A new report from National Geographic indicates that scientists are now working on “self-spreading vaccines” that jump from vaccinated people, to unvaccinated people.

The article indicates that these “new vaccines or so-called recombinant viruses” are developed through a process whereby researchers “first identify a protein from the target microbe that serves as an antigen—a substance that triggers immune responses in vaccinated people or animals.”

Researchers then “select a virus to carry the vaccine and spread it.”

This is achieved by capturing “a few animals from their target population—primates for Ebola, rats for Lassa fever,” etc. — and isolating a virus that naturally infects those animals.  Then researchers splice in genetic material from the “target to create a vaccine.”

While the article did not mention gain of function research, according to Columbia University researcher Dr. Vincent Racaniello who was not mentioned in the National Geographic article, “another way to do [Gain of Function] research is to use recombinant DNA technology to engineer changes in the genome of the organism. In experiments done in my laboratory, we took a small piece of the genome of the mouse-adapted Lansing strain of poliovirus – coding for just eight amino acids – and spliced it into the genome of another poliovirus that is unable to infect mice. The recombinant virus from this experiment had a new property – the ability to infect mice. This experiment would also be classified as GoF.”