This week, the Tennessee Legislature passed a bill mandating that if and when scientists figure out how to put vaccines in lettuce, the leafy greens will be clearly labeled as a drug.
“As introduced,” the bill reads, “defines food that contains a vaccine or vaccine material as a drug for purposes of the Tennessee Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.”
I don’t really know where to begin with this one. Like, I’m rolling it over and over in my mind and all I keep going back to is that these people clearly do not have enough actual problems in their lives if they have to go around fearing the advent of lettuce vaccines.
Via WSMV:
Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, spoke during the session about the bill, which he’s sponsoring.
“House Bill 1894 merely would require any food that contains a vaccine or vaccine material would have to be classified as a drug and labeled as such,” he said.
Questioning the bill, Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, asked if Hensley knew of any instances where food containing vaccines was offered in Tennessee.
“So does the sponsor know of any instances of there being food offered in the state of Tennessee that contains vaccines and some kind of a retail or public forum?” Campbell asked.
“No, I do not know any specific examples. But certainly they are developing this process. And actually, Congress has actually dealt with this as well and passed an amendment that said no fund could be used for transgenic edible vaccines. This is a process that is being developed. But this bill merely would say that if that happens in the future, that food would have to be classified as a drug if it had a vaccine in it,” Hensley replied.
The weirdest thing here is that they would think it wouldn’t. Like people are out there trying to roofie people’s wedge salads with vaccines they don’t want to take without regard for dosage.
Sen. Campbell also had trouble wrapping her head around how they even thought this would work.
“So while I feel like this legislation’s basically anodyne,” she said, “I mean, I guess it’s addressing something that I can’t imagine would ever exist, which is the idea that we would somehow be putting vaccines into foods that you would buy in a grocery store. I mean, I can’t think of any logical reason why anyone would ever do that. And I do know that, you know, certainly, there have been experiments with putting vaccines in vegetables for the purposes of, of studying possible transmission methods. But the idea that this would somehow correlate to some kind of a retail offering of vegetables, especially when that vegetable would cost, you know, many thousands of dollars, just seems to me, I guess, messy, to be passing legislation for that reason. So I will be voting no.”
But Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, who I am pretty sure is legally a Simpsons character, shared his concerns that they might just put vaccines in all of the lettuce, like the way they poison our precious bodily fluids with fluoride in the water.
“Actually I’ve been reading about data for a couple of years now and evidently with this new technology, they can raise this lettuce is what they’re talking about first,” he said. “They can raise this stuff so cheap, and I’ve been reading about it talking about putting it in and lettuce and mass medicate everybody, like they do with fluoride in the water. I mean, who could control the dose? If you’re, if you eat a lot of lettuce, you’re gonna get a lot of mRNA, if you don’t eat any won’t get any. And they’re actually talking about other vegetables that they’re trying to put this in. And my question is, would this have to be sold at a drugstore? Would you still buy it in a grocery store? Why don’t we just outlaw this stuff completely? We don’t have any idea what its gonna do to our children? I mean, to us and old people anything? I mean, is this stuff locked out of a science fiction movie? I mean, it’s, it’s ridiculous. It’s changes your DNA, mRNA changes your DNA when if you have your DNA tested now, and you eat a bunch of this, lettuce take a bunch of these MRNA vaccines, and you go back and get your DNA tested again, it’s gonna be a little different. It’s not going to be the same as it was that you were born with that you got from your parents. This is dangerous stuff. We need to study it, probably need to outlaw it. I mean, I can’t imagine. When I first read about this, I thought this can not be true. But you keep reading about it. And it is true.”
What in the blinking man dot gif is he on about?
This man, I am going to need to point out, also once used Hitler’s life story as a way to inspire the homeless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
“In 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while,” Niceley, a real, actual human person, said in 2022. “So for two years Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses. And then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books.”
Is there a kind of lettuce we could give Sen. Frank Niceley that would make him say fewer stupid things? Because that I’d be into.
Scientists are, in fact, studying whether or not it would be possible to grow lettuce and other foods to produce mRNA vaccines, not because anyone wants to surreptitiously slip a vaccine into anyone’s chicken Caesar wrap, but because it could be a particular effective (and cost effective) delivery system.
The importance of this discovery could potentially revolutionize how the world looks at vaccines and how they can be delivered. Not only is this delivery method much easier than injectable vaccines, but it also stimulates the development of mucosal immunity, which offers protection at mucosal surfaces including the lungs. Furthermore, it would allow us to combine injectable and edible vaccines for a more comprehensive immune response and protection against COVID-19 and other viral pandemics in the future. Advantages of this method include the low production cost, since there is no need for a cold chain for distribution, as well as avoiding the use of needles. Eliminating the need for a cold chain would greatly facilitate the administration of vaccines in rural areas and expedite vaccination efforts in developing countries around the world.
This is a good thing! In fact, it would be incredible. To take something like this, an exciting scientific development that could potentially save millions of lives, and turn it into something weird and nefarious is honestly just pretty pathetic.
I, personally, am an especially big fan of the “no needles” part, as I cannot always find someone to come with me and distract me with puppets.
No one is planning to stick unlabeled vaccine lettuce in the grocery store next to regular, non-vaccinated lettuce. That would be ridiculous. What they want is for people in the future to perhaps be able to grow their own vaccines, so that they and their families and their neighbors can have easy access to them.
There is a very, very long way to go before this kind of innovation would even be remotely viable, and if it ever does become viable, the idea that it would be used to victimize poor innocent Republicans what don’t know how a vaccine works instead of to save the lives of people who do and would like access to them, is completely absurd.
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