Tattoos and Vaccines: Muddled Thinking And A Good Idea
08/08/2024
“Often wrong, never in doubt” Anonymous
Muddled thinking. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, including a recent Nobel Prize for the technology, vaccine fabulists, like RFK, Jr, , Robert De Niro, Jenny McCarthy, my own Senator Ron Johnson, and too many others continue to spread intentional disinformation about the safety and efficacy of the COVID mRNA vaccines. Despite these naysayers, mRNA vaccines are here to stay and new ones are being developed for many other maladies that have been hard to vaccinate for, like cancer, HIV, several animal diseases, etc.
I keep encountering people who belabor the same old disproven canards about millions of people falling dead from the vaccines, about the vaccines being “experimental,” and “gene therapy.” All this disinformation continues despite the fact that tens of billions of jabs have been given to 5.6 billion vax recipients around the world over the last 4+ years. At what point does fact replace lie and truth supplant fable? The world’s entire medical establishment does not agree with these deceivers, yet they continue to sound the sham anti-vax alarm undaunted. I have pondered in these pages whether this willful dissemination of such disinformation that could affect peoples’ lives and health could be criminal. A case for this could be made.
The funny thing is that these alarmists are announcing the sky is falling over something well tested and vetted while ignoring another very common jab that many of them have likely have gotten without questioning, but that does have significant effects on one’s immune system: tattoos (see vocal anti-vaxer and celebrated tattoo artist, Kat Von D). When you stick hundreds of ink-filled needles into your skin, can it be good for you? Anti-vaxers worry about well tested and vetted vaccines, but never worry about tattoos. Why their selective outrage?
Much of tattooing remains mysterious: Scientists aren’t fully sure what makes certain tattoos fade fast, why others stick around when they’re supposed to disappear, or how they react to light. Given the fact that tat recipients are sitting for multiple injections of unknown substances into their bodies that last forever, tattooing would seem like a much better way than vaccines for someone like Bill Gates to poison us; or to use them for something sinister like mind control, or as a way to control the world population, as the vax chicken-littles often frett about with the mRNA vaccines. Why aren’t folks up in arms over this vast potential conspiracy? (Cynicism mine!)
What do tattoos do? The Atlantic recently ran an article about how tats mess with the immune system and a subsequent quick search found other concerning aspects about them. The practice involves poking dozens to thousands of holes into the middle layer of the skin, or dermis, and depositing different formulations of chemicals, or pigments, that permanently remain behind. Contrast that to the single shot of a typical vaccine that deposits into a muscle a single dose of an agent that has undergone extensive testing and approval for safety and that quickly is eliminated by the natural scavenger cells and processes of the body’s immune system so nothing remains soon after the shot is given. Both procedures irritate the immune system, but one is permanent, the other temporary.
When the hundreds of needle pricks deposit ink into the dermis for a tat, the immune system detects an assault on its body and jumps into action. The skin after all, is our immune system’s first barrier and it is well loaded with rapid-response defensive cells that lead the assault on the pigment intruder. This generally works well to heal wounds and clear infections, but the system breaks down trying to fight tat ink. The immune system simply cannot adequately clear that intruder. Rather, the pigments persist in the belly of the immune cells and skin cells, only to again be gobbled up when those cells die and disgorge their undigested contents. Then the process repeats, ad nauseam leaving a permanent stain in the skin.
Over time, the edges of tats fray and become fuzzy as ink particles are gradually shuttled away into the draining lymph nodes, which normally handle viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc. In the nodes, the immune system then revs up to recruit and deliver antibodies and T cells around the body to combat intruders that escape further into the interior. These nodes normally are pale white, but in tattooed people, they can be the color of the tattoo ink.
Thus not only is the skin tattooed, so are the lymph nodes!
It is not clear if all this misdirected immune response to tattoo ink throws the immune system off its game of surveillance against infectious pathogens. One study published last year found that tat ink can affect the function of immune cells. But, in another Australian study, tat ink was mixed with a vaccine in order to track the fate of the vaccine components after vaccination. There was no evidence of any untoward effect of the pigment on the vaccine itself. Other immunological differences between heavily tattooed and un-tattooed people have been noted but it remains unclear whether these are for the better or the worse. So, it remains uncertain whether tattoos are good or bad for one’s immune system.
However, tat ink can be harmful in other ways. The European Union banned certain pigments, that they believe are linked to bladder cancer. And a 2016 report from the Australian government found that >80% of black inks contained carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Other pigments may contain other harmful substances like barium, cadmium, lead, mercury, micro-plastics, etc. Then there always is the real risk of infection or allergic reaction when anything is injected into your body. Nice.
Tattoo-like vaccines: a good idea. In a typical vaccine, the shot is delivered into an arm muscle where the immune system is not as robust as in the skin. The skin being a primary barrier to a hostile outside world is well stocked with an armament of immune sentry cells, muscles deeper in the arm not so much. But, there are enough immune cells in muscles to get the job done and develop protective immunity to antigens which the vax delivers. For an intramuscular vaccine delivered to an arm muscle, usually a comparatively large antigen dose is used and it takes a bit of time to get the immune system in gear. Mobile immune cell cops where the vaccine bolus is deposited gobble up the material like a squirrel shovels nuts in its mouth, and then head to nearby lymph nodes to “report” that an intruder was encountered. This gets the army of T and B lymphocytes ginned up and pumping out antibodies, other immune molecules and cytokines, and other cells to respond the intruder. You are then “immunized.” This also sometimes causes the temporary malaise associated with vaccines—mild fever, fatigue, flu-like symptoms and maybe arm pain. In rare cases, allergies happen, which is a rapidly arising, acute immune response to a component in the vaccine, such as chicken egg material found in many, but not all, flu vaccines.
However, a few vaccines are actually given in the skin, more like tattoos are administered. Currently this route is used to vaccinate for small pox, TB, rabies, and more recently, mpox (formerly called monkey pox). Some studies, but not all, have shown that the intradermal (ID) vaccine route can outperform the intramuscular (IM) vax route. For this reason, other vaccines are now being developed to be given this way simply because the skin immune system is more robust and this might provide a more effective way to vaccinate, and it uses less vaccine material. This is called intradermal vaccination.
But intradermal (ID) vaccines are not that easy to administer. If not done properly and the vax material is injected too deep, which is easy to do, their efficacy can drop precipitously, just like Biden’s presidential chances plummeted after the disastrous debate. So, medical folk are actually looking at different vaccine technologies, including using tattoo machines to administer effective ID vaxes on a large scale across many clinics large and small. One technique using a DNA vaccine, called DNA tattooing has been tested in animal models and human trials and was inspired by traditional tattoo machines, which are pretty easy to use.
Bottom line: The way that vaccinologists have taken notice of tattoo technology to improve vaccine efficacy is intriguing. They have taken their science knowledge of skin immunology and realized that the pop culture tattoo fad just might improve vaccine technology and public health. That is very cool.
The sad irony is that many people who get tattooed are also vax deniers. Their cognitive dissonance is disturbing. Vax deniers loudly spread disinformation about vaccine dangers, then are completely sanguine about tattoos which inject strange chemicals into their bodies, some of which have been clearly proven to be unhealthy.
That selective outrage betrays the intellectual dishonesty and lack of curiosity of anti-vaccine dissemblers. Too bad we can't vaccinate against that.
Acknowledgment: I am indebted to Frank C. (no relation) for helping procure an article needed to write this blog post, which I had a very hard time accessing without paying a full subscription to the journal. Thanks Frank!
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Thank you, Steve, for another enlightening and entertaining article. Over 50 years ago, while still in high school, I mentioned at the dinner table that I was going to get a tattoo. My mother told me that was a good idea, as long as I was prepared to move out of her house and never eat another home-cooked meal again...and went on and on about "poisoning your body". As I've learned in the decades since, she was often more correct than even she realized. Another gem: "Eat your escarole and beans. It's pauper food but it's better for you than your friends' T-bone steak". We ate from the recipes that my grandmothers brought with them from Italy. It was "pauper food" because the ingredients were all they could afford. They'd be amused to know that today those meals are the foundation of the acclaimed "Mediterranean Diet". After much sulking on my part, I never got a tattoo and I remain ink-free. Perhaps that one word..."poison"...stuck in the mind of this headstrong teenager.
"their efficacy can drop precipitously, just like Biden’s presidential chances plummeted after the disastrous debate." Yes, I laughed. And my next thought was: "I hope Steve has reconsidered his stance re: Election 2024 now that the Harris-Walz ticket is about as far Left as imaginable. The headliners were unacceptable to you. The aforementioned anti-vaxxer RFK, Jr.? Enough said. Perhaps Cornell West? Is Jill Stein running AGAIN?
I'm not prone to hyperbole, but if there's ever a year to not "sit this one out", it's 2024. It's all going to come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan...and Wisconsin. If the "hanging chads" zaniness of Election 2000 taught us anything, it's that "Every vote counts" isn't just a political slogan. And that's especially true in a swing state that, at present, is pretty much a 50-50 toss-up.
I look forward to your future essays, and I hope you consider the words of history's most famous former lifeguard (well, second most famous. There's always David Hasselhoff): "The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally - not a 20 percent traitor."
Posted by: Jersay Peet | 08/09/2024 at 11:27 AM
Thanks Pete, Glad you liked the article and took your mother's advice and eat a Med diet!
Keep up with your vaccines. But this blog is not about the election or who any one votes for. Unless, maybe RFK, Jr runs on an anti-vax platform. I might then make an exception.
Posted by: Steve | 08/09/2024 at 03:09 PM