This Nobel Prize should never have been awarded

Although (too) many mistakes were made during the coronavirus pandemic, a series of prizes have been awarded to those involved in recent months. The medical association "Mediziner und Wissenschaftler für Gesundheit, Freiheit und Demokratie e. V." (MWGFD) has fact-checked the Nobel Prize Committee's decision to award the prize to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries in the field of nucleoside base modifications as the basis of the novel corona vaccines [1, 6, 7, 8] after the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Medicine last year and comes to a negative conclusion: according to the MWGFD, the award was unjustified [2]. The committee had damaged trust in science with the award, ignored scientific facts, made unsubstantiated claims and thus demonstrated a lack of understanding of evidence-based medicine [2]. There have been similar incidents everywhere in recent months, for example with regard to the personalities of Wieler and Drosten: awarding prizes instead of reappraisal (see Fig. 1) [431, 432]. 

Fig. 1: Excerpt from Drosten honors (source: startpage.de)

This article focuses on the Nobel Prize for Medicine, and does so thoroughly, because nobody wants to be accused of a lack of scrutiny. Are the claims made by the MWGFD fact-checkers (damaging trust in science, ignoring scientific facts, making unsubstantiated claims, lack of understanding of evidence-based medicine) really tenable? Was the award justified at all? In addition to the four statements mentioned, the accompanying article and the comments on the fact check are also examined.

According to a spokesperson for the Nobel Prize Committee, the The award was also given because the aim was to motivate people to get vaccinated [2, 6, 7, 8]. The MWGFD criticizes here that the Nobel Prize award should not be about marketing and that the individual, informed vaccination decision should not lead to people who decide against vaccination being framed as anti-vaccination. Is the statement about marketing true, or is marketing in the spirit of the inventor after all? Here you only have to quote Alfred Nobel himself: The prize should be awarded for "the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine" [3]. Nobel did not mention marketing or even "nudging". So the MWGFD is right here. The promotion of novel vaccines should not be linked to the awarding of the Nobel Prize. With regard to framing, it can be said that people who discuss the coronavirus vaccination controversially do so within the framework of well-founded analyses [10, 11], and a Polish study found that The more information there was about the new coronavirus vaccines, the less willing well-educated university graduates and specialists were to be vaccinated; in the lower education categories, on the other hand, willingness decreased less, remained the same or even increased [12]. The committee disregarded these correlations when it believed it had to motivate people who were skeptical about vaccination in a certain direction and portray them negatively.

In an article accompanying the actual fact check, the MWGFD further states that respiratory viruses mutate rapidly and that efforts to combat them with mRNA technology have therefore failed [5]. What does this mean? Is the technology even suitable for vaccination against respiratory viruses? The fact is that although mRNA as a component of vaccines has been the subject of research for some time, it should actually be used more in the field of oncology [13]. The situation is similar with vector vaccines: Vector vaccine technology had been developed for the skin contact transmissible Ebola disease [14]. There are therefore preferred technologies for different viruses or transmission routes. The fact is that the main gateway for respiratory viruses is the respiratory tract, i.e. the mucous membranes [15, 16], and that mild respiratory infections often proceed without the formation of antibodies or T cells in the blood [17], as the immune defense takes place on the mucous membrane [18]. In order to prevent severe courses, vaccination should therefore start at the gateway, the respiratory tract. As far as is known, worldwide tests have been and are mainly only carried out on antibodies and T cells in the blood, but hardly ever on T and B cells on the mucous membranes, for whatever reason. If many people on the mucous membranes were already immune, vaccination by injection would not even be necessary. Whether the use of mRNA technology in vaccines administered by injection is effective against rapidly mutating respiratory viruses can therefore currently only be proven by the fact that it prevents infections or protects against severe courses and long-term damage, because how else should one define effectiveness? According to the RKI, vaccine efficacy is defined as relative risk reduction (RRR) [19]. This means that vaccinated people fall ill relatively less often than unvaccinated people, which can be expressed in the following formula, where U stands for unvaccinated people and G for vaccinated people:

Effectiveness = (disease rate_U - disease rate_G  / illness rate_U) x 100

Consequently, unvaccinated people would have to fall ill more frequently than vaccinated people for this formula to have a positive effect. However, this is not the case [23, 24, 27]. Initially, Pfizer had stated an efficacy of 90 or even 95 %, which according to the Ärzteblatt was meant as protection against infection, but not as protection against severe courses [21], although strictly speaking, according to the definition, it should actually be protection against disease [25, 28]. This seems strange, as it is well known that vaccination does not protect against infection or disease, as Pfizer, just like the EMA and the German Minister of Health, later claimed, but only against severe courses [22, 29, 30, 41]. The absolute risk reduction (ARR) must also be considered against this background [25]. The ARR for the Pfizer vaccine is only 0.84 % or less [104], i.e. in summary: 0.84 % fewer cases of disease occur in the entire population [25]. Vaccinated persons were therefore also very frequently infected [53, 54], in some cases it was even reported that negative RRR and ARR had been calculated, i.e. vaccination in certain age groups led to more illnesses compared to unvaccinated persons [27], which could be explained by tolerance to spike proteins with repeated vaccination [81], i.e. the immune system no longer reacts to the spike proteins with repeated exposure. Against the background of these reports and the current data, it can therefore be considered indisputable that vaccinated people are infected more frequently and also fall ill more often. It can also be said that the novel coronavirus vaccines do not prevent transmission. So no effectiveness here either [26, 304]. But doesn't the vaccination at least prevent severe courses and long-term consequences? No. No significant effectiveness here either [305]. Data from the British statistics authority ONS show that vaccinated people die more frequently from corona than unvaccinated people [20]; more precisely, the data from the UK suggest that, in summary, vaccination increases the risk of dying from corona [50]. The novel corona vaccines only protect against severe courses for about six months [31], after which the vaccination leads to a worsened immune response [32, 33, 34, 35]. Vaccinated people were very often hospitalized despite vaccination [36], and they also suffered more severely from the consequences of the infection than unvaccinated people [38], although it should be mentioned in this context that Long Covid is mainly favoured by having severe symptoms during a corona infection [38], i.e. vaccinated people may also be even more susceptible to Long Covid [39, 40].

In this context, one must agree with the MWGFD, which had stated that a separation into Long Covid and Long Vax is hardly possible due to a lack of data, as other doctors from Germany had already expressed [398, 407, 408]. In this context, the scientists also stated that the effects of the spike proteins from the vaccination were worse than those of the spike proteins of the normal virus [408]. If this is indeed the case, then the vaccination would not have been beneficial in this respect. The fact is that Pfizer is currently on trial in the USA because of false data on the efficacy of the vaccines [427].

Whether the lack of protection against infection/transmission/severe courses/long-term consequences, as stated by the MWGFD, is due to the use of mRNA technology against rapidly mutating respiratory viruses and/or that the technology used may not be suitable for the target virus cannot be examined in detail due to a lack of data. The fact is, however, that the vaccination is not significantly effective with regard to the above-mentioned points and therefore does not represent an important discovery in the field of physiology or medicine.

In the actual fact check, the MWGFD picked out four points. It is not clear why these points in particular were selected, but it would be something that would have to be explained if one wanted to proceed in a scientifically correct manner. The MWGFD should have explained the methodology behind the narrowing down. Since this was not done, the only option is to check the points actually assessed by the MWGFD.

The Nobel Prize Committee acknowledges Karikó and Weissman's discovery of base-modified DNA, which increased protein production and reduced inflammatory reactions, thus paving the way for clinical application. The MWGFD notes that the injections are not natural mRNA, but genetically modified modRNA, which can damage the cells or lead to their destruction through the increased production of spike proteins. Weissman himself pointed this out. According to the MWGFD, Karikó and Weissman also made the technology more dangerous and did not enable clinical applicability. The fact that Weissman himself had pointed out the potential dangers of modRNA is definitely correct [12]. It is difficult to say whether the work of the two scientists had made the technology more dangerous, as the technology had not previously been used on human patients. Therefore, it can only be examined whether the novel corona vaccines currently in use, in which this technology is used, are safe, e.g. also in comparison to other vaccines. Insofar as the committee states that serious side effects are exceptionally rare with the newly approved mRNA vaccines and without long-term consequences, the MWGFD considers this statement to be false. There are a large number of officially reported side effects, one could even speak of a separate clinical picture "spikeopathy"; in addition, there has been a demonstrable excess mortality since the start of the vaccination campaign. This could in any case be seen as a long-term consequence. The claim that the mRNA only remains in the body for a short time is untenable. After all, Karikó and Weissman's conversion of mRNA into modRNA helped the RNA to achieve its current longevity. The spike protein continues to circulate in the blood for up to 187 days after vaccination [43]; further measurements would have to be carried out to test for a longer retention time. The protein can also trigger a variety of inflammatory reactions [44]. The modRNA, which is indeed longer-lived as stated by the MWGFD [45, 48], was detected in the body long after injection, in certain tissues even up to eight weeks [46, 47]. This exceeds the retention time of natural mRNA after infection [49]. The MWGFD's statement is therefore correct: the vaccines contain modRNA, which is longer-lived than natural mRNA, and the spike protein also remains in the body for a long time and can cause dangerous inflammation. These statements are further substantiated by the large number of reported side effects; there are now over 1000 (!) verified scientific studies reporting severe side effects of various kinds as well as numerous media reports and official data [51, 52, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 1112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 17, 128, 129, 130 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155,156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 289, 290, 295, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406]. The novel corona vaccines cause more side effects than other vaccines [291, 292, 293, 294]. A certain number of unreported cases must also be assumed for reports of side effects [296]. Vaccinated people also generally have poorer health than unvaccinated people [42].

Regarding the long-term consequences of myocarditis or pericarditis, it can be said that myocarditis and pericarditis do not always resolve without long-term consequences, as claimed by the committee according to the transcript of the MWGFD, because the heart tissue often scars in connection with inflammation [64, 65, 66], and an increase in myocardial infarction has also been observed [399, 403]. In addition, some of the heart diseases are initially asymptomatic, so there is also a risk of unreported cases [ 425]. Comirnaty's product information had to be supplemented in August 2023 to state that myocarditis and pericarditis had occurred, although in most cases people had recovered; however, deaths had also occurred [59]. The committee also states that pericarditis and myocarditis occur much more frequently after infection than after vaccination. In this regard, the MWGFD states that the link between myocarditis and long Covid has not been proven by studies. Our research shows that, according to an Israeli study, there is no increase in myocarditis or pericarditis after a coronavirus infection [68]. According to one study, the injections also only protected against Long Covid in 20 % of cases and could even cause it in some cases (see above). The fact that myocarditis is only a very rare side effect of vaccination is also scientifically disputed. A large number of studies show an increase in myocarditis after the start of the vaccination campaign or show correlations with the vaccination or at least corresponding abnormalities [35, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97]. Peri- and myocarditis therefore occur more frequently after vaccination and often lead to long-term consequences, even though the committee did not consider this to be sufficiently negative to not award the prize.

With regard to excess mortality, which the MWGFD sees as an important indicator of side effects and assesses as a direct effect of the vaccination campaign, it can be said that it is indeed present (regardless of the cause). In the graph shown by the MWGFD in the fact check, it can be seen that in the years 2021 and 2022, in which there were fewer corona deaths than in 2020, a high excess mortality was nevertheless measurable [2, 208, 309]. The above-mentioned increased incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccinated people most likely also contributes to this [67]. There is a similar number of indications and evidence regarding a link between corona vaccination and excess mortality as for the side effects without fatalities [35, 93, 94, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 288, 298, 306, 307, 308, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423].

In 20 countries, there was an increase in excess mortality after vaccination [286, 287], so that in view of the side effects and deaths that were most likely caused by the vaccination, a connection is very likely and can therefore hardly be called an important discovery for humanity, at most in a negative sense: The effect of vaccines on humanity is very large, but it is negative.

Fig. 2: Excess mortality and possible connection with vaccination (source: https://www.mwgfd.org/2023/11/faktencheck-zur-medizin-nobelpreisverleihung-2023/).

According to the committee, the parallel clinical trials for the vaccines did not result in any loss of safety. The MWGFD notes that the parallelization and shortening of preclinical and clinical studies from ten years to approximately one year and the failure to compensate for deficits identified during the emergency approval - in addition to the redefinition of genetically modified pharmaceuticals as "vaccines" - had certainly led to safety losses, as Pfizer itself had stipulated in the contract: efficacy, adverse effects and long-term effects are currently unknown [2, 4]. Incidentally, the emergency authorization or conditional authorization was converted into a regular authorization without further testing [100, 101] and, according to the MWGFD, without complying with the usual deadlines. The MWGFD cited two sources for the non-compliance with the deadlines; one of the links leads to a paywall, under the other the cited article was deleted [98, 99]. According to the MWGFD, parallelization prevents evidence-based building on previous phases in the subsequent phases, which distorts the results and makes observations of long-term effects impossible. This can be considered indisputable, as long-term observation is not possible in just one year and findings from an earlier phase cannot of course be used in a later phase if both phases run simultaneously, as scientific evaluations are planned in advance and then not changed in the course of the project. This alone would be a methodological shortcoming. In addition, safety tests have been reduced in the context of conditional approvals or emergency approvals and, in the case of the corona vaccination, were carried out very hastily [102], although the regulations were also relaxed in 2019 shortly before the "pandemic" [103] and automatic approval for the boosters is now planned [105]. In general, there were inconsistencies in the Pfizer approval study [310, 311]. The declaration of the novel corona vaccines as vaccines, although they could just as easily have been declared as gene therapy products, also represents a safety shortcoming, as the testing requirements for gene therapy products are much stricter than those for vaccines [311]. The committee also fails to mention that the spike proteins in the vaccine pose safety risks because, according to the MWGFD, it is no longer possible to influence how much spike protein is produced after vaccination. There are demonstrably large fluctuations here, as the MWGFD correctly notes [312]. Compliance with the pharmacological principle of "the dose makes the poison" can therefore no longer be guaranteed here - another safety risk. The bottom line is that there is definitely a massive loss of safety.

In response to the committee's statement that the vaccines have saved millions of lives and that serological reactions have been short-lived (which is not true, see above comments on the spike protein) with considerable protection through booster vaccinations, the MWGFD replies that the estimates of lives saved are flawed due to methodological shortcomings, that the protection is only short-lived and that the benefit-harm ratio is negative in view of other possible measures and the low risk for most people. We can only agree with this. See above for the duration of protection and the high probability of numerous side effects, including deaths. There is also evidence that infections are not prevented, but that there are mass vaccination breakthroughs [313, 314, 334, 383]. 

If you want to check whether the vaccines have saved lives, you can do this using the ARR mentioned above or by comparing corona deaths with vaccination deaths. Caution is advised here, because it may not be possible to exclude the deaths from the measures from this calculation. They can distort the result in both groups, because the corona measures had led to an increased health burden for the population and thus also to more deaths, especially via masks [318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327] and lockdowns [325, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 428]. The lockdowns were criticized in this regard quite early on in the pandemic  [335, 369, 370]. 

However, the data from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), for example, consists of data material in which all insured persons had been exposed not only to the vaccinations but also to the other measures [307, 308], so that at least here it is clear that vaccinated persons have a higher risk of death than unvaccinated persons. In the following, the danger of the novel coronavirus and thus the possibly increased mortality risk for the population due to the virus will first be examined in order to then address whether human lives may have been saved by the novel corona vaccines.

The question "Yes, how bad was it?" can be answered by comparing the case fatality rate (CFR) or infection fatality rate (IFR) of corona with that of other respiratory diseases. The comparison with influenza is actually roughly undecided [316]. The IFR is similarly high for both diseases or even lower for corona in younger age groups [336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341], and viruses with an IFR like that of influenza are to be classified as moderately dangerous [371]. A comparison of the number of influenza deaths with the number of coronavirus deaths shows that around 25,100 people died from influenza in the 2017/18 influenza season [392], and since an influenza season usually lasts around four months, that is just over 6,000 deaths per month [393]. As of March 2023, just over 160,000 people have died from corona, as of now 180,109 [395]. Depending on which figure is used as a basis, the 20000 deaths in nine months in 2023 are in any case less than 6000 per month. If we calculate with around 170000 from March 2020 to March 2023, this means that in the 46 months in which corona deaths occurred in Germany according to worldometers (fortunately, the number was not high in summer 2020), there were only around 3700 deaths per month; the flu was therefore higher. In addition, the number of corona deaths was further increased by misguided measures. In addition to the masks and lockdowns mentioned above, these include other procedures that in retrospect turned out to be harmful: contraindicated ventilation, incorrectly dosed or incorrectly not prescribed hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), prohibition of other treatment options [208, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 406]. HCQ could have been quite effective alongside other drugs; however, the use of all these options was severely restricted, i.e. their use was banned or they were simply not prescribed [348, 349], and this too has caused numerous corona deaths [342]. It may also not have been a good idea to use freshly vaccinated staff on elderly, vulnerable people, as viral material can always be shed after vaccination [298, 302, 334, 372, 373, 374, 375, 375, 376, 377, 378]; in addition, elderly people in Germany were vaccinated first; this could also have driven up the number of corona deaths [424]. The MWGFD also notes that there was no overcrowding of intensive care beds in Germany in 2020. This is consistent with other sources [389, 390].

Now that it is clear that the virus was not overly dangerous, even compared to other respiratory infections such as influenza, and that the number of corona deaths was influenced or increased by various factors that do not require vaccines to contain them, another question needs to be clarified to prove that the vaccination saved lives: Where have lives been saved by vaccination, or where have deaths increased after vaccination?

Although the CFR of circulating coronaviruses had fallen steadily since the start of the pandemic [350], mortality increased in various countries as described above. Excess mortality in the Philippines had risen sharply in direct temporal relation to the start of the vaccination campaign [351]. According to worldometers** [380], the Philippines had 66813 corona deaths with 4135345 corona infections; there were still many corona deaths long after the start of the vaccination campaign [381]. The country had an excess mortality rate of 26,000 in 2021 [351], which far exceeds the number of corona deaths. In New Zealand, too, mortality had increased in temporal relation to the start of the vaccination campaign [352, 418]; in other countries there had been a temporal relationship between the number of vaccinations and health problems [382]. Current and older projections on vaccination deaths speak of 150,000 vaccination deaths in the USA in 2021 [423] and currently around 29,000,000 [415, 417]; worldwide, there is even talk of up to 17 million vaccination deaths [411, 412]. It should be borne in mind that there were only just under 7 million coronavirus deaths worldwide, a large proportion of them before the start of national vaccination campaigns worldwide [380]. Based on data on the risk of getting sick from the vaccination or from a corona infection, the vaccination performs worse in many age groups [391]. If we look at the countries with a similar population to Germany (Germany, Turkey and Iran all have between 83 and 87 million inhabitants [380]) and compare the number of corona deaths [384] with the number of vaccine doses administered [385], it can be seen that Germany has the highest death rate (see Fig. Fig. 3 and 4), even though Iran was subject to economic sanctions at the outbreak of the pandemic, which had significantly impaired health care in the country [386, 387, 388], and even though the German population is the smallest of all three countries [380]. Vaccination was therefore of little help here. 

Fig. 3: Corona score in comparison (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths)

Fig. 4: Comparison of vaccine doses administered (source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations)

In addition, according to the MWGFD, the wave of infections was already declining at the start of the vaccination campaign in December 2021, which was due to the fact that spring began a little later. According to the MWGFD, excess mortality in Germany then set in from April, and from August the delta variant was already predominantly circulating, against which the vaccines were not effective, and according to other sources, vaccines adapted to new mutations are not always effective anyway [426]. These statements by the MWGFD can be verified on the basis of sources (see Fig. 5, 6, 7; in Germany exemplarily for the federal state of Hesse) [396, 397]. In this context, it is striking that coronaviruses were also active in summer after the start of the vaccination campaign in Germany, although this is otherwise atypical for this virus [317]. The fact that lives were saved in the summer months, which are actually rather harmless with regard to coronaviruses, and that the vaccination caused the wave of infections in summer 2021 in the first place, is therefore a somewhat daring claim against this background.

Fig. 5: Corona deaths in Germany (Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/)

Fig. 6: Daily new infections in Germany (source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/)

Fig. 7: Excess mortality in Germany (Source: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality)

So even though the virus was relatively harmless compared to other viruses, a relatively large number of people died due to misguided measures. However, this does not mean that vaccination was necessary to save them; rather, the measures - if at all - should have been appropriately evidence-based, above all the lockdowns and vaccinations, which were often not evidence-based and made the situation even worse (see above) [369, 370410, 428, 429].

But why then are there repeated claims that the novel coronavirus vaccines would and/or have saved human lives? Many studies that postulate a saving of human lives are merely model extrapolations, but not actual measurement results [353, 354, 355]. Another study that claimed this was funded by the BMGF; here, too, the model calculations were most likely flawed and were sharply criticized by other scientists [356, 376, 430]. Excess mortality continued to rise significantly even after 2020, i.e. after corona; at the same time, vaccinations had no positive effect on mortality in 17 countries [357]. An analysis also shows that excess mortality in Germany would not have been even higher without the vaccinations [307], and other risk-benefit analyses are also negative [358, 359, 360, 361, 362]. Given the massive side effects of vaccination, it therefore seems more than questionable that the vaccination really did save lives on balance [363, 364, 365] and should be investigated further [366, 367, 368]. 

The MWGFD comments as follows on the committee's assertion that vaccine components cannot be integrated into the cell nucleus and DNA: Integration is indeed possible because modRNA can be reverse transcribed into DNA and integrated into the genome even without reverse transcriptase; this has already been demonstrated in a study [55], as has contamination of vaccine doses by bacterial plasmid DNA [56, 57, 58]. So here too, the committee is wrong: the new technology is by no means harmless.

At the end of the fact check, the MWGFD claims in its conclusion that the award would have massively damaged trust in independent science. No one can currently verify this, as the award ceremony only took place in October and there have been no new survey results on trust in science since then. This statement by the MWGFD is therefore not verifiable and cannot be substantiated.

The committee had also ignored scientific facts and demonstrated a lack of understanding of evidence-based medicine. This is correct. The committee has, as correctly stated by the MWGFD, ignored the above facts. Important publications on evidence-based findings in relation to the novel corona vaccines were therefore disregarded in the decision to award the prize. It is not possible to say whether there is a lack of understanding here; however, even in our assessment, the committee did not carry out a comprehensive, conscientious review of evidence-based literature to a sufficient extent. This circumstance was also noted by others with regard to the entire approach to the pandemic worldwide; plausibility was confused with evidence-based data [410].

Furthermore, the MWGFD reveals conflicts of interest between various manufacturers of mRNA vaccines and the Karolinska Institute, which is responsible for awarding the prize. The Nobel Prize Committee was already suspected of corruption in 2008, and Moderna has been cooperating with the Institute for some time and was a co-sponsor of this year's prize [62], while Karikó was Vice President at BioNTech from 2013 to 2022 [60, 61] and Weissman was a working group leader at the former head of the US National Institute of Health (NIH), who had a positive attitude towards vaccination [63]. 

The MWGFD then raises the question of how to assess whether it really was the most important discovery in the field of medicine and defines the extent to which the technology has helped humanity as an evaluation criterion. If we want to base this on the effectiveness already discussed above, as well as on the side effects and lives saved, there is only one conclusion: No, it has not. The question would therefore have to be answered in the negative.

With all due respect to the achievements of the two scientists honored, the MWGFD is right. The award should not be made for marketing or nudging reasons, nor has the new technology helped mankind in the field of medicine.  Ignoring scientific facts, making unprovable claims - this is the case, even with regard to the findings of evidence-based medicine. Even if the damage to trust in science cannot be verified: The award ceremony in October last year was unjustifiedThe bottom line is that the MWGFD is right. Many thanks to our colleagues for this important statement, applause is definitely in order here, but probably more for the MWGFD.

*All gender identities are always meant.

**The data at worldometers is still updated, but some states may have neglected this from mid-2021.