
According to a study that examined how informed consent is given to COVID-19 vaccine trial  participants, disclosure forms fail to inform volunteers that the  vaccine might make them susceptible to more severe disease if they’re  exposed to the virus.
 
The study,1 “Informed  Consent Disclosure to Vaccine Trial Subjects of Risk of COVID-19  Vaccine Worsening Clinical Disease,” published in the International  Journal of Clinical Practice, October 28, 2020, points out that  “COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralizing antibodies may  sensitize vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were  not vaccinated.”
“Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been  approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these  vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed  empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified  or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralizing  antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and  irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via  antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE),” the paper states.
“This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial  protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that  adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur,  obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.
The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE  should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed  to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being  recruited for the trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in  order to meet the medical ethics standard of patient comprehension for  informed consent.”
What Is Antibody-Dependent Enhancement?
 
As noted by the authors of that International Journal of Clinical  Practice paper, previous coronavirus vaccine efforts — for severe acute  respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Middle East respiratory  syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) —  have revealed a serious concern: The vaccines have a tendency to trigger  antibody-dependent enhancement.
What exactly does that mean? In a nutshell, it means that rather than  enhance your immunity against the infection, the vaccine actually  enhances the virus’ ability to enter and infect your cells, resulting in  more severe disease than had you not been vaccinated.2
This is the exact opposite of what a vaccine is supposed to do, and a  significant problem that has been pointed out from the very beginning  of this push for a COVID-19 vaccine. The 2003 review paper  “Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Virus Infection and Disease” explains  it this way:3
“In general, virus-specific antibodies are considered  antiviral and play an important role in the control of virus infections  in a number of ways. However, in some instances, the presence of  specific antibodies can be beneficial to the virus. This activity is  known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of virus infection.
The ADE of virus infection is a phenomenon in which  virus-specific antibodies enhance the entry of virus, and in some cases  the replication of virus, into monocytes/macrophages and granulocytic  cells through interaction with Fc and/or complement receptors.
This phenomenon has been reported in vitro and in  vivo for viruses representing numerous families and genera of public  health and veterinary importance. These viruses share some common  features such as preferential replication in macrophages, ability to  establish persistence, and antigenic diversity. For some viruses, ADE of  infection has become a great concern to disease control by  vaccination.”
Previous Coronavirus Vaccine Efforts Have All Failed
 
In my May 2020 interview above with Robert Kennedy Jr.,  he summarized the history of coronavirus vaccine development, which  began in 2002, following three consecutive SARS outbreaks. By 2012,  Chinese, American and European scientists were working on SARS vaccine  development, and had about 30 promising candidates.
Of those, the four best vaccine candidates were then given to  ferrets, which are the closest analogue to human lung infections. In the  video below, which is a select outtake from my full interview, Kennedy  explains what happened next. While the ferrets displayed robust antibody  response, which is the metric used for vaccine licensing, once they  were challenged with the wild virus, they all became severely ill and  died.
The same thing happened when they tried to develop an RSV vaccine in  the 1960s. RSV is an upper respiratory illness that is very similar to  that caused by coronaviruses. At that time, they had decided to skip  animal trials and go directly to human trials.
“They tested it on I think about 35 children, and the same thing happened,” Kennedy said. “The  children developed a champion antibody response — robust, durable. It  looked perfect [but when] the children were exposed to the wild virus,  they all became sick. Two of them died. They abandoned the vaccine. It  was a big embarrassment to FDA and NIH.”
Neutralizing Versus Binding Antibodies
Coronaviruses produce not just one but two different types of antibodies:
- Neutralizing antibodies,4 also referred to as immoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies, that fight the infection
 - Binding antibodies5 (also known as nonneutralizing antibodies) that cannot prevent viral infection 
 
Instead of preventing viral infection, binding antibodies trigger an  abnormal immune response known as “paradoxical immune enhancement.”  Another way to look at this is your immune system is actually backfiring  and not functioning to protect you but actually making you worse.
Many of the COVID-19 vaccines currently in the running are using mRNA  to instruct your cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S  protein). The spike protein, which is what attaches to the ACE2 receptor  of the cell, is the first stage of the two-stage process viruses use to  gain entry into cells. 
The idea is that by creating the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, your  immune system will commence production of antibodies, without making you  sick in the process. The key question is, which of the two types of  antibodies are being produced through this process?
Without Neutralizing Antibodies, Expect More Severe Illness
In an April 2020 Twitter thread,6 The  Immunologist noted: “While developing vaccines … and considering  immunity passports, we must first understand the complex role of  antibodies in SARS, MERS and COVID-19.” He goes on to list several  coronavirus vaccine studies that have raised concerns about ADE.
The first is a 2017 study7 in  PLOS Pathogens, ”Enhanced Inflammation in New Zealand White Rabbits  When MERS-CoV Reinfection Occurs in the Absence of Neutralizing  Antibody,” which investigated whether getting infected with MERS would  protect the subject against reinfection, as is typically the case with  many viral illnesses. (Meaning, once you recover from a viral infection,  say measles, you’re immune and won’t contract the illness again.)
To determine how MERS affects the immune system, the researchers  infected white rabbits with the virus. The rabbits got sick and  developed antibodies, but those antibodies were not the neutralizing  kind, meaning the kind of antibodies that block infection. As a result,  they were not protected from reinfection, and when exposed to MERS for a  second time, they became ill again, and more severely so.
“In fact, reinfection resulted in enhanced pulmonary inflammation,  without an associated increase in viral RNA titers,” the authors noted.  Interestingly, neutralizing antibodies were elicited during this second  infection, preventing the animals from being infected a third time.  According to the authors:
“Our data from the rabbit model suggests that people  exposed to MERS-CoV who fail to develop a neutralizing antibody  response, or persons whose neutralizing antibody titers have waned, may  be at risk for severe lung disease on re-exposure to MERS-CoV.”
In other words, if the vaccine does not result in a robust response  in neutralizing antibodies, you might be at risk for more severe lung  disease if you’re infected with the virus.