By Zev Frankel
Crane
Cranbrook Kingswood Boys MS
The last year has been pretty crazy. From ideas that WW3 could start, to the death of a sports legend, to devastating wildfires along with a Presidential election, there is one event that has changed our lives drastically. Covid-19 forced remote learning in schools along with mass unemployment and hospitals being at full capacity. Many people have lost loved ones to the virus and it’s really sad. But with advances in technology, two companies have created a vaccine that could turn the tide of the Covid-19 pandemic and the development of vaccines. The technology that has driven these companies is mRNA or Messenger RNA.
Pfizer/BioNTech and a compa-ny named Moderna have pioneered the idea of using mRNA in Corona-virus vaccines. mRNA vaccines work differently than other vac-cines. Most vaccines use a dead or weakened sample of a disease. The vaccine is then injected into a pa-tient’s body and the sample of the disease is released. Vaccines are created to protect the public from a pathogen to which much of the pub-lic hasn’t become immune. Because the immune system does not recog-nize the new pathogen, the immune system unleashes a response. The
pathogen is targeted and recognized by the immune system but the pa-tient most likely won’t fall ill be-cause the pathogen in the vaccine was either weakened or dead. mRNA uses a different approach. mRNA technology has been around for several decades but hasn’t been used in huge quantities until the roll-out of the Coronavirus vaccines. mRNA technology focus-es on telling the body to make the Coronavirus’s spike protein which is the Achilles heel of Covid. After the injection of the Covid vaccine, cells begin to make copies of the spike protein. After making the copies, the cells break down and get rid of the vaccine’s instructions so the rest of the immune system will know what to look for. The cells display the spike protein on their surface, triggering a response. Be-cause the cells gave instructions to the immune system to target the Covid spike protein, antibodies are produced. Antibodies group on the Coronavirus and try to eliminate it. Because of the response, the body becomes immune to the pathogen.
There is good and bad news to the new technology. The good news is we have the technology to create
vaccines by using a harmless pro-tein found on a pathogen rather than using the actual pathogen. By just using the spike proteins we don’t have to look for samples of the pathogen, all the vaccines need to do is tell the body to make copies of the spike protein to trigger an im-mune response. mRNA can be used in cancer treatment by telling a can-cer patient’s body to target cancer-ous cells instead of having chemo-therapy. This doesn’t know how to recognize and just kill the cancer-ous cells. The bad news is patho-gens change and that also means the spike protein will also change. But now we can use the spike protein to help create large amounts of im-munity against a very transmissible disease. mRNA could revolutionize medical treatments and save many lives. Maybe in a few months we could return to a more normal rou-tine but that may or may not hap-pen.
1st Place
Division MS, News Writing
NW-05. News Analysis
Stories should be interpretive in nature, not straight news stories. The elements “why” and “how” should be examined through research, but the writer’s opinions should not be expressed. An analysis covers issues and problems that relate to specific events of a news nature. Submit a PDF of the print page(s) on which the story was published or the URL to the story on an online news site.
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Sharp, attention-getting lead that underscore the why/how elements of the news
- Clarifies the news elements, i.e. timeliness, nearness, impact and prominence
- Clarifies through research the background necessary to understand current news
- Develops an understanding of the issues/problems through interviews with varied and balanced sources
- Avoids personal opinion unless properly attributed
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length, written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Effective use of facts/quotes from both primary and secondary sources
- Proper diction/grammar; use of third person