Transcript segment

Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted), pp.129-130 · baric_ti:utt:01110

Date: 2026-04-10 09:00 (day precision)
Type: transcript segment · interview
recipient: Christina Salazar, Harry Kazenoff, David T. Lambeth III, William Henderson, Clark Ervin, Jake Greenberg
speaker: Ralph S. Baric
Topics: Vaccines

Okay. So basically there's a massive inflammatory response that has the potential to be lifethreatening, and the SARS coronavirus vaccines, from 2003, that the NIH had purchased, were both adjuvanted with alum. And we published papers showing that that drives a strong Th2 immune response. So my concern, and I expressed this to the WHO and to other groups, was that we needed to look carefully for vaccine-induced immune pathology. Ultimately, we published a paper with the VRC. That was one of the experiments we set up to do, where we took mRNA vaccines and we took killed vaccine preparations with alum and compared them head-to-head for the ability to induced Th2 responses. The mRNA vaccines did not cause it. The recombinant protein, or the killed vaccines plus alum caused a big Th2 response. Now, the Chinese vaccines were killed vaccines with alum, which I think was inappropriate. The mRNA vaccines, though, were tested for that using homologous virus challenge. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

Extracted statements

Rule-extracted, not adjudicated. The grade says what may be done with each one; read the document above before relying on any of them.

Statement	Grade	Attribution	Stance
So basically there's a massive inflammatory response that has the potential to be lifethreatening, and the SARS coronavirus vaccines, from 2003, that the NIH had purchased, were both adjuvanted with alum.	own voice, substantive	speaker_own	asserts
So my concern, and I expressed this to the WHO and to other groups, was that we needed to look carefully for vaccine-induced immune pathology.	own voice, substantive	speaker_own	asserts
That was one of the experiments we set up to do, where we took mRNA vaccines and we took killed vaccine preparations with alum and compared them head-to-head for the ability to induced Th2 responses.	own voice, substantive	speaker_own	asserts
Now, the Chinese vaccines were killed vaccines with alum, which I think was inappropriate.	needs context	uncertain explicit hedge	asserts
The mRNA vaccines, though, were tested for that using homologous virus challenge.	own voice, substantive	speaker_own	asserts

Statement

Grade

Attribution

Stance

So basically there's a massive inflammatory response that has the potential to be lifethreatening, and the SARS coronavirus vaccines, from 2003, that the NIH had purchased, were both adjuvanted with alum.

own voice, substantive

speaker_own

asserts

So my concern, and I expressed this to the WHO and to other groups, was that we needed to look carefully for vaccine-induced immune pathology.

own voice, substantive

speaker_own

asserts

That was one of the experiments we set up to do, where we took mRNA vaccines and we took killed vaccine preparations with alum and compared them head-to-head for the ability to induced Th2 responses.

own voice, substantive

speaker_own

asserts

Now, the Chinese vaccines were killed vaccines with alum, which I think was inappropriate.

needs context

uncertain explicit hedge

asserts

The mRNA vaccines, though, were tested for that using homologous virus challenge.

own voice, substantive

speaker_own

asserts

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open

I'm talking about this afternoon. Yeah, please.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

Okay. I just want to make sure that we get to everything. Early in 2020, did you ever have any concerns about the safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines that were being developed?
2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open

So coronavirus vaccines induce Th2 immune DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com pathology using killed vaccines plus alum. So I talked at a WHO meeting early on in the pandemic to say that alumbased vaccines, which have a tendency to -- I probably need to explain what a Th2 immune response is.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

We don't really have to. We'll look it up.
2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric

Okay. So basically there's a massive inflammatory response that has the potential to be lifethreatening, and the SARS coronavirus vaccines, from 2003, that the NIH had purchased, were both adjuvanted with alum. And we published papers showing that that drives a strong Th2 immune response. So my concern, and I expressed this to the WHO and to other groups, was that we needed to look carefully for vaccine-induced immune pathology. Ultimately, we published a paper with the VRC. That was one of the experiments we set up to do, where we took mRNA vaccines and we took killed vaccine preparations with alum and compared them head-to-head for the ability to induced Th2 responses. The mRNA vaccines did not cause it. The recombinant protein, or the killed vaccines plus alum caused a big Th2 response. Now, the Chinese vaccines were killed vaccines with alum, which I think was inappropriate. The mRNA vaccines, though, were tested for that using homologous virus challenge. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

Okay. So at this point --
2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open

At that point, the downstream question is whether if you have significant amounts of virus variation and you're infecting the original Wuhan mRNA vaccine, will breakthrough infection induce an immune pathology phenotype, and those are the kinds of things we're interested in studying now.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

Okay. Let's see. William had a followup question, so I'll let you do that one.
2026-04-10 09:00 William Henderson open

Back to the February 1st call, you said that you did not recall and could not figure out how you got added to that call. Was there any suggestion or implication or direction to you not to speak up on that call?

Full conversation →