ERVEBO Ebola vaccine will create a rice allergy epidemic, add to numerous autoimmune diseases, cancer and make Ebola disease even more severe. Design for safety and vaccine safety regulation remain abject failures. Incompetence or indifference?

The ERVEBO vaccine manufactured by Merck, contains residual rice proteins. Recombinant rice is used to manufacture human serum albumin present in the vaccine. Presence of residual rice proteins in the vaccine makes it immediately obvious that the vaccine maker and regulators are incompetent or indifferent about vaccine safety.

Injecting an alien protein induces IgE mediated sensitization directed against that protein. This vaccine will create an epidemic of IgE mediated rice allergy among recipients. A rice allergy epidemic in impoverished nations where rice is a staple food, will create a disaster that will dwarf any Ebola outbreak. Anaphylactic reactions to a common food like rice, lack of immediate access to medical facilities that can treat it and inability to afford personal emergency medications such as epinephrine injections, will make this a humongous disaster.

Rice proteins, other residual proteins (African green monkey proteins from VERO cell culture medium), vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) proteins from the backbone virus and the envelope glycoprotein of the Zaire ebolavirus can all produce cross reacting immune responses against human self proteins. Bioinformatics analysis identifies numerous potential diseases due to such cross reactivity.

The same type of vaccine (live chimeric virus) was used for the dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia. So there is no reason to expect that the Dengvaxia disaster will not be repeated in this case.

This vaccine is only useful for limited administration in “ring vaccination” strategies to contain an Ebola outbreak. This vaccine is unacceptable and unsafe for prophylaxis in the general population using mass vaccination.