Kaylee Hillinger 

Welcome to The Round Barn, a podcast devoted to all things livestock. Our goal is to offer provocative insights, challenge conventional wisdom, and never be boring. I’m your host today, Kaylee Hillinger. Joining me again is Dr. Jim Lowe, a large animal veterinarian and a member of the faculty at the University of Illinois College of VetMed. Hey, Jim, how are you today? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Good. Kaylee, how are you? 

Kaylee Hillinger 

I’m fantastic. How could you be mad with this lovely weather in Central Illinois 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I know the weather’s lovely. And I actually was almost a veterinarian today, so don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Did you walk on a farm? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I did. I was on a farm yesterday. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. You really are playing the veterinarian, huh? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I saw a pig. Don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. Did you do some veterinary work on that pig? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Yes. I may have done some veterinary work. So this is all new. It may have been malpractice. But we’ll go with it. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Oh, okay. Well, we’re doing what we can here. So, Jim, you’re on social media, right? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Yes. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yes. What’s your platform of choice? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I read Twitter. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

You are a Twitter guy. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I don’t tweet. I just read the Twitters. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. Social media stalker, then. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Yes. Yes, yes. For me. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yes. I’m new to Twitter. I had a very old Twitter that I made, I think like ten, 15 years ago on a spring break to get free drinks or something. But I made a new one so I can try to catch up on what’s happening on Twitter. My husband uses it for all kinds of scientific things, and I didn’t realize there was a whole face of Twitter for that. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Yeah, so I got started down originally with baseball Twitter because the baseball writers were tweeting instead of putting the story out. So you get the story the night before and you have to wait for the paper the next day or you know for it to appear because they were lagging the online. And now, that isn’t as big a deal. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And Twitter’s a bit of a mess. Right. Because I mean, this whole Elon Musk thing is a mess. But I get all kinds of strange stuff in my feed. But there’s also ag twitter. Yeah. So AG Twitter. And then there’s British ag twitter and there’s a whole bunch of rabbit holes you can go to. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So you get 140 characters and then a link to a true story. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Or a story. And let’s not- let’s not qualify… It’s Twitter 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Oh, yeah, that’s a- It’s a good point, which may… 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Or may not be true. Yeah, I think it’s not true. But yes. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So that’s what I want to talk about today is the misinformation of some of the things that I was reading on Twitter. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Yeah, it’s gotten like, great. Well, there’s a lot of crazy. Right. Right. Twitter itself is absolutely insane. You can’t believe hardly anything on there. But yeah, we’ve got done this mRNA vaccine thing. It’s bizarre. I mean, maybe understandable, but bizarre. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Very weird. So I copied some of the tweets that I wanted to read for some of our listeners who may not have gone down this Twitter rabbit hole on mRNA vaccines, 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It’s a whole I’m not sure it’s a rabbit hole, but it’s a hole. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So one tweet said “Never since the beginning of time have cattle needed m RNA vaccines. It’s not about the health of the cattle.” And then another one, and this is really where they start kind of going off the tail end of what’s happening is: “Legislation is being drawn up in some countries to force max mass vaccination of all livestock with m RNA technology.” 

Kaylee Hillinger 

And then they keep going, right. So now it’s Bill Gates fault. He vows to pump Dudley M RNA technology into our food supply to force jab the unvaccinated. And that’s where this whole misinformation thing really starts to cruise along. And it follows the hashtag of #SayNoToMRNA, which then takes the cattle piece and then the 2020 COVID thing and it all starts getting blurry. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So what is happening? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

People are crazy. Well, it’s an interesting bit, right, that I think we’ve conflated or the Twittersphere has conflated a technology which is self-replicating messenger RNA. With COVID. And so this mRNA technology. So we- let’s let’s back up a step. You and I, everybody listening, this makes oodles, oodles and oodles of mRNA all day long. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It happens. It’s how we- it’s how in every cell the DNA, your genes make the protein. So DNA codes has nucleic acids, these ACTs and Gs, the messenger RNA sticks to that and copies it. And that’s how you make protein. You survive based on mRNA. Okay. And so it’s completely normal. We’ve known it’s existed for a long time. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It’s how cells work. It’s messenger from the genetic code to the functional bits. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Just a biological system. It’s the way it works. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It’s the bridge. And so we’ve known, I guess for quite a while. I mean, I wasn’t aware of it before, but but if you look at so prior to COVID. This, somebody thought about, hey, can I take mRNA and basically hijack the virus and use- like the virus. So when I said- let’s take another step backwards here. I’m- I’m getting the whole story wrong. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

You’re just excited. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Oh, well, something or senile. One of the two. When a virus infects a cell. So any virus, it’s this is virus. Generic viruses don’t live on their own. They can’t divide on their own. They have to have another cell to do that. A host in a host cell specifically. And then that virus goes into the cell and it hijacks the cell’s machinery to make more copies of itself. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Well, the cell’s machinery is mRNA. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

That’s how it remakes itself. So it has to have m RNA to do that. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

For a virus to survive, it has to have mRNA. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It it yes, it all everything has to have mRNA. Okay, so it’s the messenger. It’s why it’s called messenger. It takes a copy of the genes that were there and it- and it copies it. It’s literally a copy machine. And then that is converted into a protein. In the case of a virus, it creates another copy of itself. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It makes the proteins necessary for the virus. So somebody a long time ago said in the back, if a bacteria is in the cell, it does the same thing. Okay. Somebody made a brilliant idea a while ago and said, listen, what if we instead of taking the whole virus, which is dangerous, so if we had the whole virus, you get infected and you have disease. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Okay. All right. So when we think about vaccines, we think about whole virus vaccines, which is most of what we do. Some of those are killed, so we kill them. So they’re dead. They don’t work very good. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So we just, like, inactivate them. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Inactivate them typically with heat. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so we’ll kill the virus. Viruses don’t do dry, so we dry the virus out or we heated or we kill it somehow and then we put an adjuvant. So something that the immune system pays attention to and stick that in and that induces immune response. So the vaccines we give kids, DPT are all killed vaccines. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay, so we take an actual virus piece, kill it, inject it as a vaccine when mixed with an adjuvant, create some sort of immune response. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

That’s exactly right. That’s a killed vaccine. And those are safe and reliable and not very effective. Because they’re killed. And so it takes a lot of the dead virus for the immune system to pay attention. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Because it doesn’t have that replicating power. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Doesn’t grow in the body, that’s exactly right. So then we got along here and we said we’re going to use modified live vaccine. So we took a virus and we grow it up, but we grow it in a way that it doesn’t produce disease very much. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So it’s attenuated, meaning it isn’t as virulent, doesn’t produce as much disease, and those vaccines produce a better immune response. But they’re attenuated. They’re not. So they produce some disease with it. And so the best example I can give you is the polio vaccine. So the original polio vaccine, the Salk vaccine, was killed. And then we shifted to a modified live, and that’s the oral one that most people got. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Because when I give the live attenuated vaccine doesn’t cause disease but causes a better immune response. The virus actually replicates in you. I get a more natural infection and the immunities much better. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. So because it’s live, your immune system actually attacks it. But does it cause sickness? Illness, disease? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It does cause some sickness, illness, disease. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so right. So if we look at polio today, most of the cases of polio in the world are vaccine variants. So the vaccine, the body didn’t respond appropriately and the vaccine got out of control and they get polio from the vaccine. This is a third- not here in the- we don’t actually give the vaccine anymore in the U.S.. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

But in third world countries. And so the problem with live vaccines are they work, but they’re not as safe. You can have some issues. So when we think about cattle, let’s talk about cattle, because that’s where this hubbub started. Most of the vaccines we use, viral vaccines we use in cattle they are live. Modified live. So IBR vaccine or bovine herpesvirus vaccine is modified live. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

BVD vaccine is alive Those are the big two we give. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Because they work. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Because they work and they’re mostly safe. They don’t cause much disease. We use the same bio vaccine for a long, long time. They work, they’re safe and they’re cheap. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Okay. Somebody a long time ago said, if I’m going to vaccinate and I have something I can’t attenuate, I can’t make safe, is there another approach? And so they said, can I use this m RNA that would be made naturally? Can I hijack the process and only make part of the virus inside the body? So this idea of a subunit vaccine has been really popular. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So you and I have been around pigs a lot. All of the pigs are vaccinated with a subunit vaccine for circovirus. So we make part of the virus. We’re not using mRNA there. We use another technology. We but we only make part of the virus. And then we give, we give the part that caused the immune response and we inject that. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And that works. So we grow it in another virus, harvest the protein, inject it, it works great. That- that idea of a subunit works for some things and not others. So coronaviruses, subunit vaccines haven’t worked very well. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. So so far we’ve talked about killed, modified live, and subunit vaccines. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

That’s right. Which is part of- so the idea of the subunit is it’s super safe because I’m not giving the whole- I’m not giving the whole thing and I’m giving only the part that we induce an immune immune response against. Therefore it doesn’t take as much of it. If I give the killed because if I give killed, I give the whole virus. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

And those Circovirus vaccines are like silver bullets. So. Right. This should work. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Works perfect. That’s exactly right. So circovirus vaccine in pigs, which is a subunit produced in a cell culture. So it’s not anything like mRNA that technology doesn’t work for other things. Other viruses don’t work that way, including coronaviruses. We’ve tried it. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So somewhere along the line, some smart person said, What if I hijack the machinery and make a subunit vaccine? But instead of growing that virus or making that protein outside the body, what if I make that protein inside the body? 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so hence mRNA vaccines came along. So we’ve had these 20 or 30 years. I don’t know exactly the time. They’ve been around a long time. Nobody used them. And nobody used them because they’re expensive, they’re hard to handle. And it takes a quite bit of chemical wizardry to actually make them up. I mean, this isn’t for the faint of heart. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so this thing had been sitting around, people had looked at it, said, ah, this is great. But, you know, diphtheria, tetanus and and pertussis vaccine works really, really good. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so… why would you mess with it? 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so the expensive thing is going to be used in people. It isn’t going to be used in livestock. Right? So they said, okay, look, I don’t know that vaccine works, I’m not going to replace it. And so there was really no need for it. But we had this thing sitting on the shelf. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So the mRNA technology for vaccines we’re comfortable with, familiar with. But it wasn’t used either commercially for livestock or people. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

That’s right. Because it’s too expensive and too hard. Wasn’t the simple solution. Right? Take the- the KISS thing like make it simple- that works. So coronavirus comes along and you’re like, oh, this is. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

And we’re back to coronavirus and people. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Coronavirus and people comes along, SARS-CoV-2 comes along. And so interesting, we’ve had other coronaviruses, so the original SARS epidemic and then the Middle Eastern epidemic, SARS, which happened. Was a coronavirus out of camels, like it comes from camels. Nei- both of those the killed vaccine work great they- they made a kill virus vaccine, injected into people- really old technology- grew the virus up, killed it, put an adjuvant with it, inject it and they stopped those outbreaks. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

This SARS-CoV-2 comes along and they were trying to make kill vaccine. But the problem with making killed vaccine is that they had to be able to grow the virus. I got to grow a lot of it. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yep. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

That’s also not an easy trick. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yep. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So some smart people, couple of different groups of smart people said, hey, we’ve got this other technology, let’s try. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Give it a whirl. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It’s pandemic. Let’s do some stuff. Let’s try it. And so that’s what they did. They tried it. And lo and behold, it worked. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Right. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Now. Skeptics, I may be skeptical all the time. Skeptics said we’re never going to have a- we deal with coronaviruses in pigs. Right. All the time. You know, colds are coronaviruses. So, coronavirus is this really broad thing. So we deal with coronavirus in pigs all the time. We’ve never had a vaccine that worked. And they kinda go “Uh, I don’t know what we did that for.” 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so vaccination for coronaviruses has generally been poor. The immune system can respond very well. So I didn’t think we’d ever get a vaccine. It’s like we’re that we’re- we’re in trouble. We’re not going to vaccinate our way out of this mess. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Right. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And yet A-plus b mRNA technology, plus this particular coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 worked. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so sometimes science is about luck as much as it is about being really smart. And so that combination happened to work and so here we go. And everybody’s conflating mRNA with coronavirus. mRNA is actually the self-replicating RNA, which is what they’re doing. It replicates on its own, right? 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So there’s Twitter hole, people think mRNA means COVID. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s not COVID, right. It’s just generic technology. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

They do not understand that this is a- a system in place, a replication that happens within the body, no matter whether they have covid or not. Yes. Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So we got down this rabbit hole, everybody saying, oh, we’re using it in cows. And I think they were conflating it like we were vaccinated for COVID with cows. Well A: no, no, no, it doesn’t. We’re not vaccinating cows against COVID. Nor are we vaccinating deer, pigs or anything else. I mean, it makes no sense. And then you look at the technology and remember, we didn’t use it in people where cost is really not one of the things we think about. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Right? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

It’s expensive and hard and it has to be stored at -80 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this thing is not like, Oh, I put it in the fridge and pop it out. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Right. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so nobody has really seriously said this is a thing in livestock, at least a large scale commercial thing because it’s hard. We do know there are some groups working on mRNA technology for African swine fever. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So African swine fever is one of those things we can’t grow in a petri dish. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

The modified live vaccines which have been produced and a gene deleted. So they chopped off one of the genes out. They thought it’d be safe. They’ve tried that. It’s not safe. It’s replicating and causing disease. And so mRNA or another subunit vaccine, there’s numerous subunit approaches going on. mRNA is one of those. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Might be a way to solve a African swine fever problem, but it’s because- 

Kaylee Hillinger 

There’s no other vaccine option out there 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

There’s no other approach. Now you start looking at expensive stuff. Does that make sense? You’re like okay- 

Kaylee Hillinger 

The pain is high enough to- 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

to warrant the investment. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yes. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And so they’re saying, oh, could we stick this in? Could we try a piece of the ASF virus to make vaccine? Now that’s- that’s like like people in labs sitting around. There are people, there’s some work going here on campus about using other viruses to grow it a little bit like circovirus, using other viruses to grow pieces of the ASF virus. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And would that induce immunity? 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. Because there are other options out there. So let’s give them a try. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

Yes. Yeah. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Let’s just do some science. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

We did all we did all the normal stuff and none of that works for African swine fever. So we’re down this other path like you’re down. Oh, I don’t know. Let’s try. These things are expensive and hard, but we. We got nothing else. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So we’re trying some stuff in swine. Where do cattle get drug into this whole thing? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I have no idea how cattle got drug into this whole thing. I mean, I’m not aware of any even research groups saying that we would be using mRNA vaccine for cattle. Our vaccines generally work. It’s not like that using a different technology is going to produce a better result. I mean, we’ve kinda gotten really good at those vaccines. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

They’re not perfect. But that’s because of the disease, not because of the vaccination approach. And those vaccines are safe and yada, yada, yada. So I don’t- I don’t see where I don’t know how that got started, but it doesn’t- I look at it and say, it doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s not where I would I would do it. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And foot and mouth disease would be the big foreign animal disease we’re all worried about in cattle. And we got a good vaccine for that. So we can make it cheap and grow lots of it. We’re not going to go make an mRNA vaccine. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So are there any mRNA vaccines that are used in livestock? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

No. There’s nothing- 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So this whole concept about whether there’s a differential in the general population about mRNA and COVID like and getting into the intestine to meet like- none of this is substantiated. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

None of it is. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Huh. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And the other interesting thing is the mRNA only lasts of maybe a few hours in the body and is naturally consumed. You remember? You make mRNA all day long. You have a lot of enzymes to chew up mRNA to make it go away, because it’s- you have to recycle it. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So it gets, it’s, it’s a string of nucleic acids, it gets, it does its thing, it gets chewed up by an enzyme and those nucleic acids are resorbed and used again in a different way. Hmm. So it’s not like, oh, it’s stable. Like, if we’re looking so diagnostically today, we can actually take a sample of blood and I can pull the mRNA out of it. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

And tell you what proteins you’re making. So this is like this high-end sequencing, but to do that, to give you some idea, I have to pull the blood out. I have to put it in a stabilizer and I have to pack it in dry ice within 10 minutes. Otherwise it’s all gone. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

So I think you, I, others in the scientific community can take a look at some of those tweets and social media posts and just go “Bah. These people are crazy. Like they’ve got nothing to worry about. They just don’t understand.” But with all of this publicity, like, what does that actually mean for livestock producers, if anything? 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I think it’s more of a- I don’t think it means much. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Okay. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I think you’ve got the politics of COVID coming back to play. And social media allows people to be amplified in a way that they normally would not be. So instead of sitting around the coffee shop talking about these things, we now get on Twitter and talk about these things. But it’s been real. I fielded quite a few calls about it in the last week. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So it’s it’s pretty- in emails and calls. I mean, it’s pretty interesting that everybody’s gotten what’s going on here, but there’s certainly no… Even if it was used, you wouldn’t be worried about it. It’s gone. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Yeah. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

So it’s it’s an interesting, interesting view of sociology, I guess, would be the best way to look at it. Hmm. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

Well, thanks for myth busting for us. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

I got to do something. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

You don’t have another farm to go to today. 

Dr. Jim Lowe 

No, no, no. I’m going- I’m back to my full on office- office jockey duties. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

All right. Well, thanks, Dr. Lowe, for joining us and chatting through that. Thanks for joining us. Please subscribe and tell your friends about The Round Barn. It’s available on iTunes or the podcatcher of your choice. In addition to this podcast, we offer a wide range of online learning opportunities for livestock producers and veterinarians, including a master’s of veterinary science degree. 

Kaylee Hillinger 

You can learn more by following The Round Barn at Illinois on LinkedIn or by visiting online at vetmed.illinois.edu. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.