FACT CHECK: Bill Gates Did Not Say COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Will Change Our DNA Forever’
A video circulating over the social media claiming that Bill Gates was caught “admitting vaccine will change our DNA forever” has caused furors over the safety of the vaccine.
That was in addition to several other anti-vaccinologists’ campaigns against the mRNA vaccine.
The video features authentic footage of Gates but misrepresents his remarks: he was explaining how vaccines developed with messenger RNA (mRNA) technology work. The claim that an mRNA vaccine will modify a person’s DNA is also false.
Fact Check
The video features a segment of footage visible on Gates’ own YouTube channel posted on April 30, 2020. In the 2:29-minute video, Gates explains how vaccines work and different methods for producing them.
A spokesperson for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation confirmed to some international news media that the original video shows Bill Gates discussing COVID-19 vaccines. They confirmed: “mRNA vaccines do not change a person’s DNA. Bill Gates did not make such a claim.”
The clip in question shows Gates explaining how vaccines developed with mRNA technology work. Full footage provides additional context to his remarks. He said:
“What’s typically done is you take either a piece of the virus or just the spike, that thing on the surface, and you put it on something else. So there’s no risk at all of causing the disease. One final way that’s new and is promising is called the RNA vaccine. With RNA and DNA, instead of putting that shape in, you put instructions in the code to make that shape. ” The video in this claim then repeats the sentence “you put the instructions in the code to make that shape. “
Gates was saying that RNA vaccines “put instructions in the code to make that shape”, referring to the “genetic code needed” to produce a pathogen’s antigen, as explained in his blog on the subject here , which is used by the immune system to fight the disease.
RNA VACCINES
As explained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccine “is not able to alter or modify a person’s genetic makeup (DNA)” and it “does not affect or interact with our DNA in any way”.
Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, debunked the idea that such a vaccine could genetically modify an organism. She said no vaccine can genetically modify human DNA.
“That’s just a myth,” he said. “Genetic modification would involve the deliberate insertion of foreign DNA into the nucleus of a human cell, and vaccines simply don’t do that.”
Reuters quoted Dr. Paul McCray, Professor of Pediatrics, Microbiology, and Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa, to have explained how a COVID-19 vaccine using a DNA or RNA vector would work:
As is the case with a vaccine that uses an inactivated (dead) virus, “the only modification to the host is to stimulate them to make antibodies and T cells that will prevent infection with the virus or kill any infected cells to prevent or reduce disease severity. This is what happens if you get a virus infection naturally, but the vaccine takes the risk of serious disease out of the equation.”
The technology “consists of copper-based quantum dots embedded in biocompatible, micron-scale capsules”. By administering the dots with microneedles, it delivers a “near-infrared dye” pattern that is invisible to the naked eye that can be read and interpreted by a customized smartphone”.
This technology, however, does not exist to track people for the New World Order agenda as some videos claimed.
The quantum dot dye technology project indeed received funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but a video misleadingly presents this technology and inaccurately describes it.
The video falsely claims that the dye is a “chip” and a “tracking system that will alter your DNA”.
Reuters also quoted Kevin McHugh, one of the lead authors of the “quantum dot dye” research paper, saying the technology “is not a microchip or human-implantable capsule”.
McHugh confirmed that the quantum dot dye is “not a tracking system and does not encode any personal information”. He also confirmed “it will not alter your DNA.”
REUTERS VERDICT
FALSE. An mRNA vaccine will not genetically modify humans. Video shows Gates explaining how mRNA vaccines work. It also features false claims about the quantum dot dye technology. There are no plans to use this technology during the coronavirus pandemic.
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