Cassandra Voices

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  • Sahel: Water does not become bitter without cause

     

    Ruwa baya tsami a banza:

    Water does not become bitter without cause.

    There is a reason for everything.

    The Sahel throughout history has been known for many things. To the historically inclined, it is the region that produced empires like Wagadu, Mali and Songhai, and cities of world renown like Timbuktu. Today, the Sahel represents something else entirely: instability, as it faces climate variability, insurgency, and fragile governance.

    2020 Analysis of the regional crisis. Source https://erccportal.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ECHO-Products/Maps#/maps/3330.

    Stretching from Senegal in the west through Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, northern Nigeria and onward to Chad and Sudan in the east, this 6,000 kilometre zone has produced more military coups in the last decade than anywhere else on earth. Since 2020 alone: Mali twice, Guinea, Burkina Faso twice, Niger, and Sudan, the latter embroiled in a devastating conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces that has already killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. The media dubbed it the coup belt. Security analysts called it the Sahel crisis. Outside powers, Russia, France, the Gulf states, the United States, manoeuvred for influence in a fracturing landscape.

    What almost nobody asked, at least not with any seriousness, was the historical question: what was here before?

    Not merely before the coups. Before the colonial borders that manufactured these states, before the French administrative systems that shaped their governments, before the extraction economies that defined their relationship to the world market.

    What was the political and economic life of this zone when it was organised according to its own internal logic, by its own institutions, on the basis of its own material conditions? That is what I seek to explore through this platform.

    This is not out of a sense of reactionary nostalgia. You cannot understand what a place has become without understanding what it was, what forces transformed it, and which of those transformations built capacity and which destroyed it. Northern Nigeria today is associated, in the global imagination and in too much of the Nigerian imagination, with poverty, insurgency and dysfunction.

    Boko Haram. Bandits. The caricature of Sharia law deployed by politicians as a tool of control. Coups next door. Violence and weapons spilling across borders drawn by colonial administrators through the middle of communities, trade networks and political relationships that had existed for centuries before European powers decided they had the right to divide the continent at a conference table in Berlin.

    These things did not come from nowhere. To understand where they came from, we have to look at the land itself, how it shaped the people, and how the people shaped it.

    The Shore of the Great Sea of Sand

    Orthographic Map of Africa showing the Sahelian Zone. Source : wikimedia commons. Author : Flockedereisbaer

    Sāhil in Arabic means coast or shore. In the imagination of the Arab geographers of the Middle Ages, the Sahara was not a wall. It was a sea. The camel earns its nickname, ship of the desert, honestly. It allowed merchants to make the months-long voyage across that vast expanse, linking the Mediterranean world to West Africa. The Sahel was the southern shoreline of that sea.

    A shoreline is not a remote frontier. It is the first point of arrival. Goods land there, get taxed, get redistributed. The people who control the access points accumulate wealth and build institutions. The cities that grew along this shoreline, Timbuktu, Gao, Agadez, Aoudaghost, and later Katsina and Kano, were structural consequences of that position. Constantinople sat at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and extracted enormous wealth from that geography for over a thousand years. Timbuktu sat where the gold and salt trades intersected and grew exceptionally wealthy, connecting North Africa and the Mediterranean to the productive interior of West Africa. Whoever controlled such a position could tax trade moving in both directions, access goods otherwise unavailable, and hold a structural advantage over competitors. Geography does not determine history, but it sets the terms on which history unfolds.

    The Sudan: Climate, Geography, Ecology

    The African landscape is a varied one. Moving southward from the Sahara toward the equator, rainfall increases steadily and the vegetation responds in distinct bands. Each band runs roughly east-west across the continent, with the rainfall gradient running north-south.

    To understand what this means in practice, follow an imaginary merchant setting out from Sijilmasa, the great Moroccan terminus of the trans-Saharan trade, sometime in the 11th or 12th century. He has loaded his camels with slabs of Saharan salt, bolts of North African cloth, and copper ingots from the Mediterranean world. His destination is the markets of the Sudan. His journey south will carry him through several worlds in succession, each one wetter, greener, and more densely populated than the last.

    The northernmost inhabited zone is the Sahara itself: less than 150 millimetres of rain annually, vast, arid, traversable only with knowledge accumulated over generations. The Tamashek, Tubu and Amazigh peoples hold this world. They know where water sits beneath the surface and how the seasonal winds move. Our merchant cannot cross without them. He pays a toll and hires guides, folding the cost into the price his goods will command at the other end. The Sahara is dangerous and expensive, which is precisely why the goods that cross it are worth crossing it for.

    After weeks of travel, the landscape shifts. The hard gravel plains of the deep Sahara give way to the Sahel proper, where annual rainfall runs between 150 and 600 millimetres. Semi-arid steppe. Thorny acacia scrub. A landscape suited to pastoral herding and seasonal movement, in most areas not adequate for settled cultivation. The few cities that exist here become all the more important for their scarcity. At Taghaza, our merchant loads additional blocks of rock salt, a commodity mined there by enslaved labourers under brutal conditions. Salt is so essential to life in the agricultural south that it commands near its weight in gold at certain markets. That simple fact drives the entire commercial logic of the Saharan world. At Timbuktu or Walata, he enters a different order of things entirely: a city of scholars, merchants and administrators sitting at the junction of the desert routes and the productive Sudan. He exchanges his salt and Mediterranean goods for gold, kola nuts and leather goods from the south. He hears news of the markets further inland. He weighs whether to press on or turn back.

    He presses on. The landscape rewards his decision. Trees thicken. Grass grows tall between them. The soil deepens. The dusty, pale earth of the Sahara gives way to the red laterite soil familiar to anyone who has spent time in West Africa, rich and dense underfoot. Annual rainfall here ranges between 600 and 1,200 millimetres. The growing season runs long enough for reliable grain cultivation. Millet, sorghum, cotton, groundnuts. Cattle graze across the open woodland. Horses are kept and bred. Populations concentrate in numbers impossible further north. Cities grow large and stay large because the surrounding land can feed them across many consecutive years without exhaustion.

    This is the bilād al-sūdān, the land of the black people, the broad belt of productive savanna the Arab geographers named and described across centuries of writing. In modern ecological terminology it carries the name Sudanian savanna, though the medieval Arabic name carries more historical weight. This is the zone our merchant has been trying to reach from the moment he loaded his camels in Sijilmasa. These markets, these consumers, and this world were the reason he carried everything across the desert.

    He has arrived in the agricultural heartland of West Africa.

    Further south still, the Guinea savanna thickens into closed forest, where rainfall exceeds 1,500 millimetres annually, the canopy closes over, and the tsetse fly kills cattle and makes cavalry warfare almost impossible. Powerful and institutionally sophisticated states flourished in this region: Oyo, Benin, Asante. Each connected to the same continent-spanning trade network through chains of regional merchants and intermediaries. Our merchant will not venture this far. His goods travel the rest of the way through other hands, through the networks of Mande-speaking Dyula traders and Hausa fatake who specialised in exactly this kind of relay commerce. He sells to them, and they carry his salt southward to people he will never meet.

    What Each Zone Produces and Why it Matters

    Salt commands near its weight in gold at certain markets.

    Salt from the Sahara. Robin Taylor, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    The Saharan mines at Bilma, Kawar, and Taghaza produce a mineral that the agricultural populations of the Sudan belt cannot produce for themselves in adequate quantities. Salt preserves food, seasons it, and maintains the biological functions of people and their animals. Without access to it, agricultural communities weaken and decline. This biological necessity is what drives human beings to organise caravans of hundreds of animals across one of the most hostile environments on earth, month after month, generation after generation.

    Gold flows in the opposite direction. The forest zone of West Africa contains some of the richest alluvial gold deposits in the pre-modern world, worked by Akan-speaking miners in what is today Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. That gold fed the monetary systems of medieval North Africa and Europe. It funded the Fatimid Caliphate. It built the great mosques of Morocco. European monetary expansion from the 13th century onward depended substantially on West African gold long before Europeans had any direct access to West Africa at all. The forest zone also produces kola nuts, a mild, bitter stimulant that became the social currency of Muslim West Africa wherever Islamic law prohibited alcohol. Kola travels without refrigeration, remains potent for weeks, and carries ritual significance at ceremonies from Senegambia to the Niger Delta. Hausa merchants built entire trading empires on the kola circuit alone. The ancestors of Nigeria’s richest Man Aliko Dangote were Agalawa merchants who grew wealthy through the Kola trade.

    Cotton cloth and leather goods move in every direction. The Sudanic region weaves and dyes cloth that North African and Saharan buyers prize. It tans hides into leather goods, sandals, saddlebags and harnesses, whose quality the Mediterranean world cannot match from its own resources.

    None of these zones is self-sufficient. The pressure toward exchange is structural, not incidental. It does not require any particular ruler to decide to encourage trade. It arises from the complementarity of the zones themselves, from the fact that survival and prosperity in each depends on what the others produce. The political consequences of this logic are enormous. Controlling the transit points between zones, taxing the movement of goods across ecological boundaries, is one of the primary mechanisms of wealth accumulation in pre-modern West Africa. The empires that rise and dominate this region do not, for the most part, produce the commodities they trade. They sit between the producers and the consumers, and they tax the passage.

    The Empires of the Sudan: Power Built on Position

    Map of the Wagadu empire. Luxo, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

    The empire the Arabs called Ghana, and which its own people knew as Wagadu, built the first great demonstration of this logic. Rising in the western Sudan, probably by the 4th or 5th century CE, Wagadu sat between the gold-producing regions of the south and the North African merchants hungry for that gold. The state did not mine the gold. It taxed it.

    The Arab geographer Al-Bakri, writing in 1068, recorded the precise mechanism. The king of Wagadu levied a tax of one dinar of gold on every donkey load of salt entering the country, and two dinars on every load leaving it. He charged five mithqals on a load of copper and ten mithqals on a load of finished goods. Gold nuggets found in the mines belonged entirely to the crown. Private citizens could trade gold dust freely, but the crown entirely monopolised nuggets, which could be used as money and accumulate political power. Al-Bakri described the king’s court audience: the ruler sat in a domed pavilion surrounded by horses wearing golden halters, dogs wearing golden collars guarding his doors, and ten pages standing to his right carrying shields and swords decorated with gold. Behind him stood the sons of subordinate kings, their hair interlaced with gold.

    This is not just for the sake of flexing, although that played a part. It is a public display of the fiscal power the state extracts from its position in the trade network. The gold on those horses and dogs and sword hilts passed through Wagadu’s markets and Wagadu’s tax offices. They represent accumulated transit fees, turned into symbols of authority.

    Wagadu extended its reach from Takrur in the Senegambia region east to the Niger, controlling the western trans-Saharan routes for several centuries. Its decline came gradually from the 11th century onward, through a combination of Almoravid pressure, internal rebellions, and the progressive southward shift of gold-producing communities beyond its reach. There is scholarly debate today about whether Almoravid pressure was military or commercial and how decisive a role it played in Wagadu’s decline.

    Mali

    Its successor took the same logic further and built something larger.

    The Mali Empire of the Mansas reached from the Atlantic coast to the Niger bend at its height in the 13th and 14th centuries, incorporating the gold-producing Bambuk and Bure fields directly into its territory rather than simply taxing their output from a distance. This shift from transit taxation to direct control of production represented a significant intensification of the model. Mali did not abandon the transit fees; it added productive control on top of them.

    The wealth this generated was genuinely staggering. In 1324, Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, performed the hajj to Mecca and passed through Cairo on the way. He travelled with a retinue reportedly numbering in the tens of thousands and distributed so much gold in Cairo and along the route that he single-handedly triggered an inflationary crisis in the Egyptian gold market. Contemporary Arabic sources record that the price of gold in Cairo had still not fully recovered twelve years later. One man’s pilgrimage gift-giving destabilised a regional monetary economy for over a decade. That is what the structural control of the Sudan’s gold output looked like in practice.

    Mansa Musa Depicted on the Catalan Atlas, Abraham Cresques, 1375. public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

    Under the Mansas, Timbuktu became the intellectual capital of the Sudan. The Sankore Mosque and its associated scholarly networks attracted students and teachers from across the Islamic world. Mali’s trading diaspora, the Wangara and Dyula merchants who spread out from the empire’s commercial networks, carried Islam southward and eastward into regions the empire itself never directly controlled. They built mosques in market towns across the savanna, established the contract forms and credit mechanisms of Islamic commercial law, and created the social infrastructure that later Islamic reform movements would draw on and contest.

    Songhai

    Map of the Songhai Empire. HetmanTheResearcher, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    The last and among the largest of the great Sudanic empires rose from within Mali’s shadow and eventually consumed it.

    Songhai centred on Gao in the Niger bend, a city that had been a significant commercial centre for centuries before the empire’s rise. Initially a tributary state under Mali, Songhai began asserting independence in the mid-15th century under Sunni Ali Ber, a military commander of exceptional energy who spent nearly three decades in almost continuous campaigning, capturing Timbuktu in 1468 and Jenne in 1473 and turning the Niger river into Songhai’s internal highway. Sunni Ali understood something that his predecessors had sometimes neglected: control of the river meant control of the grain trade that fed the cities of the Sudan, which meant leverage over the urban populations and scholarly classes on which commercial empires depended.

    His successor, Askia Muhammad, who seized power in 1493 and built the empire’s administrative and intellectual infrastructure, brought Timbuktu to its peak. By the late 15th century, Timbuktu held a population that contemporary sources estimated at up to 100,000 people. The Sankore Mosque alone had 25,000 students. The city imported books from across North Africa and the Middle East and produced its own manuscript tradition that scholars are still cataloguing today. Askia Muhammad undertook his own famous hajj in 1496, arriving in Cairo and Mecca with gold but also with political questions: he sought a fatwa from the Egyptian scholar al-Suyuti legitimising his deposition of Sunni Ali’s dynasty. Religion and political authority were inseparable, and the caliphs and scholars of the east were the sources of legitimacy that Sudanic rulers sought.

    Songhai’s collapse came suddenly. In 1591, a Moroccan army under Judar Pasha crossed the Sahara with something no Sudanic army had yet faced: firearms. At the Battle of Tondibi on the Niger, Moroccan muskets and cannon scattered a Songhai cavalry force many times larger. It was the first use of firearms south of the Sahara in a major engagement, and it exposed a structural vulnerability that the military architecture of the savanna empires had never needed to address before. Songhai fragmented. The Moroccan forces could conquer but not administer an empire of that scale from their North African base. The Sudan entered a period of political fragmentation that would define it for the following century.

    Kanem-Bornu: The Ancient State of the Central Sudan

    Kanem-Bornu at its greatest extent by Megartonius, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    While Wagadu, Mali and Songhai rose and fell in the western Sudan, a different political tradition took root in the east and proved more durable than any of them.

    The state centred on Lake Chad, known first as Kanem and later as Bornu, appears in Arabic sources as early as the 9th century. The Dugawa dynasty that founded it controlled the central trans-Saharan corridor running through the Fezzan in modern Libya, connecting the Mediterranean directly to the Lake Chad basin and the agricultural lands to its south and west. Where the western Sudan empires built their power on the gold routes, Kanem-Bornu built on a different set of commodities: enslaved people, ivory and natron, the sodium carbonate mineral used across the Arab world for soap-making, food preservation and glass production.

    Islam arrived at the Kanem court around the 11th century, making it one of the earliest Muslim polities in Africa south of the Sahara. The conversion was not merely spiritual. It gave Kanem’s rulers access to the networks of Islamic scholarship, commerce and political legitimacy that connected the Sudan to the wider Muslim world. The Mai sent students to study in North Africa and brought back scholars to staff his administration. He corresponded with the Sultan of Morocco and the rulers of Egypt as a fellow Muslim sovereign. Islam provided the institutional language through which Kanem-Bornu organised its bureaucracy, justified its laws, and conducted its diplomacy.

    That bureaucracy proved extraordinarily resilient. The state survived internal rebellions, external invasions. The realm persisted after the forced relocation of its capital from Kanem, east of the lake, to Bornu, west of it in the 14th century, a massive institutional disruption that most states would not have survived. It survived the disruptions of the 16th century that destroyed Songhai. It adapted, reformed, and persisted across ten centuries of continuous existence, making it arguably the most durable state institution in West African history.

    That durability rested on a resource base that demands honest accounting. Bornu was not merely complicit in the trans-Saharan slave trade. For long periods, it organised and profited from it at scale. The state taxed the movement of enslaved people northward through its territory. Elite households depended on enslaved labour for agriculture, craft production and domestic work. Military expansion into the territories to the south and west was partly organised around the capture of people who would be sold northward or retained within the state economy. This was not an aberration imposed on an otherwise pristine political economy. The capture of people was structurally embedded in how Bornu accumulated and distributed surplus, how its ruling class maintained itself, and how it funded the military capacity that kept it intact. A history that omits this is not an honest history.

    Bornu’s influence radiated westward into Hausaland across many centuries. The political vocabulary of the Hausa city-states carries the fingerprints of this contact. The title Ciroma, used in Hausa courts for a senior ranked position, is a Kanuri borrowing from Bornu. Galadima, another major Hausa title, has the same eastern roots. The Bayajidda foundational legend, which we will examine carefully in the next essay, routes the origin of the Hausa states through Bornu for reasons that are not accidental. Bornu was the dominant power of the central Sudan for most of the period in which the Hausa city-states were forming their institutions. Its administrative models, its Islamic scholarly networks, and its commercial relationships all shaped what Hausaland became. The reign of Mai Idris Alooma was the Apogee of the polity and it would slowly decline in the centuries following his reign. I will cover his reign with the care it deserves in its own essay.

    Bornu’s power and influence would wane over the centuries, driven by shifting trade routes, environmental changes and the rise of powerful rivals like the Usmanid/Sokoto Caliphate. The state met its end in 1900, when Rabeh Zubayr, a Sudanese warlord and former slave soldier who had carved his way across the central Sudan with a disciplined firearms-equipped army, besieged and destroyed the Bornu capital. Rabeh’s conquest coincided almost exactly with the arrival of French colonial forces from the west and British forces from the south. The three-way collision finished what a millennium of rivals had failed to do. Bornu, which had outlasted Wagadu, Mali and Songhai by centuries, fell not to any single force but to the specific conjuncture of the 1890s, when the internal disruption of Rabeh’s campaign intersected with the external pressure of European colonial conquest at the worst possible moment.

    Our merchant from Sijilmasa, had he lived long enough and travelled far enough east, would have recognised the world of Bornu: the same logic of transit taxation, the same integration of Islamic commercial law into the fabric of trade, the same cities growing wealthy at the junction of ecological zones. But he would also have noticed something different about the political terrain further west, in the territory that Bornu influenced but did not control. A cluster of city-states, each independent, each competitive, each building its own institutions and its own commercial networks. Fragmented where Bornu was unified. Commercially distributed where Bornu was centrally administered. Younger in its political consolidation but extraordinarily dynamic.

    Why Any of this Matters

    The empires described in this essay did not exist in a separate, sealed-off past with no connection to the present. They were the product of specific material conditions, specific ecological positions, and institutional choices made over centuries. Wagadu’s wealth stemmed from the trans-Saharan trade, Songhai’s internal highway was the Niger river, and Bornu’s millennium-long anchor was the Lake Chad basin; these assets did not vanish with the empires’ demise. The geography remained. The ecological logic endured. Trade routes remained, at least until colonial borders, railway lines and artificial tariff walls were drawn through them.

    What changed was who controlled them and in whose interest they operated.

    The colonial partition of the 1880s and 1890s did not encounter an empty or stagnant landscape. It encountered the successor states of a thousand years of Sudanic political development, states that had survived the collapse of Songhai, the disruption of the trans-Saharan routes, and centuries of internal competition. What colonialism did was reorganise that landscape. It redirected trade routes toward coastal ports and away from the Saharan corridors that had sustained the interior for centuries. Wherever it preserved certain institutions, the emirate system in northern Nigeria being the most consequential example, it did so in forms useful to administrators rather than local populations. It created borders that cut through the agricultural zones, pastoral routes and commercial networks that the ecological logic of the region had generated over centuries. And it extracted resources with none of the internal redistribution, however unequal and often brutal, that the older state systems had practised. The Sahelian Juntas claim to have seized power to right those wrongs, but only time will tell.

    Captain Ibrahim Traore, Military Leader of Burkina Faso. Source Bamjo226, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    The coup belt is the inheritance of that reorganisation. The states collapsing today did not build on the institutional foundations of Wagadu, Mali, or Bornu. They were built on colonial administrative frameworks that prioritised control over capacity, extraction over development, and the convenience of outside powers over the coherence of local political economies. The Sahel crisis is not evidence that this region cannot sustain complex political life. The record described in this essay is the evidence against that claim. It is evidence that the specific political structures imposed over the last century have failed, and that understanding why requires going further back than the coups, further back than independence, further back than colonialism itself.

    That is the work of this series: https://thesahelianrecord7.substack.com/

    Feature Image: Jillian Amatt – Artistic Voyages on Unsplash

    Sources:

    Al-Bakri, Kitāb al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik (Book of Routes and Realms), c. 1068, in Basil Davidson, The African Past (Penguin Books, 1966), p. 81

    Brooks, George E., Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630 (Westview Press, 1993)

    Hunwick, John O., Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire (Brill, 1999)

    Last, Murray, The Sokoto Caliphate (Longmans, 1967)

    Levtzion, Nehemia, Ancient Ghana and Mali (Methuen, 1973)

    Levtzion, Nehemia and J.F.P. Hopkins (eds.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge University Press, 1981)

    Lovejoy, Paul E., Salt of the Desert Sun (Cambridge University Press, 1986)

    Lovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1983)

    Lovejoy, Paul E., Caravans of Kola (Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980)

    Trimingham, J. Spencer, A History of Islam in West Africa (Oxford University Press, 1962)

    Webb, James L.A. Jr., Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change Along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995)

  • Bullying: It’s You, Not Me

    Bullies can take many shapes, forms, and disguises. It seems a daily occurrence that can be defined as repeated behaviours that are intentional or have malicious intent to cause fear or to instil feelings of superiority in the bully, while also causing anxiety and hopelessness in the victim, due to the bully’s relentless behaviour.

    Northern Ireland, where I grew up, is a hotspot for bullying. It seems to thrive in an environment where tribalistic differences are constantly debated, leading to hostility, sectarian violence, hatred, and ultimately, often, murder.

    When I was a boy, from about the age of six for a few years I was indeed a bully myself. I should add that I have been bullied many times.

    Anyway, I bullied a girl at primary school who had an eating disorder. She used to make large bubbles with her mouth because her stomach was troubled. I mocked her over it, because I was a damaged child and did not know any better. She was thin, wore glasses, and I was a pig-ignorant, angry little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes. It was as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, adults used to say about me once they realised, I was a bully without an emotional processor.

    But I could not understand what I was doing due to poor emotional regulation and underdeveloped emotional skills. One thing was certain: I was damaged.

    I come from a broken home and a troubled, all-encompassing background where violence was often inflicted by a parent or guardian. They were young themselves and did not know any better.

    I was constantly on the defensive. And I remained so for decades. Fight or flight with pounding anxiety, cortisol coursing through my system.

    It is a difficult paradigm to break – the cycle of aggressor abuse and the inflicted aggressions, both verbal and physical.

    I was aggressive and used to demand that other school kids bring in a football to school until two much tougher brothers roughed me up out the front of the school on the grass one afternoon. And the bullied girl’s mother accosted me at the school gates, calling me out, rightly so, but I did not know any better. My bullying was reactive without conscious thought. My prefrontal cortex was not developed. Anyway, that was the end of my primary school bullying career.

    Cottonbro Studio

    Bullying in Adulthood

    There is always an opportunity to make money, poke fun at someone, or treat someone like a lesser human being; and here’s the thing: people definitely do, and try to do it, daily.

    I have watched several TEDx Talks on bullying and other YouTube videos on the topic. There seem to be two types of bullying: implicit and explicit.

    It’s a complex human behaviour to gauge on the social barometer. That is, many people are involved in these actions. It is part of us. Indeed, one wonders which circle of Dante’s Hell houses bullies and what they have awaiting there.

    Is it a deliberate choice or a visceral response to something in their psyche? Sometimes, individuals with damaged self-esteem find it challenging to know how to repair themselves. They have become so deeply traumatised that they cling to what they know, or rather, have become.

    There is the Dark Triad of Personality: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and, in a pitiful corner, Psychopathy, which is quite common in Northern Ireland if you ask me.

    In Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, he posits that some individuals employ mind games and manipulate others’ emotions to achieve their goals.

    In my teens, a bigger mate bullied me because of his size and skill as a fighter. Needless to say, we are no longer friends.

    A few years ago, he emailed to ask how I was and say that he missed me, or something to that effect. I replied telling him that he had bullied me, and I had dark thoughts about getting revenge on my bullies.

    He emailed back, saying he didn’t believe it, that he, it, the bullying ‘was that bad.’ But he was – he was a bully. He is probably still in denial.

    In some ways, he was a rather unusual character. I believe he was bisexual and concealed it, using aggression as a coping mechanism. He also tried to project an image of being a tough man.

    In Northern Ireland, the projected image of ‘don’t mess with me sunshine’ is all. The knuckle-dragging image of the hard man, the person feared and respected for his reputation as a fighter, is deeply ingrained in the collective, broken Northern Irish psyche.

    Loudmouth

    When I turned eighteen, I was quite the loudmouth, and a young, tough bloke at a local disco bullied me.

    One night, he was waiting outside the disco, itching for a fight, slouched against the wall under the arch of the local hotel. I was walking alone, leaving the disco, and he decided to pick a fight with me. He approached and swung a big, balled-up fist. I took it without ducking, as I was intoxicated – as usual – and he clocked me. Since I was skinnier and therefore fair game, it was on for him.

    He thumped me, and I staggered away. Afterwards, I sat on a low stone wall, and I think I had a bloodied nose – I cannot quite recall, but I do remember putting my jeans in the bath with warm water and salt, which drew the blood out of them.

    On another occasion, I was a bundle of nerves due to anxiety, excessive drug use, and simply not being well. I suffered from cannabis-induced psychosis and alcoholism. When he came over and threatened me I soiled myself. I sat there in the front seat of my mate’s car, let it happen, and wetted my trousers. I didn’t show anything to my friends inside the car, but that’s what occurred. The bully left after realising I wasn’t taking the bait or accepting the challenge of a fight. I was very skinny then, not eating properly, and most likely he would have beaten me to a pulp.

    Years later, I wanted to attack this individual. Full of rage, I was letting him dominate me in a way. I often thought of killing him. Decades of pent-up rage came to the fore in my psyche, and I was not going to lie down and take it anymore. The fact is that he was an ignorant halfwit and would have had little insight into his behaviour.

    Then there was the self-proclaimed ‘Christian’ in a homeless hostel in Belfast. A ‘Baptist’, ‘turn the other cheek?’ They were full of shite. He was, and probably still is, a narcissist who ‘knew better’ than the rest. He bullied me, well, it was institutional abuse, while I was resident in a homeless hostel. He became insanely jealous of the friendly relationship I had with one of the female staff. Getting through that situation over a year severely tested me because I had finally a bit of strength about me then, and I wanted to test that out.

    After that there was bullying, from a verbally abusive, ‘celebrity’ chef, who I worked for. He called me ‘a useless bastard.’ because I didn’t dress a plate of raw salmon to his standard. I informed him that I would not talk to a dog the way he talked to his staff, and I walked away not to return. He was well known as a bully. One day, allegedly, he grabbed one of his smaller trainees by the neck and pinned him up against a fridge. Needless to say, he doesn’t come across as a bully on the television or radio.

    Image: Pietro Lang

    Owning up to my own Failings

    I intentionally bullied a rather large, but chilled out guy with whom I shared a house as he was one of the laziest people I have ever met. He would not lift a finger to keeping the house in shape. He lay in bed all day nursing a hangover, something I had plenty of experience with.

    He was angry with me, but I later apologised and explained I only tried to motivate him when he lay in bed all day. Once I pulled him and his mattress off his bed and took him downstairs, as it was a lovely day outside, and he was lamenting his life while suffering from a hangover. This was his, or rather our norm.

    One day, I made a loud noise behind him in the kitchen, as he didn’t know I was there, which startled him while making a sandwich. He held a steak knife in his hand, turned around, and said: ‘Just you wait, Burnsy. One day I will get you.’

    Bullying also occurs in relationships. They must always be right. They will gaslight you into believing that you are the problem. They play the victim and are rather good at emotional manipulation. They cannot comprehend that a relationship is a collaboration. They call the shots, hold the power, and you must bend to their ways.

    I have been gaslight into believing that I was always the problem. Playing the victim is a form of emotional manipulation. Some cannot comprehend that a relationship is a collaboration. They must call the shots. Bullies rarely change. I work on it.

    Yet, sometimes you have to act aggressively when no other option is working.  Once, back home, a letting agency with questionable ethics, known for rather shoddy practices, failed to answer my calls, refusing to return a deposit of £527.00 owed to me. They dragged their heels and told me one date and then another, and wouldn’t pay.

    The owner has been done for fraud multiple times. It seemed as if the ‘management’ were trying to rip me off for the sheer fun of it. So, I went to their office and told them they had ten minutes to pay me, or I would have to get a bit rough. I got my money back within an hour or so.

    Robert Greene

    Robert Greene on Bullies

    Robert Greene, in his book The 48 Laws of Power, doesn’t explicitly discuss bullying as a primary topic, but he does address behaviours and tactics that are often associated with bullying, particularly in the context of power dynamics and social interactions. He highlights how insecurity and a desire for control can motivate individuals to engage in manipulative and aggressive behaviours towards others.’

    I do not stand for bullying nowadays. Although I wonder whether challenging or confronting a bully is really only a Pyrrhic victory? Or perhaps it’s a way to square the circle of your own trauma. I will leave it the reader to decide. I wrote this piece to confront my own mistakes and bullying behaviours to help build clarity and humility in myself, from now on.

    Feature Image: Mikhail Nilov

  • Poem: ‘And Not Your Garments’

    And Not Your Garments

    Lord, Lord this my heart full

    of secrets, seeds I know
    you did not send—Lord, I

    cannot rend.

    If I am choked, therefore,

    by weeds,

    I will not ask
    for a mended garden, I

    won’t beg your holy pardon
    at scythe’s end.

    These were difficult to bury,
    so little loam left in me. You,

    perfect,            alone
    apprehend.

     

    Feature Image: De intrige, (James Ensor, 1890); collection: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen

  • ‘Healthy People Do Not Require Genetic Vaccination’

    Editor’s Note: Having previously published Vaccination: A Matter of Trust with Caveats, we now anticipate objections from some readers to an article that may provoke vaccine hesitancy, at a point when rapid rollout to the entire adult population is widely touted as the only path out of interminable lockdowns. The author of this article, Dr. Marcus de Brun, however, is a medical doctor, and prior to his resignation last year– in protest against the government’s handling of the pandemic – a member of the Irish Medical Council. He also holds a first class degree in microbiology from TCD. Thus, we believe it is incumbent on Cassandra Voices as ‘a home for independent voices to inspire new thinking’ to provide this platform for him to articulate fully a public stance that he would not vaccinate a healthy person with any of the four vaccines currently on offer in Ireland. All the more so in a period of crisis, we maintain it is vital to give space to informed arguments that go against the grain. We invite comment and/or rebuttal, and ask if you appreciate this article that you offer a contribution to this publication, either through signing up with us on Patreon or through a single donation Buy Me A Coffee.

     

    Having recently stated publicly that I would ‘not administer a genetic-vaccine to a healthy animal, never mind a ‘healthy human being,’ I have been asked by friends (and foes) to clarify this statement, and will attempt to do so here.

    At present, vaccines produced by four companies (Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson) are available on the European market. All four are ‘genetic vaccines’ in that they are composed of synthetic DNA or RNA that is contained within a membrane or shell. In construction and appearance the vaccine is very similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the coronavirus disease known as Covid-19. The vaccine gains entry to human cells by a process that is almost identical to the manner by which a virus generally gains access to host cells. This process is called ‘transfection’.

    Each of these vaccines work by introducing either DNA or RNA into host cells. The genetic material then instructs host cells to make a piece of the coronavirus (the spike protein) that is then released into the blood stream or tissues. There, the spike protein will trigger an immune response. Following this immune response, the vaccinated individual will retain some immunity; they will have antibodies and white cells that can now recognise Covid-19 and attack it before it has a chance to cause a serious infection.

    The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are DNA vaccines,[i] which transfect DNA into the Nucleus of host cells. The Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines are RNA vaccines, these transfect their RNA into the cytoplasm of host cells. The difference will be explained later; however, the initial process is the same: human cells take up synthetic viral genes, those genes then direct those cells to begin manufacturing the spike-protein of Covid-19. The cells will then release the nascent spike-protein into the bloodstream or tissues, where it will then function as a ‘traditional vaccine.’

    In essence, the distinction between genetic-vaccines and ‘traditional vaccines’ is that the latter would involve a person being injected with killed or inactive virus or spike-protein, which would then cause our immune systems to mount a response. Each of these novel genetic-vaccines however, insert genetic material into human cells. These synthetic genes then ‘hijack’ those cells or ‘convert’ them to manufacture and release the spike-protein. With a genetic vaccine, pharma does not make the vaccine, our own cells are programmed to do the work instead, a process entirely different from that of a ‘traditional vaccine’.

    Out with the Old…

    For the first time in my medical career of some twenty years, I am presented with the apparent necessity of vaccinating young healthy people with experimental vaccines, against a disease for which they have little or no risk of suffering life-threatening,[ii] or even serious long-term[iii] illness. The vast majority of  ‘vulnerable’ people to whom they might pass Covid-19 have already been either vaccinated or been exposed to the virus.[iv]

    In Ireland according to our Central Statistics Office, during the past 12 months up to the end of January 2021; amongst the entire population of 1-24yr olds, there have been 55,565 PCR confirmed cases of Covid-19. Out of those cases, there has not been a single death recorded; from, by, or associated with Covid-19.[v] It has been reported that a single Covid-related death in this cohort (1-24yrs) did occur in February of this year. However, this has yet to appear in the figures published by the CSO.

    Young nurses, medical staff, care workers, are being pressured into taking a vaccine they probably don’t need themselves, despite residents under their care having been almost all vaccinated already. Now Covid-19 genetic-vaccines are being tested upon children as young as six months old.[vi]

    A Scarcity of Serious Questions? Or a Scarcity of Serious Media?

    The justification for many, if not most, policies during this crisis has largely been based on ‘mortality data’. In contrast, Swedish authorities have enforced relatively few restrictions, nor made masks mandatory. In Ireland, the CSO indicate that 92% of all Covid-related deaths have occurred in those over 65 years of age.[vii]

    In Sweden that cohort of their population is 3.17 times greater Ireland’s. Thus, if we roughly compare the Swedish mortality total (at the time of writing) of 13,262,  to the Irish total of 4588, and if we then multiply the Irish mortality total by 3.17, we arrive at a figure of 14,544, which is significantly higher than the comparable Swedish total.

    We are crudely, but reasonably, comparing ‘like with like’ to reveal glaring potential problems with our own relatively draconian Covid policies. When compared with Sweden, our own version of lockdown seems to have had no benefit in terms of preventing mortality. It might not be unreasonable to assert that our stricter policies may have contributed to a relatively higher mortality. Yet, perhaps the biggest question here is: why are there so few questions being posed in the media in respect of the efficacy of masks, lockdowns or vaccination policies?

    On the rare occasion questions are raised in our national media, it as if an ‘anti-vaxxer’, ‘right-wing loon’, or political extremist is trying to gate crash what might otherwise be a rather sedate and respectable party.

    Pro-Vaxxer

    In the good old days before Covid, in Ireland, and around the world, we only vaccinated those who were vulnerable to, or at risk from a specific disease. We still vaccinate children against an array of illnesses that adults have not been, and are not routinely vaccinated against; Rotavirus and Meningitis B are but two obvious examples. Adults are equally susceptible to infection by either, but they are not as vulnerable to serious illness, and so are not vaccinated. Previously, we only ever vaccinated the vulnerable and those at risk; recently, however, that good science and common sense has been turned on its head.

    It is suggested that we should vaccinate young healthy people who have little if anything to fear from Covid-19. A paediatric genetic-vaccine is expected to be available later this year. It is argued that even though children are generally not susceptible to serious disease, they should be vaccinated in order to protect the vulnerable and achieve ‘herd-immunity.’ In the meantime, the vulnerable have in large part already been either been vaccinated already, exposed or sadly passed away.

    In a recent post on Twitter Michael Levitt, Nobel Laureate and Professor of Biophysics at Stanford University said:

    If getting the disease does not give immunity, how do you think that a vaccine that makes the same spike protein as the virus makes will give immunity?

    It beggars belief that with over a quarter of a million cases of Covid-19 already confirmed in Ireland, [viii] those who have already contracted the virus, are not at least being offered antibody testing prior to being offered (or pressured into taking) a new type of vaccine; novel vaccine that have recognised associated risks, and have not completed all safety trials.

    Between March and June, 2020, 96% of additional deaths related to COVID-19 in Europe occurred in patients aged older than 70 years [ix] We have clearly lost sight of whom we are trying to protect, and what we are trying to protect them from. Presently we have a national obsession with conformity, and an ostensible adherence to guidelines. Despite empirical truths, and substantial contrary evidence, we are being corralled into what increasingly appears to be a specific belief-system surrounding Covid-19, and its threat to the entire population.

    Those who have read George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) will be familiar with the threats issued to the hapless animals: ‘Jones the farmer will return, and destroy all of your good work!’ In contemporary parlance, he will return with ‘Long Covid,’[x] and frightening ‘New Variants’ with him.

    https://twitter.com/bergerbell/status/1379143927542947841

    Politicians have applied policies that are in keeping with this notion of ‘universal severity’ in response to a virus where 86% of those infected did not have virus symptoms, such as cough, fever, and loss of taste or smell., according to a UK study from October.[xi] Many of our Covid policies arrive with the benefit of preserving established governments from demonstrations and assemblies calling for policy revisions and or enquiries.

    My own calls for a public enquiry into nursing home deaths, or my pleas on behalf of common sense and natural science, are at best ignored by media. As are those of colleagues who feel and believe as I do, including Limerick GP Dr. Pat Morrissey, and Wexford GP Dr Gerry Waters, who was recently suspended by the Medical Council for refusing to adhere to and promote current public health guidance. Others who have openly spoken out against current policies have been subjected to investigation by the Medical Council, and ongoing vilification by many of our peers. Speaking out returns precious few short term dividends.

    Throughout much of Europe since the outset of the crisis, governments, like our own, are presently controlled by proxy scientific-panels or unelected expert committees. Governments claim to be simply ‘following their scientists advice,’ whilst the scientists insist that they are merely informing the government and not directing government policy. In this apparently blameless political ‘no man’s land’, the stage is perfectly set for blameless political atrocities.

    War of the Words: ‘Genetic vs ‘Traditional’

    Many scientists and physicians prefer to describe most Covid-19 vaccines as ‘gene therapy’. It is a phrase that no doubt serves as much to antagonise proponents, as it does to inform them. However, it is as good a place as anywhere to start.

    Genetic vaccines are certainly not ‘traditional’ vaccines. The licence for their use against Covid-19 throughout Europe was granted under emergency legislation that permits manufacturers to skip phase 4 safety trials that would have otherwise delayed their distribution. Advocates insist that skipping this final phase was absolutely necessary to resolve the current crisis.

    There is much to this argument, and we will not dive into it here. However, one point should be made. There are at least two off-patent (cheap and safe) drugs, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, that may be effective in treating Covid-19. These drugs are not, however, licensed for use in treating Covid in many Western countries, (particularly the wealthier ones who can afford the novel vaccines).

    https://twitter.com/EvidenceLimited/status/1379400534000594945

    If either, or both, drugs had been licensed, this might have proved an obstacle to the granting of emergency use licences for Covid-19 vaccines. The reason for this is that grounds for emergency licensing of genetic-vaccines are substantially reinforced, as long as there are no other pharmacological treatments available at the time.

    Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

    A Traditional ‘Vaccine’

    In China the practice of inoculation against diseases such as smallpox was established as far back as 200 BC.[xii] It is likely that traditional medicine, tribesmen and ancient civilisations used, or at least inadvertently ‘knew’ something of the benefits of limited exposure to a disease, in order to establish some degree of immunity.

    Our own modern era of the ‘traditional’ vaccine begins when Edward Jenner (1749-1823) noticed that milkmaids appeared to be relatively immune to smallpox, a viral illness that was, in Jenner’s day, responsible for widespread suffering and death.

    Jenner observed that something was being transmitted from the cows to the milkmaids, effectively protecting them against smallpox. Cows contract cowpox. It’s not the same disease as smallpox, but as the respective viruses are so similar, whenever the hands of a milkmaid came into contact with a blister or pox on the udder of a cow infected with cow-pox; the milkmaid would be exposed to this very similar virus.

    In these instances the cowpox virus or ‘pieces’ of it, would enter the milkmaid’s blood stream through a cut or minor abrasion on her hands. The virus would be identified by her immune system as a ‘pathogen’ or disease-causing agent. White cells would attack the cowpox virus, causing it to break apart. Those same white cells would manufacture antibodies; little Y-shaped proteins that will stick to surface-proteins on the virus, and cause it to be directly destroyed, or recognised by other white cells that will mobilise to destroy it.

    All of this complex immunology would of course be occurring within the milkmaid’s blood, whilst she happily milked her cows. She might notice a slight blister, a little pus, or minor swelling around one of the abrasions on her overworked hands. The slight redness might be ignored, and would inevitably fade away. However this localised reaction would have heralded exposure to cowpox. The cowpox antibodies would then persist in her blood, remaining attached to the surface of many of her circulating white blood cells; protecting her or “vaccinating” her against small-pox.

    If the milkmaid should later come into contact with smallpox, those newly formed cowpox antibodies would be ready to mount an early and more efficient immune response. Her antibodies to the cowpox virus could attach to the smallpox virus, recruit other white cells – killer t-cells etc – onto the scene, and mount a pre-emptive response. This would be fast enough to eradicate the smallpox infection before it had an opportunity to spread and cause severe illness or death. It was Jenner’s genius that ultimately brought this reality to light.

    Jenner collected some of the pus that oozed from the udders of cows infected with cowpox. He swirled it about in a drop of water, placed it in a glass vial and then offered it to the world as the prevention for small-pox. Half a century later Louis Pasteur coined the phrase ‘vaccination’ after vacca, the Latin for cow. The paradigm in respect of human medicine and public health had shifted forever.

    Louis Pasteur.

    Perhaps the real hero of the vaccination story was an eight-year-old boy by the name of James Phipps, the son of Jenner’s gardener. On May 14th 1796, Jenner made a small incision into James’s arm, and rubbed in a drop of his magical ‘pus-paste’, making little James the first to be given a vaccine in the modern sense.

    Thankfully, little James proved immune to the various small-pox ‘exposures’ and challenges that Jenner then came up with. At the time small-pox was responsible for almost 10% of annual deaths in England. Jenner sent his results in a paper to the Royal Society for publication, but his paper was ignored.

    Having had the audacity to suggest pus from an infected cow’s udder, as a cure for smallpox, Jenner was at first dismissed as an eccentric by his peers. Yet, rather than disappearing into obscurity, he persisted. He vaccinated a further twenty-three people, and having seen little James survive, he even included his own eleven-month old son Robert, in this first ever vaccine trial.

    At that stage the medical establishment found it impossible to ignore his findings, which soon attracted widespread interest amongst the medical fraternity. However, it was not until 1840, some forty-four-years after his first attempt to publish his results, that the British Government began offering Jenner’s vaccination, free of charge, to the general public.

    The same but different

    Since Jenner’s day, ‘traditional vaccines’ have functioned in precisely the same way. Pharmaceutical companies take a virus or bacterium, they break it up, kill it, or leave it intact but render it weaker or ineffective ‘the same but different.’ They then take the bug (or pieces of the bug), swish them around in a little drop of water, add in a few elements that act as preservatives and immune-stimulants; then we doctors inject those pieces into people, thereby preventing many from succumbing to various infective diseases. The vaccination exposes us to a bug or pieces of a bug causing our immune system to generate antibodies and white blood cells that will persist in our circulation and be ready to launch a pre-emptive strike against the bug or a similar bug if it is encountered again: we have, in essence, become immune.

    So what is different about genetic-vaccines? Well here’s where the story becomes a little nuanced. Let’s try to put it in terms we might relate to.

    To begin with we must remind ourselves that: all living things are composed of cells, which is perhaps the most basic tenet of biology.

    Image of a recreated 1918 influenza virus.

    Viruses are not considered ‘living things’, because they are not ‘cells’ and neither are they made up of cells. They are formally referred to as ‘obligate intracellular parasites.’ They only become ‘alive;’ and can only replicate, after entering host cells, at which point they replicate or multiply within host cells. Once inside a cell the virus hijacks the cell’s own processes for making things that the cell needs for itself. The infected cell then becomes a virus factory, it swells with new virus particles, until it bursts, dies, and releases its payload of new virions into the bloodstream, or fluid outside of the cell membrane.

    It is only when a virus is outside the cell, within the blood stream or tissues, that it might be recognised by white cells or antibodies, and become the subject of an immune response. When a virus is inside one of our cells, there are some discrete ways this cell can let other cells know that it has become infected; there are means by which the immune system detects that one of our own cells has a virus inside it. However, these are comparatively slow, indefinite and uncertain processes and will not be discussed here. The major and most important way the immune system clears viruses is by getting at them before they get inside our cells.

    Once a virus is inside a cell, for the most part, it is hidden from the immune system. This point will be crucial to understanding the distinction between a genetic vaccine, and a traditional vaccine.

    All Cells Look a Little, or a Lot, Like a Fried Egg:

    Under a microscope, all cells appear a little like fried eggs. Almost all of them have the same basic plan, the yellow yolk being the nucleus; the white of the egg, the ‘cytoplasm;’ and the outer margin of the fried egg (the crispy brown edge) being the ‘cell membrane’ or wall surrounding the cell. To learn the basics of how genetic vaccines work, we need only refer to this analogy, but we must understand our ‘egg’ a little better before we put the toast on.

    The yellow yolk, or nucleus, contains all of our DNA. To understand what DNA looks like, imagine your fly, not the one buzzing at the window, but the zip on your trousers. It is composed of two sides or strands that are linked together when your zipper is up, and separated when your zipper is down.

    DNA is like an extremely long length of closed zip. Imagine this super long ‘zip’ coiled into individual space-saving packages, like neat balls of wool. Each of these little packages is called a chromosome and (with the exception of sperm cells and egg cells) the nucleus of each of our cells contains forty-six of these little balls of wool; twenty-three from mum, and twenty-three from dad.

    All forty-six are packed into the nucleus, the yellow yolk of our analogous egg. When we, or one of our cells, needs something; a protein, a hormone, a replacement part etc., the information to make what the cell needs (the recipe for all of life’s necessities) is coded for in that length of closed zip, our DNA.

    Each of the ‘teeth’ along the length of the zip strands, represent a single letter of the genetic code. An entire message may contain many letters, or teeth, along a specific length or piece of the zip. The lengths of zip that contain messages (or recipes) are called our ‘genes.’

    The ‘message’ within a gene is like a recipe in a cookbook. It contains a coded instruction for how to make the protein, enzyme etc., or whatever it is that the cell wants or needs. The DNA code is in the nucleus, and the basic ingredients are located in the cytoplasm, and it is in the cytoplasm (the egg-white) where the item required is assembled and manufactured. The raw materials for manufacture get into the cytoplasm, when they are absorbed across the cell membrane (the crispy brown bit at the edge of our fried egg). These raw materials are the amino-acids, sugars and vitamins etc., that we receive in our diet.

    To kick off the process, when a cell needs to make something, a signal is sent from the white of the egg (the cytoplasm) into the nucleus. That signal makes its way to the ball of wool or chromosome that contains the particular recipe, or code for the ingredients that will make up whatever is needed by the cell. When the signal reaches the chromosome containing the particular recipe or gene, the ball of wool is loosened slightly, and a relatively small length of closed zip (or DNA containing that recipe), is unzipped. One side of the opened zip is then copied into a piece of mRNA.

    That copy of one side of the unzipped zip is called messenger RNA. In most textbooks it (the mRNA) looks exactly as I have described it: a single side of a zip. This messenger RNA then exits through pores in the nucleus.  It enters the white of the egg, where this mRNA ‘recipe’ is then read or translated, and whatever it is the cell needs can now be manufactured within the cytoplasm or the white of the egg.

    The Ribosome

    When the strand of messenger RNA leaves the nucleus and enters the cytoplasm it is immediately found by a fascinating little cytoplasmic protein called a ‘ribosome’. The ribosome attaches to the mRNA. It then slides along this single strand of zip, and as it does so, ‘reads’ the code, and then makes a little strand, like a bead of pearls (a polypeptide). That strand of polypeptide then curls and folds itself into a little ball or blob; and this little blob of protein, is the very thing that the cell was looking for in the first place.

    It might be a structural protein, an enzyme, a building block, a replacement part, or whatever. When the ribosome slides along the piece of mRNA it makes this new little string that will ultimately fold upon itself to become the required product. This wonderful orchestral process is as ancient as life itself and is called ‘translation.’

    It is one of the rare occasions when jargon makes sense, for the little piece of mRNA, has indeed been ‘translated’ into a protein or ‘final product’ by the ribosome. The cell has now manufactured the thing that it needs, and after a few translations, the mRNA then degrades. No more ribosomes can attach to it, and no further product can be manufactured from it. If the cell wants another product it must send another message into the nucleus and call for another mRNA copy to be made in the nucleus and sent into the cytoplasm. It is a beautifully organised process, integral not simply to human life but to all life on the planet.

    How Does a Genetic-Vaccine Work?

    If you got all of that, you have grasped some of the fundamentals of cell biology and we are now able to ask: how does a genetic vaccine work?

    Most of us have seen an image or an artist’s impression of what a coronavirus looks like. A little ball, covered in spikes, like a medieval weapon swung from the end of a chain. Inside this little ball are the virus’s own genes. These genes are in the form of strands of RNA; the same type of RNA that is made in the nucleus of our cells, and sent into the cytoplasm for the manufacture of all ‘things’ that the cell needs.

    SARS-CoV-2

    The main difference between the RNA strands within a coronavirus, and those that naturally emerge from the nucleus of our own cells, is that coronavirus RNA does not code for ‘things’ that our cells might need. On the contrary, it codes for pieces that make up the coronavirus itself.

    When a coronavirus binds to the outside of one of the cells in our respiratory tract, it releases its RNA into those cells – into the white of the egg – and there, instead of making proteins that are needed by our cells, our ribosomes attach to their viral RNA and begin to manufacture (or translate) proteins that make up the physical structure of the virus. The host cell has now becomes a virus-making factory; the cytoplasm swells with viral particles; the cell bursts, and thousands of new viruses (virions) are released into the bloodstream, or the fluid that lies outside of the cell membrane.

    A genetic vaccine looks like, and functions, in almost exactly the same manner as the coronavirus itself. If a genetic vaccine could be visualised, it would look like a little sphere that encapsulates a piece of viral RNA or DNA (depending on which of the four vaccines we are considering). The role of the sphere is to protect the RNA or DNA inside the vaccine, and, most importantly, to bind it to human cells in a manner that will allow the piece of RNA or DNA to enter host cells at the site where the ‘vaccine’ is injected.

    For an RNA containing vaccine (Pfizer & Moderna) once the vaccine RNA gets inside our cells, our ribosomes attach and translate the RNA into a piece of the virus (one of the spike proteins). The host cell will then swell with spike proteins, and release them into the blood stream or body fluids outside the cell. There, the spike-protein will trigger the same immune response that Jenner and the traditional vaccines make use of.

    For DNA vaccines (Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca) the vaccine-DNA makes its way into the nucleus of our cells where it begins working (and is treated the same as our own DNA). It is copied into a piece of mRNA that will then travel into the cytoplasm and be translated by ribosomes into spike-proteins. Because genetic vaccines cannot infect cells, the process whereby a genetic-vaccine enters host cells is referred to as ‘transfection’.

    It is only after the transfected host cell releases spike-protein into the blood stream that our genetic-vaccine begins working in the ‘traditional’ way. In reality, it is the cellular process for the manufacture of things which has been hijacked, and the ‘traditional vaccine’ is being made inside one’s own cells. The ‘vaccine’ is released into our blood stream in the same way that a cell infected with a virus releases new virus into the blood stream or tissues.

    The final result might be the same, however, where a genetic-vaccine is different is in its mechanism it operates inside cells at a level of intimacy that Jenner could never have imagined. Because DNA vaccines enter the nucleus of our cells, and are treated as our own DNA, they come with a risk of damaging our own DNA, causing mutations, including, potentially, cancer. The potential is indeed an established fact. It is no less established than the fact that there is a link between smoking and cancer.

    Consider when a piece of synthetic DNA comes within intimate proximity of a relatively enormous coiled ball of DNA that is dynamically unwinding and unravelling in response to the daily activities of the cell. Is there a chance that this relatively small piece of synthetic DNA might become incorporated into or interfere with the normal function of our own DNA? Before Covid, the answer was an emphatic yes. However of late, the mere suggestion will undoubtedly be treated as something of a ‘conspiracy theory’.

    It is for this and other reasons that genetic-vaccines have not been previously licensed for use in humans prior to the current crisis. Thus, a 2013 paper[xiii] published in Germs, the respected Journal of Infectious Diseases lists the established disadvantages of DNA vaccines.

    Crossing the Rubicon

    At this point the reason critics refer to current Covid-19 vaccines as ‘gene therapy’ should not be too difficult to understand. It is important to bear in mind that as the cellular process of translation can be hijacked to produce a ‘vaccine’, it can also be hijacked to produce a myriad of other potential pharmaceutical therapies.

    Very limited forms of gene therapy are available in the treatment of terminal cancers. However, pharmaceutical companies have not been able to market this form of medicine, outside of the laboratory, on human populations.[xiv] A cynic might reasonably argue that companies are exploiting the current crisis in order to expedite safety trials and open the market for ‘gene-therapy’.

    There is nothing new here, this type of therapy, whereby patients are administered the gene for a missing or desired product, has been in development for several decades. The major difficulty for pharmaceutical companies has been how to get it out of the laboratory and past the paralysis of safety trials. It is certainly easy to see that if our cells are programmed to make and release spike-proteins, they can also be programmed to release other kinds of proteins, drugs and potential therapies directly into the human blood stream or tissues.[xv] Getting this type of therapy past regulators, and avoiding meaningful debate, has, (for better or worse), clearly been accomplished within the context of the current crisis.

    From a simple economic perspective, if human cells can be programmed to take on the role of manufacturing the ‘drug’, numerous difficulties in respect of production, costs, delivery, and even safety trials, are relatively easily overcome. The paradigm shift that resulted from Jenner’s development of vaccination could pale into insignificance compared to the potential game changer of genetic-vaccine.

    Ah go on. You’ll be grand!

    If, indeed, these vaccines are going to protect people from Covid-19, and they come with the added benefit of paving the way for novel therapies, why are people like me getting our proverbial knickers in a twist?

    Again the answer is not that complicated. The cellular process of ‘translation’ that is being ‘hijacked’ by the relevant pharmaceutical companies, does not belong to them, to our respiratory cells, or even human cells. As mentioned already, it is a process that belongs to ALL cells, in ALL species. In essence it ‘belongs’ to all living things in Nature.

    If anything happens to go wrong, the consequences are not limited to human beings, as the process being ‘hijacked’ is not exclusive to us. It ‘belongs’ to all life on Earth. The consequence of error, may extend further than a little nausea or swelling at the injection site.[xvi] Potential consequences extend to all cells that utilize the same process, and come in contact with the manufactured DNA or RNA.

    DNA or RNA? Red or White?

    Whilst the potential for either of the two available DNA vaccines to integrate into, or damage, human DNA is well established; there is an argument being made that this cannot possibly occur with the two available RNA vaccines.

    Generally speaking within our cells once RNA is copied or made in the nucleus it moves into the cytoplasm. It does not travel backwards. RNA does not move back inside the nucleus and incorporate into our DNA. However, the key words here are: ‘generally speaking.’

    Nature (generally speaking) blocks this possibility because the copied RNA that exits the nucleus, is different to DNA. It is an RNA copy of the DNA, the RNA cannot bind or interact with DNA. In the first instance RNA is a single stranded copy of one side of the zip. In the second instance the ‘teeth’ on the newly copied RNA are slightly different. They are tweaked with a sugar molecule called ribose, they are ‘ribosylated’ and therefore cannot readily recombine with DNA. (The ‘R’ in RNA simply means Ribosylated Nucleic Acid.)

    The RNA does indeed code for the same message that is contained within the DNA, but the teeth, or the letters of the RNA code, are slightly different. RNA does not travel backwards and interfere with DNA. Generally speaking they are incompatible, and cannot interfere with each other. Therefore, when the vaccine makers insist that the pieces of RNA that they have transfected into our cells do not interact with our DNA; well, they aren’t spoofing. It doesn’t normally happen that RNA interferes with DNA.

    So that’s what it says on the tin. However, there are two points that must be considered before we take this claim at face value. The first is a question of ‘precedence’ and the second is a question of scale.

    Does it happen in humans and in Nature that RNA can travel backwards into the nucleus and interfere with or incorporate into DNA? The simple answer to this question is a definite yes! RNA can and does travel backwards to incorporate itself into our DNA. This retrograde move, (where RNA sequences become incorporated into DNA) is called reverse-transcription. The reason for the use of ‘retro’ in the word retrovirus, is because retroviruses, and many other viruses, make use of reverse-transcription, converting RNA into DNA that will then integrate into our own DNA.

    HIV and HTLV (a human virus that causes t-cell leukaemia) are examples of viral infections, where RNA is converted backwards into DNA which then ‘interferes’ with our own DNA inside the nucleus of our cells. These viruses contain RNA, and they also carry an enzyme called ‘reverse transcriptase’. This enzyme converts RNA backwards into DNA. Retroviruses and other viruses (such as Hepatitis B) introduce the reverse-transcriptase enzyme into our cells when they infect them.[xvii] Furthermore, our own cells normally produce and use this enzyme (reverse transcriptase) inside the nucleus, where it has some ‘house-keeping’ roles in maintaining our own DNA.[xviii]

    Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that within the human genome some 8% of our DNA is composed of DNA that was originally viral RNA. Infections with RNA viruses whose genes have since become permanently incorporated into our own DNA. These sequences are called ‘Human Endogenous Retroviral Sequences’ or HERVS.[xix] Many of them persist within our genome because they may code for proteins or things that are likely to be of some benefit to us; genes brought into our genome from outside the cell, via the natural, dynamic interaction between viruses, retroviruses and human DNA.

    Many more of these endogenous retroviral (originally RNA) sequences are mysteriously redundant, and science is yet to learn of their function in sickness or in health. The fact remains that they are present; been present for countless millennia; may be integral to our evolution as a species; and are certainly with us ‘until death do us part.’ They should serve to remind us that there is a long established history of communication between viral and human genetics; an interaction that we should attempt to understand before it is blindly manipulated.

    Interconnectedness

    Too often viruses are portrayed as static structures, distinct from our own genetic material and distinct from one another. This is quite simply a rather primitive concept, the same kind of thinking that removes human beings and the consequence of our actions from Nature. It is part of the reason we remain largely incapable of seeing and appreciating the vast web of interconnectedness that dependently joins us to whales, rain forests, and even viruses.

    We depend upon viruses for our genetics, as we depend upon yeast for our beer. Often viruses depend upon each other to cause infection. In certain instances, if a particular virus is missing something, a part or component (without which it is defective or deficient), the missing part is supplied by another helper-virus. There are helper-viruses, and there is an entire family of viruses (dependoviruses) that are entirely dependent upon assistance from helper-viruses. For example, in Humans, Hepatitis D virus is activated, only in the presence of Hepatitis B virus. Essentially, in order to function, the D-virus ‘borrows’ some missing parts from the B virus.

    In short, viruses are not ‘monogamous recluses’: interacting with each other; helping each other; interacting with our genetic material within the cytoplasm and within the nucleus. It does not matters if that genetic material has come from the nucleus of our own cells, or been synthesized in the labs at Johnson and Johnson.[xx]

    A Question of Scale

    There is no such thing as a ‘perfect process’. Do something for the first time and you might do it right,  do it right enough times, and you will eventually do it wrong. 

    When vaccine RNA or DNA hijacks a natural cellular processes and transforms the cell to vaccine or spike-protein production; how many times does this ‘event’ occur in the tissue of the person who has thus been vaccinated? Thousands, or several thousands of times? How many times has it occurred when several billion people are vaccinated? I don’t know the answer to this question. However, when a process is repeated billions of times, mistakes are no longer ‘possible’, they are inevitable. Such mistakes or mutations are not only inevitable but are essential, lying at the heart of evolution itself.

    The End is Nigh?

    There is certainly a mountain of spin and delusion on either side of the ‘genetic-vaccine’ or ‘gene-therapy’ debate, and we must keep matters in perspective. Genetic modification is here to stay, for better or for worse. The argument in respect of unforeseen genetic consequence to ourselves and/or other species is an old one. It began with ‘Dolly’ the sheep, and has raged for some time around the desirability of genetically modified foods.

    Ironically, the introduction of synthetic genes into vegetables, created something of an international furore, yet the transfection of synthetic genes into millions of regular human beings has created far less controversy. Debate or discussion on the subject of genetic modification or therapy, its necessity, utility, or potential harm, is long overdue; although perhaps it might be a case of too little, too late.

    Today, many of the foods we eat have been genetically modified to some degree. Genetically modified food is, however, met with and processed by the acid and digestive enzymes in our guts. The synthetic genes in GM products do not (as far as we know) enter our cells, they do not attempt to manipulate our own cellular or genetic processes.

    There is clearly an urgent need to revisit this debate in light of these new vaccines. The battle may have been lost in respect of GM crops, but there is a reasonable argument to be advanced this time round as ‘human genetic processes’ are being tampered with, rather than sheep, beetroot or soya beans.

    The Right Hashtag?

    In recent years discourse and protest have become strangely predictable, organised around or stimulated by whatever happens to be trending on social media. It seems the right hashtag hasn’t been developed for ‘debate’ in respect of current pandemic policy, even as that policy extends into the function of our own cells.

    How many people in Ireland, or around the world, know how a Covid vaccine work? How many clinicians are aware for that matter? When debate does erupt in relatively small pockets around the country it is hijacked by extremists or dismissed as being organised and attended by extremists. Social media appears to be moderating our behaviour to a greater degree than even genetics.

    The health of our society depends far more on constructing a more honest and happier version of ourselves. We need to re-evaluate materialism, define happiness, reduce consumption, eat less (or no) meat, take plastics out of our food chain and ecosystems, restore and preserve habitats, protect and understand a biodiversity upon which we are entirely dependent. All of this, and more, is not contingent on genetic modification, no more than it is dependent on us getting to Mars.

    Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I would not inject a healthy animal with an experimental genetic-vaccine, never mind a healthy human being.

    [i] Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer, ‘How the Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Works,’ New York Times, March 22nd, 2020,  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/oxford-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine.html

    [ii] Smriti Mallapaty, ‘The coronavirus is most deadly if you are older and male — new data reveal the risks’ August 28th, 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2

    [iii] Adam W. Gaffney, ‘We need to start thinking more critically — and speaking more cautiously — about long Covid’ Statnews, March 22nd, 2021, https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/22/we-need-to-start-thinking-more-critically-speaking-cautiously-long-covid/

    [iv] Conor Pope, Vivienne Clarke, ‘Vaccination rollout in nursing homes almost complete, HSE says,’ February 12th, 2020, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/vaccination-rollout-in-nursing-homes-almost-complete-hse-says-1.4483250

    [v] CSO. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-covid19/covid-                                                19informationhub/health/covid-19deathsandcasesstatistics/

    [vi] Moderna Announces First Participants Dosed in Phase 2/3 Study of COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate in Pediatric Population https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-first-participants-dosed-phase-23-study-0

    [vii] CSO. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-covid19/covid-                                                19informationhub/health/covid-19deathsandcasesstatistics/

    [viii] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=covid+deaths+ireland

    [ix] ‘Immune evasion means we need a new COVID-19 social contract’, The Lancet, February 18th, 2021, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00036-0/fulltext

    [x] Jeremy Divine, ‘The Dubious Origins of Long Covid’, Wall Street Journal, March 22nd, 2021,  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dubious-origins-of-long-covid-11616452583

    [xi] Angela Betsaida B. Laguipo, ‘86 percent of the UK’s COVID-19 patients have no symptoms,’ News Medical Life Sciences, October 9th, 2020, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201009/86-percent-of-the-UKs-COVID-19-patients-have-no-symptoms.aspx

    [xii] The History of Vaccines, Chinese Smallpox Inoculation, https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/early-chinese-inoculation

    [xiii] Germs. 2013 Mar; 3(1): 26–35. Published online 2013 Mar 1. doi: 10.11599/germs.2013.1034/

    [xiv] Kristina Fiore, ‘Want to Know More About mRNA Before Your COVID Jab?’ Medpage Today, December 3rd, 2020, https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/89998

    [xv] Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 17, pages261–279(2018)

    [xvi] Nicola Davis, ‘Covid vaccine side-effects: what are they, who gets them and why?’ The Guardian, March 18th, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/18/covid-vaccine-side-effects-what-are-they-who-gets-them-and-why

    [xvii] Medical Microbiology. 4th edition (Chapter 62).Galveston (TX): University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; 1996.

    [xviii] Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1986 Apr; 83(8): 2531–2535.
    doi: 10.1073/pnas.83.8.2531, https://www.nature.com/articles/1205081

    [xix] PMCID: PMC7139688 PMID: 32155827 Human Endogenous Retroviruses (HERVs): Shaping the Innate Immune Response in Cancers.

    [xx] Knipe, David M.; Howley, Peter M. (2007). Fields Virology (5th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 126–7.