which they are the target, or plants whose genetic modification allows them to tolerate one or more herbicides, or plants that combine both properties. In these plants, therefore, one or more of the insecticides that they produce accumulate, or one or more herbicides that they absorb without dying, which will then end up in the food chain. Taking an interest in the issue of agricultural GMOs, and in particular their health and environmental safety, therefore implies taking a strong interest in pesticides. However, most pesticides are carcinogens/mutagens/reprotoxic agents (CMR), or endocrine disruptors (EDCs), responsible for many so-called chronic or environmental diseases that have exploded around the world in recent decades: cancers, cardiovascular diseases, neurodevelopmental disorders, obesity, type 2 diabetes…

LM: The vaccines against Covid-19 that have been marketed all over the world for several months use many of these techniques of genetic engineering and no longer correspond to the principle of vaccines that will now be called “classic”, the vaccines with inactivated viruses that we have all known since our childhood, those associated with Pasteur. Can you explain the implications and the differences between these multiple vaccines? [Question 3]

CV: Let me first restate what viruses are. These are infectious agents comprising a protein shell called a capsid, consisting of the juxtaposition of many copies of a viral protein called the capsid protein and containing the genetic material of the virus which is either DNA or RNA (for more information about DNA, RNA and proteins, see Figure 1 of the original French transcript). Many viruses are also surrounded by an envelope that consists of a bilayer of fat (lipids) in which are embedded several copies of another protein: the surface protein of the virus (see Figure 2 of original French transcript). Viruses with an envelope are enveloped viruses; those without them are naked viruses. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for Covid-19, is an enveloped virus whose genetic material is RNA. Its surface protein (embedded in its envelope) is the famous “spike” protein.

Vaccines currently available worldwide, or about to be available, to combat Covid-19 can fall into three categories: inactivated vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines, and genetic vaccines.

Inactivated vaccines consist of injecting the entire but inactivated virus (by heat or by chemical treatment with formaldehyde). This is the case, for example, with the Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac, but also of the vaccine developed by the French biotechnology company Valneva.

The so-called “recombinant protein” vaccines consist of injecting not the entire virus but a protein of the virus (usually its surface protein), which is produced in the laboratory by cells cultured on a large scale and into which was previously introduced the viral gene holding the manufacturing secret of this protein. These cells take in the viral gene, decode it and make the viral protein (antigen) which is then purified, combined with various adjuvants, and then injected into the people to be vaccinated. The viral protein in question is called a “recombinant protein” because it is produced by cells that don’t make it naturally. This is the case with the vaccine developed by the American company Novavax, and which therefore works by injecting the spike protein of the Sars-Cov2 virus responsible for Covid-19. This is also the case with the Cuban vaccine (Soberna02), and the vaccine candidates developed by the American company United Biomedical (COVAXX UB-612) and by the French company Ose Immunotherapeutics  (CoVepiT), but they all have different variations: in these last three cases, what is produced and injected, or intended to be injected, is not the whole spike protein but only one or more fragments of this protein possibly fused to another protein or fragments of other proteins serving as a kind of “display” of the Sars-Cov2 antigens.

Finally, genetic vaccines work by injecting not the entire virus or all or part of a protein into the virus, but a part of its genetic material holding the manufacturing code for the surface protein. In the case of Sars-Cov2, it is therefore either the portion of the viral RNA encoding the spike protein and trapped in a fat nanoparticle, or a DNA copy of this portion of viral RNA, inserted into the DNA of another virus (adenovirus) used as a “vehicle” or vector to deliver this genetic material into the cells of the person to be vaccinated. The vector virus is therefore a genetically modified virus that has been rendered harmless. It is said to have been “disarmed” by removing some of its own genetic material (DNA), which has been replaced by the DNA copy of the Sars-Cov2 viral RNA encoding the spike protein. The principle of these genetic vaccines is therefore to have the antigen (in this case the spike protein) made directly by our own cells. This is of course the case with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines (RNA vaccines trapped in a fat nanoparticle) and the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines (DNA vaccines using an adenovirus as a vector).

LM: In December 2020, you wrote an expert report on vaccines using GMO technologies, which gave rise to a controversial disagreement with Alain Fischer, professor of medicine at the Collège de France who was appointed by the government to head the “Vaccine Strategy Orientation Council” on December 3, 2020. Can you explain the stakes and the content of this controversy from your point of view? (Question 4)

CV: In my expert report, I insist there is a particular risk linked to genetic vaccines (RNA or DNA): that of promoting the appearance of recombinant viruses. What are these? Viruses have a great ability to exchange fragments of their respective genetic material as long as the viral genomes concerned are of the same nature (either DNA or RNA) and coexist in the same cells. This phenomenon is even more marked if the two viral genomes in question share sequences (genes) that resemble each other. The well-known process that governs these exchanges is called recombination (and when this recombination takes place between DNA or RNA sequences that resemble each other, it is called homologous recombination). This recombination phenomenon is not limited to viral DNA or RNA, but viral sequences are known to be the subject of many recombinations. They are said to be very “recombinogenic”. The result of these exchanges between viral genetic materials are so-called “recombinant” viruses, that is viruses whose genome consists of segments from the two parental viruses (see Figure 3 in the French text).

Of course, this phenomenon can only occur if genetic material from at least two viruses is found in the same cells, which is fortunately extremely rare in nature since it implies that the same cells are co-infected with at least two viruses. But once viral genetic material is introduced artificially into a very large number of individuals—in this case for vaccination—all that is needed is a person being infected already with just a single virus for such exchanges (between the genome of the infecting virus and the vaccine genetic material) to occur, and this will give rise to recombinant viruses.

However, in his answers to this expert note, Mr. Fischer refutes this risk on the pretext that “viral RNA cannot be converted into DNA”. Apart from the fact that this claim is completely gratuitous—because it is not at all impossible that, under certain conditions, the viral RNA of Sars-Cov2 can be converted into DNA within our cells, as has been shown in human cells in culture (Zhang et al, 2021)—it is absolutely preposterous that Mr. Fischer could thus suggest that recombination events between viral RNAs would require a prior conversion of these into DNA. Viral recombination exists between viral DNA on the one hand and between viral RNAs on the other. And in the latter case, it does not require a conversion of viral RNA into DNA. Viral RNAs recombine directly. This has been known for a very long time already (since the 60s) with the polio virus (Ledinko, 1963;  Cooper, 1968;  Cooper et al, 1974), aphtoviruses (McCahon et al, 1977; McCahon, 1981; King et al, 1982), Newcastle disease and influenza viruses (Hirst, 1962), and coronaviruses (Makino et al, 1986; Baric et al, 1990) which are also the champions of viral recombination since their recombination rate (as soon as two coronavirus genomes are in contact) can go beyond 10% (Makino et al, 1986; Baric et al, 1990) while it is in general, for other RNA viruses, of the order of 0.1 to 2% (Lai,1992) [See the original French text for hyperlinks to these sources].

In addition, coronaviruses are able to recombine with RNA viruses of another type: recombination events have indeed been detected between, on the one hand, an influenza virus and, on the other hand, bovine, murine coronaviruses and a human coronavirus (Luytjes et al, 1988).

In addition, Mr. Fischer states that “such recombinants have never been observed with live attenuated vaccines that deliver their genetic material into the cells they infect.” Live attenuated vaccines (which are not among the vaccines or vaccine candidates against Covid-19) consist of injecting the entire weakened but not inactivated virus. On the one hand, there are few live attenuated vaccines. Most are inactivated vaccines, and they have never been used on such a large scale as Covid-19 vaccination is being done or will be done. On the other hand, I regret to inform Prof. Fischer that a study published in April 2020 reveals the appearance of a recombinant (RNA) virus of infectious bursitis in chickens between a natural infectious strain and an attenuated vaccine strain (Wuet al-2020).

Either Mr. Fischer is ignorant of all this, which is a serious problem, or he deliberately lied, which is another serious problem.

One of the many videos of Dr.
Vélot’s lectures and interviews, some still available on YouTube

LM: Vaccines have two potential functions, one is individual, to protect the individual from the risk of disease in case he is contaminated by the virus. The other is collective, to contribute to the formation of herd immunity, which the government presents as the exclusive key ending restriction of freedoms. Let’s start with the first one, which itself poses several questions. I see at least four. The first is: what do you think is the nature and degree of individual protection that these new vaccines provide against the risk of developing a disease after contamination? The publications prepared by the pharmaceutical manufacturers who market these vaccines speak of 70 to 90%, or even 95% effectiveness against the risk of more or less serious disease. Is this reality or marketing? (Question 5)

CV: Regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines, we must know what we are talking about. First, effectiveness against what: severe form, all forms, contamination? These distinctions are ignored most often. To directly measure the effectiveness of an anti-Covid vaccine, it would be necessary to voluntarily infect a sample of people with the virus, which is, when there is no cure for the disease, obviously impossible for ethical reasons. What the effectiveness of a vaccine measures, therefore, is not the risk of developing the disease or one of its severe forms. To say that a vaccine is 90% effective with regard to severe forms does not mean that the vaccinated population is 90% protected. Nor does it mean that 90% of vaccinated people are protected. What the predicted effectiveness of the vaccine measures is actually the reduction in the risk of developing the disease by being vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated population. Imagine, for example, that the probability of developing a severe form in the unvaccinated population is 1 per 1000, then it would be 1 per 10,000 among the vaccinated population (with a vaccine whose effectiveness is 90%). In other words, a vaccine that is 90% effective decreases the probability of being sick by 10 compared to the unvaccinated population. Finally, it should be noted that the calculation of the effectiveness of a vaccine should always be accompanied by a statement of the confidence interval of this value [a statistical calculation of the probability of the findings being accurate].

Finally, there is the question of the protocols that have made it possible to establish these announced efficacy values, and, in particular, of the populations concerned. Are they healthy people, people with comorbidities, young people, the elderly, or an average of the overall efficacy in these populations? There is a jumble of numbers but not the slightest explanation. Then the authors of these studies rely on the collective imagination for a positive overinterpretation of the meaning of the results.

LM: The second issue concerns, in my view, the target populations for vaccination and the risks of side effects. Is it reasonable to vaccinate the entire population? Aren’t there particular risks of major side effects for people with heart disease or for pregnant women? To your knowledge, what is the nature and extent of these side effects? Do you think they are properly accounted for by the official pharmaco-vigilance? (Question 6)

CV: This question is connected to that of the protocols highlighted above: which populations have been tested in phase III clinical trials? Since the duration of this phase III before emergency use authorization was extremely short, one can only rely on the data from the full-scale trial that represents the [mass] vaccination phase itself. This raises the issue of post-vaccination follow-up. However, it is clear that we do not have registers to ensure this monitoring in a precise way, population by population—sex, age, body mass index, comorbidities, allergic people, immunocompromised people, pregnant women, etc. This would require a complete and very detailed questionnaire prior to vaccination, notably in the “vaccinodromes” where patients are unknown to health workers carrying out this vaccination. At CRIIGEN, we are particularly concerned about this question of registers, so for a long time we have been calling for a way to establish, for example, possible correlations, region by region, between the use of certain pesticides and the emergence of this or that type of cancer or other chronic diseases. Certainly, correlations are never evidence of causation, but they provide leads that can be pursued in order to establish whether there are causal links.

And in the case of Covid-19 vaccines, the problems caused by this lack of a registry are further compounded by the fact that many people who have received a first injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine require another brand of vaccine for the second injection due to significant side effects they suffered from the first shot. This further complicates monitoring considerably. If we cannot blame the people in question, it shows once again that we have gone too fast in authorizing a vaccine without appreciating the extent of the side effects, to the point of not anticipating the refusal by patients of the second dose.

LM: The third issue, in my view, is that of contagiousness. After the argument for individual protection against the risk of disease, the central argument of general vaccination is that one must vaccinate oneself to protect others as well. So, does being vaccinated prevent one from transmitting the virus? The IHU of Marseille [University Hospital] has already reported that this is not the case and that they have treated vaccinated patients who have more or less serious forms of Covid. What do you think? (Question 7)

CV: Obviously, the vaccination provided to us does not prevent transmission. Not only are vaccinated people developing Covid, as has actually been reported by the IHU, but the WHO itself recommends that vaccinated people continue to wear masks and adopt other behaviors to stop transmission. This means that the vaccinated group and the infected group overlap, which further increases the risk of viral recombination between the infecting virus and the vaccine genetic material mentioned above.

In addition, since 80% of people carrying the virus are asymptomatic, it would be important, in order to limit this overlap between infected and vaccinated, to make a systematic detection before vaccination, which has not been happening. However, it would be easy to set up this system, especially in “vaccinodromes” with first a rapid detection station (antigen tests) and then a vaccination station for those who turn out to be negative at the first station.

LM: The fourth question is the effects of vaccination on the life of viruses. We know that coronaviruses are viruses that can recombine easily and create variants or mutants. The IHU of Marseille was the first to have spoken about it in France, from the end of summer in 2020, and to follow very closely the evolution of these variants or mutants. But does vaccination also have consequences on these developments? (Question 8)

CV: First of all, let me make a little clarification: all mutants are variants but not all variants are mutants. To “vary”, and thus escape the [host organism’s] immune system, a virus has two solutions: mutate or recombine (one is not exclusive of the other).

Mutations occur at the time of replication (copying) of viral genetic material inside infected cells. The enzyme in charge of this replication is provided by the virus and it commits a number of errors (mutations), especially when the viral genetic material is RNA. RNA consists of sequences of four molecules that are designated by their respective initials, namely the four RNA bases: A (adenine), G (guanine), C (cytosene), and U (uracil). It happens sometimes that the enzyme in charge of the replication of the viral genome puts a G in place of an A, a C instead of a U, etc. The resulting variants are then mutants.

The other way for a virus to vary is recombination, as explained in my answer to question 4. The resulting variants are then recombinants.

If mutations or recombination events take place in the sequence that encodes the spike protein, this protein will then be modified and may no longer be recognized by antibodies developed to target the original protein. This is what we mean by “immune escape”.

Contrary to what is very often heard, coronaviruses mutate little compared to other RNA viruses, despite the fact that the genome of coronaviruses is larger than that of other RNA viruses. For example, the HIV genome (AIDS virus) consists of 10,000 letters (arrangements of A, G, C, and U); that of influenza: 13,500; Ebola: 19,000; and coronaviruses: 31,000 letters. In theory, the larger the genome, the higher the probability of making mistakes when copying. Coronaviruses avoid this because the enzyme responsible for replicating their genome has an error detection and correction system. This is not to say that they do not mutate. This detection and correction system is not 100% effective, but they mutate little. On the other hand, as already mentioned in response to question 4, coronaviruses are the champions of recombination, and this is the main mechanism that allows them to escape the immune system.

And as explained earlier, genetic vaccination is not neutral in this regard. It has an impact on the ability of Sars-Cov2 to vary since genetic vaccines run the risk of increasing the emergence of variants by enabling recombination (between the vaccine genetic material and the genome of an infectious virus already present in the cell). And this is true for all genetic vaccines, whether RNA or DNA. In the case of vaccines such as AstraZeneca’s, which uses a DNA virus to deliver the vaccine genetic material, this will, once in the cell, be converted into RNA (encoding the spike protein), which may well be able to recombine with an RNA virus already infecting the cell. The process is the same as when the vaccine genetic material is administered as RNA.

In addition, in the case of coronaviruses at least, it turns out that the recombination mechanism passes through portions of RNA corresponding to a partial replication of a parental virus (Makino et al, 1986). With vaccine RNA, a portion of viral RNA is supplied directly, which is therefore a facilitating factor for these recombination events. In addition, recombination between an infecting virus and only a fragment of the genetic material of a related virus has been widely observed in transgenic plants into which a viral gene has been voluntarily introduced and infected with a related virus (Lommel and Xiong, 1991; Gal et al, 1992; Green and Allison, 1994; Wintermantel and Schoelz; 1996; Frischmuth and Stanley, 1998; Borja et al, 1999; Adair and Kearney, 2000;   Varrelmann et al, 2000; Latham and Steinbrecher, 2004) [See the original French text for hyperlinks to these sources].

LM: Finally, there is the question of the strategy of herd immunity. You explain in your last video that general vaccination during a pandemic is a major strategic mistake. Why? Is it also useful and reasonable to vaccinate children on a massive scale in view of the four points we have just mentioned? (Question 9)

CV: In times of pandemic, by definition, the virus is circulating. There is, therefore, the emergence of variants, whether they are, in general, mutants or recombinants. If these are less virulent than the original strain and just as well neutralized by antibodies, everything is fine. But if these variants escape the acquired natural or vaccine immunity against the original strain, they will be able to proliferate, especially since the original strain has been eliminated by mass vaccination. The variant then has free reign because the original strain cannot compete with it. In other words, by vaccinating massively during a pandemic, we create selection pressure in favor of variants. In a way, we create with mass vaccination vis-à-vis variants the same situation as with the abuse of antibiotics that leads to antibiotic resistance. These have free reign because all bacteria vulnerable to the antibiotic are gone and can no longer “occupy the territory” and limit the proliferation of resistant variants.

Therefore, assuming that vaccines are safe and effective, it is of course necessary to vaccinate, but only a segment of the population who are those most vulnerable to the virus, and especially not those who can carry the original variant without showing symptoms. But this population exists, and this is a fortunate aspect of the pandemic. It is young people. It is therefore stupid to want to vaccinate non-vulnerable populations, especially young people, on the pretext that variants are circulating. We must do exactly the opposite. That’s not to say they should never be vaccinated, but not until we’re out of the pandemic for good.

That is why, instead of a very childish competition between countries over who will have vaccinated the most in the shortest time, vaccination should be coordinated on a global scale by defining, country by country, region by region, percentages of people to be vaccinated. But for that, it would be necessary to have something like, oh, I don’t know, a thing called the “World Health Organization”…

LM: When we warn against the marketing of corporations, recalling that their primary objective is to earn as much money as possible, we are quickly accused of being conspiracy nuts. However, the question seems to me to be an important one. How would you describe the weight, influence, and strategies of these industries on governments and on the WHO today? (Question 10)

CV: These are extremely aggressive strategies, suffered by the WHO and by countries of the world, and dictated by profits and short-term visions. However, the time required for health and environmental security is incompatible with the urgency of patents and profits. This is true in the field of vaccines. It is also true in the field of GMOs, pesticides, and other endocrine disruptors.

If their primary goal was not profit, they would have given up patents, and vaccines would be, as they should be, common goods. If saying this is conspiracy thinking, then we will just have to say that the industrialists who produce the vaccines are philanthropists…

LM: In the same vein, to your knowledge, what are the links between the genetics industries, GMO research (or their new names) and the pharmaceutical industry? (Question 11)

CV: They are the same. I remember seeing a documentary (the title of which I have unfortunately forgotten) where we were shown, among other things, a worker who was the victim of poisoning in his company by a product made by Bayer. A little later, he is found in his hospital bed with an infusion bag labeled “Bayer” …  Am I still engaging in conspiracy theory?

LM: Finally, we understand that the general vaccination project presented as the miracle solution, which would save us from danger and allow us to “return to a normal life”, constitutes a simplistic or even dangerous ideology. For several major diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis vaccines have never succeeded. What do you think of alternative therapeutic measures, especially early treatments? (Question 12)

CV: We can only deplore this policy of putting all eggs in the vaccine basket. Of course, vaccines can prove to be a solution and should not be overlooked. But the problem is that the approach is exclusive and at the expense of all others. This is again a mistake! If, for example, with HIV, we had bet everything on a vaccine, today we would not have the triple therapy that has largely proven its worth.

Faced with such a situation, we must not neglect anything and not close any doors. One can only wonder about the attitude that has consisted of sweeping aside the record of drugs known for a long time such as hydroxychloroquine coupled with azithromycin, or ivermectin. It is clear that these are choices and decisions that are based much more on politics and economics than on health. Drugs known and administered for fifty years suddenly became dangerous and vaccines without any history of use are deemed safe and without risk. On what scientific rationality are these choices based? Other avenues also seem to be totally ignored such as, for example, that of BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene), a drug whose effectiveness in inactivating enveloped viruses has been known for a long time and has been the subject of a publication in the famous journal Science (Snipes et al, 1975). 

States have released large sums for laboratories working on vaccine development to the detriment of laboratories exploring alternative preventive or curative therapies.

LM: When we study Covid-related mortality, we quickly understand that it is not at all a threat to all humanity as claimed by the Director-General of the WHO at the beginning of the pandemic, which frightened the whole world. In reality, Covid essentially only kills extremely elderly people and/or people who are already very sick for other reasons such as obesity-related cancers or diabetes and hypertension. Doesn’t this bring us back to your starting point at CRIIGEN? That is to say, this mortality, which particularly concerns the richest Western countries on the planet, is it not ultimately directly related to or even characteristic of our way of life? (Question 13)

CV: As early as 2008, the WHO warned of chronic diseases that were then (and the situation has not improved since) responsible for 63% of deaths in the world, or 36 million deaths, of which 29% were under 60 years old. Imagine this for a moment: if Mr. Salomon reported every evening the death toll from chronic diseases, the figures announced would exceed those announced to us daily for Covid-19. For me, this is not a question of pitting some deaths against others, but it is clear that, for our authorities, not all deaths have the same value. And yet, Covid-19 and chronic diseases are not disconnected: while not all people with chronic diseases are victims of Covid-19, most victims of Covid-19 are chronically ill. In other words, the Sars-Cov2 virus is not a killer virus: it is the final blow for people already weakened because they have chronic pathologies, the famous “comorbidities” …

There is therefore an urgent need to closely address the causes of chronic diseases that we know are neither genetic nor infectious. There is indeed no law of classical genetics that makes it possible to account for such a rapid change over such a short time, over a very small number of generations, just as it is clear that in the vast majority of cases, these pathologies are not due to an infectious virus or bacteria. We know the cause is environmental. This surge of chronic diseases is explained in particular by the many chemical pollutants, and in particular pesticides and other endocrine disruptors omnipresent in the air we breathe, in our homes, in our food. Covid-19 is only the revelation of this other silent pandemic against which no strong measures been taken, either nationally or globally.

Protecting against Covid-19 today, or another infectious disease tomorrow, requires a fight against chemical pollution. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a contrary strategy. We were already in the “world before” obsessed with Pasteurian hygiene, to the neglect of chemical hygiene. This episode of Covid-19 has only increased tenfold the obsession with saliva droplets and disinfecting door handles, and it has made us forget all the poisons that surround us. Moreover, this pandemic is a pretext for opening the door to greater chemical contamination. We disinfect at all costs—tables, seats, worktops, doors, streets and even beaches! —without worrying about the composition of the products used and their dissemination in our homes and in the environment.

Wanting to solve the issue of Covid-19 without tackling this global health problem is just polish on dirty fingernails. Today it is Covid-19. Tomorrow it will be another viral or bacterial disease, but the victims will always be the same: victims of environmental diseases.

A theme in talk about Covid-19 is the “world after”. However, it is clear that no lessons have been learned. Yes, there will be a “world after”: it will be essentially like the “world before” but worse!

LM: Your critical analysis is now almost inaudible in the public debate. Your YouTube videos have been censored. You are almost absent in all the media, which was not always the case. I presume that some were quick to label you as a “conspiracy theorist” in order to better dismiss your arguments. This is the favorite argument of the defenders of the orthodoxy. Can you tell us a bit about this contempt and censorship as you have experienced it in recent months? (Question 14)

CV: I had already experienced censorship, especially in the scientific world, particularly around the issue of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). But I must admit that now it is beyond comprehension. Disagreement in science does not matter, and it is even healthy. Contradiction is what makes democracy breathe, and it is needed in science as it is elsewhere. We should be able to sit around the table and discuss, without invective, and take into consideration all opinions. In science it is the culture of dissensus that must prevail, and not the search for consensus at all costs. The history of science has often shown us that being alone in defending a thesis is not synonymous with being wrong. The only fault of these often-isolated scientists is that they were right too early. But again, no lessons are learned. And faced with the lack of opposing arguments, we resort to eviction and censorship, orchestrated or relayed by most of the media who do not hesitate to distort the words of said scientists or doctors so that we can easily pin the label of “antivax” or “conspiracy theorists” on them.

For example, in an article in L’Express on January 6th entitled “Vaccines modifying our genome—source of a fake news”, the two authors have me saying that “the RNA of the vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna could insert itself into our genome and turn us into GMOs”. But this is a lie, I have never said that RNA can be integrated into DNA and therefore into our chromosomes. I even say clearly, both in my expert note and in the educational video I made in December 2020, that this is not possible (unless, possibly, it was previously converted into DNA, as mentioned in answer to question 4). As for the link with GMOs, it is also a total distortion of what I was saying. My expert note is entitled “General Public Expert Note on Vaccines Using GMO Technologies”, which obviously has nothing to do with turning us into GMOs. Genetic RNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna) or DNA (AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, or Johnson & Johnson) are effectively vaccines based on biotechnologies, or GMO technologies. In the first case, the vaccine RNA corresponding to the part of the Sars-Cov2 genetic material encoding the spike protein is synthetic RNA modified to increase its stability, optimize the production of the spike protein in human cells, and optimize the immunogenicity of this protein. In the second case, the vector used to deliver the vaccine genetic material into the cells of the person to be vaccinated is indeed a genetically modified virus (adenovirus) as I explained in the answer to question 3. And this is why the European directive 2001/18 that legislates GMOs was amended last August by European Regulation 2020/1043. Its articles 2 and 3 allow exemptions for Covid-19 treatments. Any clinical trial of drugs containing GMOs or consisting of such organisms which are intended to treat or prevent Covid-19 do not require the prior assessments on health and the environment that are required for GMOs.

And most other media outlets foolishly and blindly repeat in unison the nonsense of their colleagues and sisters of L’Express without even bothering to conduct any investigation and verify the sources, or even to contact me. All these so-called journalists behave like a flock of frightened sheep: first L’Express comes out of the pen rushing headlong through the fence, trampling everything in its path, and all the others follow while the fence has an opening. I apologize to sheep for this metaphor. These so-called journalists are to journalism what Gérard Depardieu is to dietetics. We are in a dictatorship of thought, and this worries me much more than Covid-19.