Groups of scientists are currently developing ‘self-spreading vaccines’ that could infect others from vaccinated to unvaccinated people or between vaccinated to unvaccinated animals, according to National Geographic.
The experiment was designed to spread the vaccine to unvaccinated people in vaccinated person’s close proximity.
But others argue that the viruses used in these vaccines could themselves mutate, jump species, or set off a chain reaction with devastating effects across entire ecosystems.
“Once you set something engineered and self-transmissible out into nature, you don’t know what happens to it and where it will go,” says Jonas Sandbrink, a biosecurity researcher at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. “Even if you just start by setting it out into animal populations, part of the genetic elements might find their way back into humans.”