厨房里酿出的疫苗啤酒：一口下去，是免疫还是风险？
He made beer that’s also a vaccine. Now controversy is brewing
译文简介
本文讲述一名病毒学家尝试以酵母啤酒形式递送疫苗的争议性探索。
该做法在动物和自我实验中显示潜力，但绕开传统审批流程引发安全、伦理与公众信任担忧。
正文翻译
He made beer that’s also a vaccine. Now controversy is brewing
厨房里酿出的疫苗啤酒：一口下去，是免疫还是风险？
Chris Buck stands barefoot in his kitchen holding a glass bottle of unfiltered Lithuanian farmhouse ale. He swirls the bottle gently to stir up a fingerbreadth blanket of yeast and pours the turbulent beer into a glass mug.
Buck raises the mug and sips. “Cloudy beer. Delightful!”
克里斯·巴克赤脚站在厨房里，手里拿着一瓶未经过滤的立陶宛乡村艾尔啤酒。他轻轻旋转酒瓶，让瓶底约一指厚的酵母沉淀翻腾起来，然后把这杯浑浊的啤酒倒进玻璃啤酒杯中。
巴克举起杯子啜了一口，说道：“浑浊的啤酒，真美妙！”
He has just consumed what may be the world’s first vaccine delivered in a beer. It could be the first small sip toward making vaccines more palatable and accessible to people around the world. Or it could fuel concerns about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Or the idea may go nowhere. No matter the outcome, the story of Buck’s unconventional approach illustrates the legal, ethical, moral, scientific and social challenges involved in developing potentially lifesaving vaccines.
他刚刚喝下的，可能是世界上第一种以啤酒为载体递送的疫苗。
这也许是让疫苗变得更容易被全球人群接受、更容易获得的第一小口。
也可能，它会加剧人们对疫苗安全性和有效性的担忧。
或者，这个想法最终可能不了了之。
无论结果如何，巴克这种非常规做法的故事，生动展现了在研发潜在救命疫苗过程中所面临的法律、伦理、道德、科学与社会层面的重重挑战。
Buck isn’t just a home brewer dabbling in drug-making. He is a virologist at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he studies polyomaviruses, which have been lixed to various cancers and to serious health problems for people with weakened immune systems. He discovered four of the 13 polyomaviruses known to infect humans.
巴克并不只是一个“玩票式”涉足制药的家庭酿酒师。
他是马里兰州贝塞斯达国家癌症研究所的一名病毒学家，研究对象是多瘤病毒——这种病毒与多种癌症以及免疫功能低下人群的严重健康问题相关。他发现了目前已知可感染人类的13种多瘤病毒中的4种。
The vaccine beer experiment grew out of research Buck and colleagues have been doing to develop a traditional vaccine against polyomavirus. But Buck’s experimental sips of vaccine beer are unsanctioned by his employer. A research ethics committee at the National Institutes of Health told Buck he couldn’t experiment on himself by drinking the beer.
啤酒疫苗实验源于巴克及其同事为研发传统多瘤病毒疫苗所开展的研究。
但巴克自行试饮疫苗啤酒的行为，并未获得其所在机构的批准。美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的研究伦理委员会明确告知他，不得通过饮用该啤酒对自己进行实验。
Buck says the committee has the right to determine what he can and can’t do at work but can’t govern what he does in his private life. So today he is Chef Gusteau, the founder and sole employee of Gusteau Research Corporation, a nonprofit organization Buck established so he could make and drink his vaccine beer as a private citizen. His company’s name was inspired by the chef in the film Ratatouille, Auguste Gusteau, whose motto is “Anyone can cook.”
巴克表示，委员会有权决定他在工作中可以做什么、不可以做什么，但无权干涉他的私人生活。
因此，这一天他成了“古斯托大厨”——古斯托研究公司的创始人兼唯一员工。这是一家由巴克创立的非营利组织，目的是让他能够以私人公民身份制作并饮用他的疫苗啤酒。
公司的名称灵感来自电影《料理鼠王》中的厨师奥古斯特·古斯托，他的座右铭是：“人人都能做饭。”
Buck’s body made antibodies against several types of the virus after drinking the beer and he suffered no ill effects, he and his brother Andrew Buck reported December 17 at the data sharing platform Zenodo.org, along with colleagues from NIH and Vilnius University in Lithuania. Andrew and other family members have also consumed the beer with no ill effects, he says. The Buck brothers posted a method for making vaccine beer December 17 at Zenodo.org. Chris Buck announced both publications in his blog Viruses Must Die on the online publishing platform Substack, but neither has been peer-reviewed by other scientists.
巴克与其兄弟安德鲁·巴克，以及来自美国国立卫生研究院和立陶宛维尔纽斯大学的合作者，于12月17日在数据共享平台 Zenodo.org 报告称：巴克在饮用该啤酒后，体内产生了针对多种病毒类型的抗体，且未出现不良反应。
巴克还表示，安德鲁及其他家庭成员也饮用了这种啤酒，同样没有出现不良反应。
同日，巴克兄弟还在 Zenodo.org 上公开发布了疫苗啤酒的制作方法。
克里斯·巴克在在线写作平台 Substack 上的博客《病毒必须死》中宣布了这两项发布，但这两份成果均尚未经过其他科学家的同行评审。
A second ethics committee at the NIH obxted to Buck posting the manuscxts to the preprint server bioRxiv.org because of the self-experiment. Buck wrote a rebuttal to the committee’s comments but was loathe to wait for its blessing before sharing the data. “The bureaucracy is inhibiting the science, and that’s unacceptable to me,” he says. “One week of people dying from not knowing about this is not trivial.”
美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的第二个伦理委员会也因巴克进行了自我实验，而反对他将手稿发布到预印本平台 bioRxiv.org。巴克就委员会的意见提交了书面回应，但他不愿等待委员会批准后才分享数据。
他说：“官僚体系正在阻碍科学进展，这对我来说不可接受。因为不知道这件事，一周内就可能有人因此丧命，这绝不是小事。”
Buck’s unconventional approach has also sparked concerns among other experts about the safety and efficacy of the largely untested vaccine beer. While he has promising data in mice that the vaccine works, he has so far reported antibody results in humans from his own sips of the brew. Normally, vaccines are tested in much larger groups of people to see how well they work and whether they trigger any unanticipated side effects. This is especially important for polyomavirus vaccines, because one of the desired uses is to protect people who are about to get organ transplants. The immune-suppressing drugs these patients must take can leave them vulnerable to harm from polyomaviruses.
巴克的非常规做法，也引发了其他专家对这种几乎未经充分测试的疫苗啤酒在安全性和有效性方面的担忧。尽管他在小鼠实验中获得了显示疫苗有效的初步数据，但迄今为止，他在人类身上报告的抗体结果，仅来自自己饮用啤酒后的反应。
通常，疫苗需要在更大规模的人群中进行测试，以评估其效果，并观察是否会引发任何意料之外的副作用。
这对多瘤病毒疫苗尤为关键，因为其潜在用途之一，是保护即将接受器官移植的患者。这些患者必须服用抑制免疫系统的药物，因此更容易受到多瘤病毒的伤害。
Michael Imperiale, a virologist and emeritus professor at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, first saw Buck present his idea at a scientific conference in Italy in June. The beer approach disturbed him. “We can’t draw conclusions based on testing this on two people,” he says, referring to Buck and his brother. It’s also not clear which possible side effects Buck was monitoring for. Vaccines for vulnerable transplant patients should go through rigorous safety and efficacy testing, he says. “I raised a concern with him that I didn’t think it was a good idea to be sidestepping that process.”
密歇根大学安娜堡分校医学院名誉教授、病毒学家迈克尔·因佩里亚莱今年6月在意大利的一次科学会议上，首次听到巴克介绍这一想法。他对“啤酒疫苗”的做法感到不安。
他说：“仅凭在两个人身上进行测试，我们无法得出任何结论。”这里指的是巴克本人及其兄弟。
他还指出，目前并不清楚巴克究竟监测了哪些潜在副作用。针对易受影响的器官移植患者开发的疫苗，必须经过严格的安全性和有效性测试。
“我曾向他表达过担忧，我认为绕过这一正规流程并不是一个好主意。”
Other critics warn that Buck’s unconventional approach could fuel antivaccine sentiments. Arthur Caplan, who until recently headed medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, is skeptical that a vaccine beer will ever make it beyond Buck’s kitchen.
其他批评者警告说，巴克的非传统做法可能会助长反疫苗情绪。直到最近还担任纽约大学格罗斯曼医学院医学伦理主管的亚瑟·卡普兰，对疫苗啤酒能否走出巴克的厨房持怀疑态度。
“This is maybe the worst imaginable time to roll out something that you put on a Substack about how to get vaccinated,” he says. Many people won’t be interested because of antivaccine rhetoric. Beer companies may fear that having a vaccine beer on the market could sully the integrity of their brands. And Buck faces potential backlash from “a national administration that is entirely hostile to vaccines,” Caplan says. “This is not the place for do-it-yourself.”
“现在或许是发布‘如何接种疫苗’这类内容的最糟糕时机，”他说。许多人因反疫苗言论而对其不感兴趣。啤酒公司也可能担心，市场上出现“疫苗啤酒”会损害自身品牌形象。卡普兰还指出，巴克可能会遭遇来自“一个对疫苗完全持敌意的国家政府”的反弹。“这不是适合搞‘自己动手’的领域。”
But the project does have supporters who say it could instead calm vaccine fears by allowing everyday people to control the process. Other researchers are on the fence, believing that an oral vaccine against polyomavirus is a good idea but questioning whether Buck is going about introducing such a vaccine correctly.
不过，这个项目也确实拥有支持者，他们认为，通过让普通人掌控整个过程，反而可能缓解人们对疫苗的恐惧。
也有研究人员持观望态度：他们认为针对多瘤病毒的口服疫苗理念本身是可取的，但质疑巴克是否以恰当的方式推广这种疫苗。
“I’m of two minds on this,” says Bryce Chackerian, a virologist at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque. Sometimes the government makes choices about who can take a vaccine based on what age you are or whether you have preexisting health conditions, he notes. “I’m sympathetic to Chris’s frustration with those sorts of constraints on vaccine uptake.”
“我对这件事的看法比较复杂，”新墨西哥大学阿尔伯克基分校健康科学中心的病毒学家布莱斯·查克里安（Bryce Chackerian）说。他指出，政府有时会根据年龄或是否存在基础疾病，决定哪些人可以接种疫苗。
“我能理解克里斯对这类限制疫苗接种条件的挫败感。”
Chackerian adds that he personally has no safety concerns about this particular type of vaccine. Still, he says, “I believe in our system of testing vaccines. I think it’s really important for making sure that we have safe products that go into people and that we don’t undermine the public trust in vaccines.” He calls Buck’s approach “a bold choice by him, but interesting and, I would say, not out of character.”
查克里安还补充说，他个人对这种特定类型的疫苗并无安全方面的担忧。不过他表示：
“我相信我们现有的疫苗测试体系。我认为这对确保进入人体的产品是安全的、同时避免破坏公众对疫苗的信任，至关重要。”
他评价巴克的做法是：“这是一个大胆的选择，既有趣，也可以说，并不出人意料。”
The painful dangers of polyomaviruses
多瘤病毒带来的痛苦危险
Buck and his NCI colleagues have been working for more than 15 years to develop an injectable polyomavirus vaccine. Polyomaviruses are icosahedrons (think of 20-sided dice) with surface proteins that have a particular repeating pattern. The immune system views this pattern as “an innate danger signal,” Buck says. That makes them attractive vaccine candidates.
巴克和他在美国国家癌症研究所（NCI）的同事，已经投入超过15年时间，致力于开发一种可注射的多瘤病毒疫苗。多瘤病毒呈二十面体结构（可以想象成20面的骰子），其表面蛋白具有特定的重复排列模式。巴克说，免疫系统会将这种模式视为一种“先天性的危险信号”，这也使多瘤病毒成为颇具吸引力的疫苗候选对象。
Polyomaviruses are everywhere and infect many people, causing serious problems for some but lying dormant in most humans. Up to 91 percent of people are infected with BK polyomaviruses by the time they turn 9 years old. BK is the species of polyomavirus that Buck is developing his vaccine against. Polyoma means “many tumors,” and the viruses are suspected to be involved in bladder cancers. Some evidence suggests these viruses also cause interstitial cystitis, a painful bladder condition in which people have a frequent or urgent need to pee. It affects about 1 to 3 percent of people in the United States.
多瘤病毒无处不在，感染了大量人群：对部分人来说会引发严重问题，但在大多数人体内则处于潜伏状态。到9岁时，多达91%的人已经感染过BK多瘤病毒。BK正是巴克目前研发疫苗所针对的多瘤病毒类型。“Polyoma”一词意为“多肿瘤”，这种病毒被怀疑与膀胱癌有关。一些证据还表明，多瘤病毒可能导致间质性膀胱炎——一种疼痛明显的膀胱疾病，患者会频繁或急迫地想要排尿。该疾病在美国的发病率约为1%至3%。
In the blog post announcing the new results, Buck recounts a visit to a pediatric hospital where he learned that children with BK hemorrhagic cystitis screamed so loudly from bladder pain that the hospital had to install soundproofing. “There are screaming children at the back of my mind after that experience,” he says.
在一篇公布最新研究结果的博客文章中，巴克回忆了他曾走访一家儿科医院的经历。在那里，他得知患有BK出血性膀胱炎的儿童因剧烈的膀胱疼痛而尖叫不止，声音之大甚至迫使医院加装隔音设施。“那次经历之后，我脑海中一直挥之不去的是那些尖叫的孩子，”他说。
In addition, organ transplant recipients may suffer organ damage from polyomaviruses. That happens because transplant recipients take immune-suppressing drugs given to prevent rejection of the donated organ. Kidney transplant recipients may lose the organ because their weakened immune systems allow dormant BK polyomavirus in the donor kidney to reawaken and cause damage.
此外，器官移植受者也可能因多瘤病毒而遭受器官损伤。这是因为移植患者需要服用免疫抑制药物，以防止身体排斥移植器官。对肾移植患者而言，免疫系统被削弱后，供体肾脏中原本潜伏的BK多瘤病毒可能被重新激活，从而造成损伤，甚至导致移植肾丧失。
Other transplant patients can develop a brain disease caused by BK’s cousin JC polyomavirus. But transplant patients who have high levels of antibodies against polyomaviruses prior to surgery are often protected from such complications. Buck says transplant surgeons practically shake him by the shoulders to demand polyomavirus vaccines for their patients.
其他移植患者还可能因 BK 的“表亲”——JC 多瘤病毒——而患上脑部疾病。但在手术前体内多瘤病毒抗体水平较高的移植患者，通常能够避免这类并发症。巴克说，移植外科医生几乎会抓着他的肩膀，强烈要求为患者提供多瘤病毒疫苗。
Those patients are part of what spurred Buck’s work — and his own experiences drove him to try and make it accessible outside the typical government approval process.
正是这些患者，成为推动巴克继续研究的重要原因之一——而他自身的经历，也促使他试图在传统的政府审批流程之外，让这种疫苗变得更容易获得。
Buck often recounts how a friend was denied the vaccine for human papilloma virus, or HPV, because he was an adult man at a time when vaccine access was limited to adolescent girls. The friend later died of head and neck cancer sparked by that virus. Buck says that withholding vaccines from people who want them is morally equivalent to the evils of the Tuskegee experiment, a deeply racist and unethical program in which Black men with syphilis were denied penicillin so scientists could observe the effects of not treating the disease.
巴克经常提起一位朋友的经历：由于当时人乳头瘤病毒（HPV）疫苗的接种对象仅限于青少女，这位成年男性朋友被拒绝接种。后来，他因该病毒引发的头颈癌去世。巴克认为，拒绝向希望接种疫苗的人提供疫苗，在道德层面上等同于塔斯基吉实验的恶行——那是一项充满种族歧视且极不道德的研究项目，研究人员故意不给患梅毒的黑人男性使用青霉素，只为观察疾病在未经治疗情况下的发展。
Ultimately, he hopes to win official approval for the yeast-based vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But, he writes in the blog post, “there’s a glacial wall of license-wrangling, technical barriers, and impenetrable regulatory bureaucracy between me and the desperate families literally screaming for my help.”
最终，巴克仍希望获得美国食品药品监督管理局对这种酵母基疫苗的正式批准。但他在博客中写道：“在我与那些因急切寻求帮助而几乎在尖叫的家庭之间，横亘着一堵冰川般的高墙——由许可纠纷、技术障碍以及难以穿透的监管官僚体系构成。”
The rise of a yeast-based vaccine
酵母疫苗的兴起
Buck’s NCI team has been working with a vaccine maker in India that holds the license to a traditional, injectable version of a polyomavirus vaccine that’s being tested in animals. That vaccine consists of BK polyomavirus’ outer shell protein, VP1, which is made in insect cells and then purified to strip out all but the viral proteins. These proteins naturally assemble into empty viruslike particles. When injected, the purified viruslike particles cause antibody levels in rhesus monkeys to shoot up well beyond a level that may protect against infection, the researchers reported in Vaccine in 2023. The protective response lasted for the length of the study; about two years.
巴克在美国国家癌症研究所（NCI）的团队一直与一家印度疫苗制造商合作，该公司拥有一种传统、可注射的多瘤病毒疫苗的许可，这种疫苗目前正在动物中进行测试。该疫苗由 BK 多瘤病毒的外壳蛋白 VP1 构成，这种蛋白在昆虫细胞中制备，随后经过纯化，去除除病毒蛋白之外的所有成分。这些蛋白会自然组装成空的类病毒颗粒。研究人员在 2023 年发表于《Vaccine》期刊的论文中报告称，注射这种纯化后的类病毒颗粒后，恒河猴体内的抗体水平会大幅上升，远高于可能具有保护作用的水平。这种保护性免疫反应在整个研究期间持续存在，约为两年。
The results were so encouraging that Buck wondered if the vaccine could be delivered in other ways. And he wondered if it was really necessary to purify viruslike particles at all. For his virus factories, Buck decided to use Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the baker’s and brewer’s yeast that leaven bread and ferment wines, many beers, chocolate and coffee.
这些结果令人振奋，以至于巴克开始思考疫苗是否可以通过其他方式递送。他也开始质疑，是否真的有必要对类病毒颗粒进行纯化。作为“病毒工厂”，巴克决定使用酿酒与烘焙中常见的酵母——酿酒酵母，这种酵母用于发面并发酵葡萄酒、许多种啤酒，以及巧克力和咖啡。
In his lab at NCI, his team sprayed ground-up yeast that make empty polyomavirus-like particles in mice’s noses, scratched it into their skin and fed it to them. Squirting particles up mice’s noses worked, though not as well as injecting purified particles did. Scratching the skin was also effective, Buck and colleagues report in their December papers. But feeding mice ground-up dead yeast didn’t work at all.
在 NCI 的实验室中，他的团队将能够产生空类多瘤病毒颗粒的酵母研磨后，分别喷入小鼠鼻腔、涂抹并划破皮肤，或喂食给小鼠。结果显示，将颗粒喷入小鼠鼻腔是有效的，尽管效果不如注射纯化颗粒；通过皮肤划痕递送同样有效，巴克及其同事在 12 月发表的论文中报告称。但将研磨后的死酵母直接喂给小鼠则完全无效。
That’s not a surprise, Chackerian says. Oral vaccines against rotavirus, cholera and polio exist, so it’s a viable strategy. But in this case, the viruslike particles probably “just fall apart” in the acidic environment of the stomach, Chackerian says. Another challenge with developing oral vaccines is that many viral particles don’t interact with cells in the intestine. Viruses like polio naturally infect intestinal cells, so it’s no problem for weakened viruses in the oral polio vaccine to invade intestinal cells and prompt the immune system to erect defenses. Many scientists, including Buck, used to think oral vaccines work only if they consist of live, weakened viruses or bacteria that can infect intestinal cells.
查克里安表示，这一结果并不令人意外。针对轮状病毒、霍乱和脊髓灰质炎的口服疫苗已经存在，因此这一策略本身是可行的。但在这一案例中，类病毒颗粒很可能在胃部的酸性环境中“直接解体”。开发口服疫苗的另一项挑战在于，许多病毒颗粒无法与肠道细胞发生相互作用。像脊髓灰质炎病毒这样的病原体本就会自然感染肠道细胞，因此口服脊灰疫苗中的减毒病毒能够顺利侵入肠道细胞，并激活免疫系统的防御反应。过去，包括巴克在内的许多科学家都认为，口服疫苗只有在由能够感染肠道细胞的活的减毒病毒或细菌构成时才会有效。
Polyomaviruses are primarily found in the urinary tract. And Buck’s group wasn’t making a live virus. The yeast produce empty viral shells that can’t establish infection. S. cerevisiae yeast also do not cause infections in people, so Buck didn’t expect an oral polyomavirus vaccine to work.
多瘤病毒主要存在于泌尿道中。而且，巴克的团队并未制造活病毒。酵母产生的是空的病毒外壳，无法建立感染。酿酒酵母本身也不会引起人体感染，因此巴克原本并不指望口服多瘤病毒疫苗会奏效。
Just to be thorough, the team fed mice whole, live yeast carrying the viruslike particles mixed with their kibble. The mice “love it and have a party when you give them the food,” Buck says.
为了更加严谨，研究团队还是将携带类病毒颗粒的完整活酵母与小鼠饲料混合后喂给小鼠。巴克说，小鼠们“非常喜欢，给它们这种食物时简直像在开派对”。
Live yeast sprayed in the nose didn’t work — but the party kibble produced antibodies in the mice. That indicates that if they make it through the stomach, empty polyomavirus-like particles can interact with immune cells in the gut to produce antibodies, Chackerian says. It’s also a sign that live yeast might be able to ferry other types of proteins to build immune defenses against other diseases. “That’s a very exciting possibility,” he says, “because that would potentially mean that his findings aren’t just limited to this vaccine.”
将活酵母喷入小鼠鼻腔并未奏效——但这种“派对饲料”却让小鼠体内产生了抗体。查克里安表示，这说明只要空的类多瘤病毒颗粒能够通过胃部，就可能与肠道中的免疫细胞发生相互作用，从而诱导抗体产生。这也表明，活酵母或许能够作为载体，将其他类型的蛋白质递送到体内，从而构建针对其他疾病的免疫防御。
“这是一个非常令人振奋的可能性，”他说，“因为这意味着他的发现或许并不仅限于这一种疫苗。”
With a little tinkering, Buck thinks yeast could deliver vaccines against a wide variety of diseases, including COVID-19 and H5N1 bird flu, as well as cancers caused by HPV.
巴克认为，只需稍作调整，酵母就有望用于递送针对多种疾病的疫苗，包括新冠病毒、H5N1 禽流感，以及由 HPV 引发的癌症。
A seismic shift in making a vaccine
疫苗制造的重大转变
The initial results from feeding mice the live yeast came as a shock even to Buck.
用活酵母喂养小鼠所得的初步结果，甚至让巴克本人都感到震惊。
“We repeated this experiment a couple of times. I was reluctant to believe it,” Buck said at the World Vaccine Congress Washington in April. “It felt like an earthquake when I first saw the results emerging.”
“我们把这个实验重复做了好几次。我一开始并不愿意相信，”巴克在4月于华盛顿举行的世界疫苗大会上说。“当我第一次看到这些结果逐渐显现时，那种感觉就像发生了一场地震。”
The rumbling he felt was triggered by his knowledge of the way food and drugs are regulated in the United States. Buck realized he may not need FDA approval to get a polyomavirus vaccine into the hands of people who might benefit from it. “If you can eat something, you can sell it as a dietary supplement product” or food, he says. Such products are regulated differently than drugs or vaccines.
这种“震动”源于他对美国食品和药品监管体系的理解。巴克意识到，他或许并不需要获得美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）的批准，就能将多瘤病毒疫苗送到可能从中受益的人手中。
“如果一种东西可以吃，你就可以把它作为膳食补充剂产品，或者作为食品来出售，”他说。这类产品的监管方式与药品或疫苗并不相同。
Vaccine and drug testing involves multiple rounds of clinical trials. These trials typically start with a few hundred people to establish whether there are obvious safety concerns. If there are no safety issues, larger trials involving thousands to tens of thousands of volunteers are conducted. There, scientists look for rare side effects that might not have been apparent in the smaller trial. Bigger trials can also give researchers clues about how well the vaccine works. Even after vaccines are approved, they are monitored for safety.
疫苗和药物的测试通常需要经历多轮临床试验。试验一般从几百人规模开始，用以确认是否存在明显的安全隐患；若未发现安全问题，则会开展涉及数千至数万名志愿者的大规模试验。在这一阶段，科学家会寻找在小规模试验中可能未显现的罕见副作用。更大规模的试验也有助于评估疫苗的实际效果。即便疫苗获批上市，其安全性仍会持续受到监测。
But Buck envisions vaccine beer as a food first. Food and dietary supplements don’t have to undergo multiple rounds of testing. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are supposed to establish their products’ safety before selling them, but that might be as simple as feeding samples to a few volunteers. Food and supplement makers also don’t have to prove to the FDA that their products work as advertised, although the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission ensure that manufacturers aren’t falsely advertising their products as cures for specific diseases.
但在巴克的设想中，疫苗啤酒首先是一种食品。食品和膳食补充剂不需要经历多轮临床测试。膳食补充剂生产商在销售前应当确认其产品的安全性，但这一步骤有时可能仅限于让少数志愿者食用样品。食品和补充剂制造商也无需向 FDA 证明其产品确实具备宣传中的功效，不过 FDA 和美国联邦贸易委员会会监管企业，防止其将产品虚假宣传为治疗特定疾病的手段。
Buck says the ingredients in his vaccine beer are already part of the food supply, and that the components meet the FDA definition of “generally regarded as safe” for people to eat. In addition, polyomaviruses are shed in massive quantities in urine and are aerosolized with every flush to float in the air and coat every bathroom door handle, so people probably unwittingly breathe in or consume millions of them daily, he says.
巴克表示，他的疫苗啤酒所含成分本身已是食品供应体系的一部分，而且这些成分符合 FDA 对“普遍认为安全”（GRAS）的定义。此外，多瘤病毒会以极大量存在于尿液中，并在每次冲水时形成气溶胶，漂浮在空气中，附着在几乎每一个浴室门把手上。因此，人们很可能在不知不觉中，每天吸入或摄入数以百万计的多瘤病毒。
People who don’t drink beer could pour off the alcohol and eat the yeast. Buck is also experimenting with dried yeast chips or capsules of yeast but doesn’t have manufacturing infrastructure to produce large quantities of yeast. He hopes to enlist companies that make yeast for home brewers to make his vaccine beer yeast.
不喝啤酒的人可以把酒精倒掉，直接食用酵母。巴克也在尝试将酵母制成干燥的酵母薄片或胶囊，但目前还缺乏能够大规模生产酵母的制造基础设施。他希望能联合那些为家庭酿酒者生产酵母的公司，来生产他的疫苗啤酒用酵母。
And here’s where things get sticky. “Vaccines are drugs. We all know this. There’s no hiding or costuming of vaccines. You should think of it as a drug,” Buck says. “But just because something is a drug does not mean it can’t also be a food.”
而问题也正是在这里变得棘手起来。
“疫苗就是药物，这一点大家都很清楚。疫苗不存在什么隐藏或伪装的问题，你应该把它当作一种药物，”巴克说，“但仅仅因为某样东西是药物，并不意味着它不能同时也是一种食物。”
For instance, wormwood has been used for hundreds of years as a remedy against malaria. Nobel laureate Tu Youyou developed its active ingredient into the malaria drug artemisinin. Wormwood can be sold as dietary supplement or food but by law can’t claim to treat or prevent malaria. Vague claims, such as “supports immune health,” are allowed. But if someone wants to sell a product as both a drug and a food or supplement, the product must first be a food or supplement before being developed as a drug.
例如，苦艾在数百年来一直被用作治疗疟疾的药材。诺贝尔奖得主屠呦呦将其中的活性成分开发成了抗疟疾药物青蒿素。苦艾可以作为膳食补充剂或食品出售，但依法不能宣称其能够治疗或预防疟疾。像“有助于免疫健康”这类模糊表述则是允许的。但如果有人希望将某种产品既作为药物销售，又作为食品或补充剂销售，那么该产品必须首先以食品或补充剂的身份存在，之后才能被开发为药物。
Andrew Buck set up a corporation specifically to sell the yeast strains Chris developed and has made sales to two scientists who are friends and supporters. The Buck siblings flirted with calling their invention “vaccine-style beer” to indicate that it is reminiscent of a vaccine, much the way India pale ales or Belgian-style beer are made in the mold of beers from those countries. They finally decided to call it vaccine beer so people would know its intended purpose even though the siblings don’t have irrefutable evidence that it works. “The place that we cannot go is saying that it is effective for any specific disease state,” Buck says. “The only way to do that is with full FDA approval” of the yeast as a vaccine.
安德鲁·巴克专门成立了一家公司，用于销售克里斯开发的酵母菌株，目前已向两位科学家朋友兼支持者出售过产品。巴克兄弟一度考虑将他们的发明称为“疫苗风格啤酒”，以表明它在概念上类似疫苗，就像印度淡色艾尔或比利时风格啤酒，是按照特定国家啤酒的风格酿造的一样。最终，他们决定直接称之为“疫苗啤酒”，让人们清楚其设计初衷，尽管兄弟二人并没有确凿证据证明它确实有效。
“我们绝不能做的，是宣称它对任何特定疾病具有疗效，”巴克说，“唯一能这样做的途径，是让这种酵母作为疫苗获得 FDA 的全面批准。”
Stirring up debate about trust in vaccines
引发关于疫苗信任的讨论
Buck drank the first batch a pint a day over five days in late May. He followed that with two five-day booster flights seven weeks apart. Buck pricked his finger before and at regular intervals after drinking the beer to measure whether he was making antibodies against the virus. He already had antibodies against one of the four subtypes of BK polyomavirus but he was reassured to see levels of antibodies against BK type IV slowly climb after he drank beer containing the protein from that subtype. Antibodies against subtype II shot up even more rapidly.
巴克在5月下旬连续五天每天饮用一品脱第一批疫苗啤酒。随后，他又进行了两轮为期五天、间隔七周的加强“疗程”。在饮用啤酒前以及之后的定期时间点，巴克都会扎破手指取血，以检测体内是否产生了针对病毒的抗体。他原本就对 BK 多瘤病毒的四个亚型之一存在抗体，但在饮用含有该亚型蛋白的啤酒后，看到针对 BK IV 型的抗体水平逐渐上升，这让他感到安心。而针对 II 型亚型的抗体水平上升得更为迅速。
Antibodies against subtypes I and II reached the threshold considered protective for transplant patients, but those against type IV didn’t make the mark. There are no blood test results from his brother or the other family members who quaffed the beer.
针对 I 型和 II 型亚型的抗体水平达到了被认为对移植患者具有保护作用的阈值，但针对 IV 型的抗体未能达到这一标准。至于他哥哥以及其他饮用过这种啤酒的家人，目前并没有相应的血液检测结果。
Buck says his self-experiment illustrates that a person can be safely immunized against BK polyomaviruses through drinking beer. But even though Buck produced antibodies, there is no guarantee others will. And right now, people who drink the vaccine beer won’t know whether they produce antibodies or if any antibodies they do produce will be sufficient to protect them from developing cancer or other serious health problems later.
巴克表示，他的自我实验表明，人们可以通过饮用啤酒的方式，安全地对 BK 多瘤病毒产生免疫反应。但即便巴克本人产生了抗体，也无法保证其他人同样如此。而且目前，饮用疫苗啤酒的人并不知道自己是否会产生抗体，或即便产生了抗体，这些抗体是否足以在未来保护他们免于罹患癌症或其他严重健康问题。
Other scientists familiar with Buck and his yeast project also have conflicting opinions about how it might influence public trust and acceptance of vaccines.
其他一些熟悉巴克及其酵母项目的科学家，对这一做法可能如何影响公众对疫苗的信任与接受程度，也持有不同看法。
If something were to go wrong when a person tried to replicate Buck’s beer experiment, Imperiale worries about “the harm that it could do to our ability to administer vaccines that have been tested, tried and true, and just the more general faith that the public has in us scientists. Right now, the scientific community has to think about everything it does and answer the question, ‘Is what we’re doing going to cause more distrust amongst the public?’”
如果有人在尝试复制巴克的啤酒实验时出了问题，因佩里亚莱担心，“这可能会损害我们推广那些经过充分测试、行之有效的疫苗的能力，也会伤害公众对我们科学家的整体信任。如今，科学界在做任何事情之前，都必须问自己一个问题：‘我们正在做的事情，会不会让公众更加不信任我们？’”
That’s especially true now that health officials in the Trump administration are slashing funding for vaccine research, undermining confidence in vaccines and limiting access to them. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans are still confident that childhood vaccines are highly effective at preventing illness. But there has been an erosion of trust in the safety of those vaccines, particularly among Republicans.
在特朗普政府的卫生官员大幅削减疫苗研究经费、削弱公众对疫苗的信心并限制疫苗获取的背景下，这种担忧显得尤为突出。皮尤研究中心最近的一项民调显示，大多数美国人仍然相信儿童疫苗在预防疾病方面非常有效，但人们对这些疫苗安全性的信任正在下降，尤其是在共和党人中更为明显。
“Coming up with new modes of administration of vaccines is way overdue,” Caplan says. But given all the controversies swirling around vaccines, Buck’s do-it-yourself approach could backfire and “take a good idea he has and ruin it,” he says. “Vaccine doubts and fears and antivaccine attitudes could easily undercut what could be something useful.”
“开发新的疫苗接种方式早就该提上日程了，”卡普兰说。但在围绕疫苗的各种争议之下，巴克这种“自己动手”的方式可能会适得其反，“把他原本的一个好点子给毁了”。他说，“疫苗相关的怀疑、恐惧以及反疫苗情绪，很容易削弱本来可能非常有价值的东西。”
Preston Estep, a geneticist and entrepreneur who made his own DIY nasal spray vaccine against COVID-19, disagrees with Caplan’s assessment. “Bioethicists and public health officials often say that X, Y or Z is going to erode public trust in vaccines, and they actually don’t have any idea either whether or not that’s true,” says Estep, founder and chief scientist of the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative, a COVID-19 vaccine research and development nonprofit group. The group of scientists and citizen scientists from around the world tested Estep’s nasal vaccine on themselves months before COVID-19 vaccines became available, though there is only anecdotal data on its effectiveness. In 2024, the group shifted to a vaccine formulation that has been shown to produce immunity in animals.
遗传学家兼企业家普雷斯顿·埃斯特普（Preston Estep）曾自制针对新冠病毒的鼻喷疫苗，他并不同意卡普兰的判断。“生物伦理学家和公共卫生官员经常说，某种做法会削弱公众对疫苗的信任，但他们其实也并不知道这是否真的如此，”埃斯特普说。他是新冠疫苗研发非营利组织“快速部署疫苗协作组织”的创始人兼首席科学家。该组织由来自世界各地的科学家和公民科学家组成，在新冠疫苗正式问世前数月，就已在自身身上测试了埃斯特普的鼻喷疫苗，尽管其有效性目前仅有零星的轶事性证据。2024 年，该团队转向了一种已被证明能够在动物中诱导免疫反应的疫苗配方。
If the vaccine beer proves effective and safe, it could build, not erode, public trust, Estep says. “It allows people to experience vaccines in a really prosaic sort of comfort food or comfort beverage approach.” And since Buck’s brother is selling yeast that people would need to homebrew into a liquid vaccine, “what I argue is that they’re not selling a vaccine, they’re selling a vaccine factory,” Estep says.
埃斯特普认为，如果疫苗啤酒最终被证明既安全又有效，它可能会增强而非削弱公众信任。“它让人们以一种非常日常、像安慰性食物或饮料那样的方式来接触疫苗。”此外，由于巴克的兄弟出售的是需要人们自行酿制成液体疫苗的酵母，“我认为他们卖的并不是疫苗，而是一个‘疫苗工厂’，”埃斯特普说。
Buck says it’s more important than ever for people who want protection against diseases to have another option. Even with the Trump administration’s “saber-rattling, they cannot stop people from cooking in their own kitchen.” It’s not ideal to have to home brew your own vaccine, he admits. But “if nothing else works, or if the administration goes bananas and tries to shut it all down commercially, this is what we’re going to have to resort to.”
巴克表示，对于那些希望获得疾病防护的人来说，拥有另一种选择比以往任何时候都更为重要。即便特朗普政府不断“虚张声势”，也无法阻止人们在自家厨房里动手操作。他承认，自行酿制疫苗并不理想，但“如果其他办法都行不通，或者政府真的发疯，试图在商业层面彻底封堵这一切，那这就是我们不得不采取的方式。”
Buck feels a moral imperative to move forward with his self-experiments and to make polyomavirus vaccine beer available to everyone who wants it. “This is the most important work of my whole career,” he says. “It’s important enough to risk my career over.” What he’s doing in his home lab is consistent with his day job, he adds. “At the NIH in my contract it says my job is to generate and disseminate scientific knowledge,” he says. “This is my only job, to make knowledge and put it out there and try to sell it to the public.”
巴克认为，自己在道德上有责任继续推进自我实验，并让所有有需要的人都能获得多瘤病毒疫苗啤酒。“这是我整个职业生涯中最重要的工作，”他说，“重要到值得我为此冒上职业生涯的风险。”他还补充说，自己在家中实验室所做的事情，与他的本职工作是一致的。“在 NIH，我的合同里写明，我的职责是产生并传播科学知识，”他说，“这就是我唯一的工作——创造知识，把它公布出来，并努力让公众接受。”
He doesn’t see himself as a maverick. “I’m not a radical who’s trying to subvert the system. I’m obeying the system, and I’m using the only thing that is left available to me.”
他并不认为自己是一个特立独行的人。“我不是试图颠覆体制的激进分子。我是在遵循体制规则，只是利用了我所剩下的、唯一可用的途径。”
厨房里酿出的疫苗啤酒：一口下去，是免疫还是风险？
Chris Buck stands barefoot in his kitchen holding a glass bottle of unfiltered Lithuanian farmhouse ale. He swirls the bottle gently to stir up a fingerbreadth blanket of yeast and pours the turbulent beer into a glass mug.
Buck raises the mug and sips. “Cloudy beer. Delightful!”
克里斯·巴克赤脚站在厨房里，手里拿着一瓶未经过滤的立陶宛乡村艾尔啤酒。他轻轻旋转酒瓶，让瓶底约一指厚的酵母沉淀翻腾起来，然后把这杯浑浊的啤酒倒进玻璃啤酒杯中。
巴克举起杯子啜了一口，说道：“浑浊的啤酒，真美妙！”
He has just consumed what may be the world’s first vaccine delivered in a beer. It could be the first small sip toward making vaccines more palatable and accessible to people around the world. Or it could fuel concerns about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Or the idea may go nowhere. No matter the outcome, the story of Buck’s unconventional approach illustrates the legal, ethical, moral, scientific and social challenges involved in developing potentially lifesaving vaccines.
他刚刚喝下的，可能是世界上第一种以啤酒为载体递送的疫苗。
这也许是让疫苗变得更容易被全球人群接受、更容易获得的第一小口。
也可能，它会加剧人们对疫苗安全性和有效性的担忧。
或者，这个想法最终可能不了了之。
无论结果如何，巴克这种非常规做法的故事，生动展现了在研发潜在救命疫苗过程中所面临的法律、伦理、道德、科学与社会层面的重重挑战。
Buck isn’t just a home brewer dabbling in drug-making. He is a virologist at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he studies polyomaviruses, which have been lixed to various cancers and to serious health problems for people with weakened immune systems. He discovered four of the 13 polyomaviruses known to infect humans.
巴克并不只是一个“玩票式”涉足制药的家庭酿酒师。
他是马里兰州贝塞斯达国家癌症研究所的一名病毒学家，研究对象是多瘤病毒——这种病毒与多种癌症以及免疫功能低下人群的严重健康问题相关。他发现了目前已知可感染人类的13种多瘤病毒中的4种。
The vaccine beer experiment grew out of research Buck and colleagues have been doing to develop a traditional vaccine against polyomavirus. But Buck’s experimental sips of vaccine beer are unsanctioned by his employer. A research ethics committee at the National Institutes of Health told Buck he couldn’t experiment on himself by drinking the beer.
啤酒疫苗实验源于巴克及其同事为研发传统多瘤病毒疫苗所开展的研究。
但巴克自行试饮疫苗啤酒的行为，并未获得其所在机构的批准。美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的研究伦理委员会明确告知他，不得通过饮用该啤酒对自己进行实验。
Buck says the committee has the right to determine what he can and can’t do at work but can’t govern what he does in his private life. So today he is Chef Gusteau, the founder and sole employee of Gusteau Research Corporation, a nonprofit organization Buck established so he could make and drink his vaccine beer as a private citizen. His company’s name was inspired by the chef in the film Ratatouille, Auguste Gusteau, whose motto is “Anyone can cook.”
巴克表示，委员会有权决定他在工作中可以做什么、不可以做什么，但无权干涉他的私人生活。
因此，这一天他成了“古斯托大厨”——古斯托研究公司的创始人兼唯一员工。这是一家由巴克创立的非营利组织，目的是让他能够以私人公民身份制作并饮用他的疫苗啤酒。
公司的名称灵感来自电影《料理鼠王》中的厨师奥古斯特·古斯托，他的座右铭是：“人人都能做饭。”
Buck’s body made antibodies against several types of the virus after drinking the beer and he suffered no ill effects, he and his brother Andrew Buck reported December 17 at the data sharing platform Zenodo.org, along with colleagues from NIH and Vilnius University in Lithuania. Andrew and other family members have also consumed the beer with no ill effects, he says. The Buck brothers posted a method for making vaccine beer December 17 at Zenodo.org. Chris Buck announced both publications in his blog Viruses Must Die on the online publishing platform Substack, but neither has been peer-reviewed by other scientists.
巴克与其兄弟安德鲁·巴克，以及来自美国国立卫生研究院和立陶宛维尔纽斯大学的合作者，于12月17日在数据共享平台 Zenodo.org 报告称：巴克在饮用该啤酒后，体内产生了针对多种病毒类型的抗体，且未出现不良反应。
巴克还表示，安德鲁及其他家庭成员也饮用了这种啤酒，同样没有出现不良反应。
同日，巴克兄弟还在 Zenodo.org 上公开发布了疫苗啤酒的制作方法。
克里斯·巴克在在线写作平台 Substack 上的博客《病毒必须死》中宣布了这两项发布，但这两份成果均尚未经过其他科学家的同行评审。
A second ethics committee at the NIH obxted to Buck posting the manuscxts to the preprint server bioRxiv.org because of the self-experiment. Buck wrote a rebuttal to the committee’s comments but was loathe to wait for its blessing before sharing the data. “The bureaucracy is inhibiting the science, and that’s unacceptable to me,” he says. “One week of people dying from not knowing about this is not trivial.”
美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的第二个伦理委员会也因巴克进行了自我实验，而反对他将手稿发布到预印本平台 bioRxiv.org。巴克就委员会的意见提交了书面回应，但他不愿等待委员会批准后才分享数据。
他说：“官僚体系正在阻碍科学进展，这对我来说不可接受。因为不知道这件事，一周内就可能有人因此丧命，这绝不是小事。”
Buck’s unconventional approach has also sparked concerns among other experts about the safety and efficacy of the largely untested vaccine beer. While he has promising data in mice that the vaccine works, he has so far reported antibody results in humans from his own sips of the brew. Normally, vaccines are tested in much larger groups of people to see how well they work and whether they trigger any unanticipated side effects. This is especially important for polyomavirus vaccines, because one of the desired uses is to protect people who are about to get organ transplants. The immune-suppressing drugs these patients must take can leave them vulnerable to harm from polyomaviruses.
巴克的非常规做法，也引发了其他专家对这种几乎未经充分测试的疫苗啤酒在安全性和有效性方面的担忧。尽管他在小鼠实验中获得了显示疫苗有效的初步数据，但迄今为止，他在人类身上报告的抗体结果，仅来自自己饮用啤酒后的反应。
通常，疫苗需要在更大规模的人群中进行测试，以评估其效果，并观察是否会引发任何意料之外的副作用。
这对多瘤病毒疫苗尤为关键，因为其潜在用途之一，是保护即将接受器官移植的患者。这些患者必须服用抑制免疫系统的药物，因此更容易受到多瘤病毒的伤害。
Michael Imperiale, a virologist and emeritus professor at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, first saw Buck present his idea at a scientific conference in Italy in June. The beer approach disturbed him. “We can’t draw conclusions based on testing this on two people,” he says, referring to Buck and his brother. It’s also not clear which possible side effects Buck was monitoring for. Vaccines for vulnerable transplant patients should go through rigorous safety and efficacy testing, he says. “I raised a concern with him that I didn’t think it was a good idea to be sidestepping that process.”
密歇根大学安娜堡分校医学院名誉教授、病毒学家迈克尔·因佩里亚莱今年6月在意大利的一次科学会议上，首次听到巴克介绍这一想法。他对“啤酒疫苗”的做法感到不安。
他说：“仅凭在两个人身上进行测试，我们无法得出任何结论。”这里指的是巴克本人及其兄弟。
他还指出，目前并不清楚巴克究竟监测了哪些潜在副作用。针对易受影响的器官移植患者开发的疫苗，必须经过严格的安全性和有效性测试。
“我曾向他表达过担忧，我认为绕过这一正规流程并不是一个好主意。”
Other critics warn that Buck’s unconventional approach could fuel antivaccine sentiments. Arthur Caplan, who until recently headed medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, is skeptical that a vaccine beer will ever make it beyond Buck’s kitchen.
其他批评者警告说，巴克的非传统做法可能会助长反疫苗情绪。直到最近还担任纽约大学格罗斯曼医学院医学伦理主管的亚瑟·卡普兰，对疫苗啤酒能否走出巴克的厨房持怀疑态度。
“This is maybe the worst imaginable time to roll out something that you put on a Substack about how to get vaccinated,” he says. Many people won’t be interested because of antivaccine rhetoric. Beer companies may fear that having a vaccine beer on the market could sully the integrity of their brands. And Buck faces potential backlash from “a national administration that is entirely hostile to vaccines,” Caplan says. “This is not the place for do-it-yourself.”
“现在或许是发布‘如何接种疫苗’这类内容的最糟糕时机，”他说。许多人因反疫苗言论而对其不感兴趣。啤酒公司也可能担心，市场上出现“疫苗啤酒”会损害自身品牌形象。卡普兰还指出，巴克可能会遭遇来自“一个对疫苗完全持敌意的国家政府”的反弹。“这不是适合搞‘自己动手’的领域。”
But the project does have supporters who say it could instead calm vaccine fears by allowing everyday people to control the process. Other researchers are on the fence, believing that an oral vaccine against polyomavirus is a good idea but questioning whether Buck is going about introducing such a vaccine correctly.
不过，这个项目也确实拥有支持者，他们认为，通过让普通人掌控整个过程，反而可能缓解人们对疫苗的恐惧。
也有研究人员持观望态度：他们认为针对多瘤病毒的口服疫苗理念本身是可取的，但质疑巴克是否以恰当的方式推广这种疫苗。
“I’m of two minds on this,” says Bryce Chackerian, a virologist at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque. Sometimes the government makes choices about who can take a vaccine based on what age you are or whether you have preexisting health conditions, he notes. “I’m sympathetic to Chris’s frustration with those sorts of constraints on vaccine uptake.”
“我对这件事的看法比较复杂，”新墨西哥大学阿尔伯克基分校健康科学中心的病毒学家布莱斯·查克里安（Bryce Chackerian）说。他指出，政府有时会根据年龄或是否存在基础疾病，决定哪些人可以接种疫苗。
“我能理解克里斯对这类限制疫苗接种条件的挫败感。”
Chackerian adds that he personally has no safety concerns about this particular type of vaccine. Still, he says, “I believe in our system of testing vaccines. I think it’s really important for making sure that we have safe products that go into people and that we don’t undermine the public trust in vaccines.” He calls Buck’s approach “a bold choice by him, but interesting and, I would say, not out of character.”
查克里安还补充说，他个人对这种特定类型的疫苗并无安全方面的担忧。不过他表示：
“我相信我们现有的疫苗测试体系。我认为这对确保进入人体的产品是安全的、同时避免破坏公众对疫苗的信任，至关重要。”
他评价巴克的做法是：“这是一个大胆的选择，既有趣，也可以说，并不出人意料。”
The painful dangers of polyomaviruses
多瘤病毒带来的痛苦危险
Buck and his NCI colleagues have been working for more than 15 years to develop an injectable polyomavirus vaccine. Polyomaviruses are icosahedrons (think of 20-sided dice) with surface proteins that have a particular repeating pattern. The immune system views this pattern as “an innate danger signal,” Buck says. That makes them attractive vaccine candidates.
巴克和他在美国国家癌症研究所（NCI）的同事，已经投入超过15年时间，致力于开发一种可注射的多瘤病毒疫苗。多瘤病毒呈二十面体结构（可以想象成20面的骰子），其表面蛋白具有特定的重复排列模式。巴克说，免疫系统会将这种模式视为一种“先天性的危险信号”，这也使多瘤病毒成为颇具吸引力的疫苗候选对象。
Polyomaviruses are everywhere and infect many people, causing serious problems for some but lying dormant in most humans. Up to 91 percent of people are infected with BK polyomaviruses by the time they turn 9 years old. BK is the species of polyomavirus that Buck is developing his vaccine against. Polyoma means “many tumors,” and the viruses are suspected to be involved in bladder cancers. Some evidence suggests these viruses also cause interstitial cystitis, a painful bladder condition in which people have a frequent or urgent need to pee. It affects about 1 to 3 percent of people in the United States.
多瘤病毒无处不在，感染了大量人群：对部分人来说会引发严重问题，但在大多数人体内则处于潜伏状态。到9岁时，多达91%的人已经感染过BK多瘤病毒。BK正是巴克目前研发疫苗所针对的多瘤病毒类型。“Polyoma”一词意为“多肿瘤”，这种病毒被怀疑与膀胱癌有关。一些证据还表明，多瘤病毒可能导致间质性膀胱炎——一种疼痛明显的膀胱疾病，患者会频繁或急迫地想要排尿。该疾病在美国的发病率约为1%至3%。
In the blog post announcing the new results, Buck recounts a visit to a pediatric hospital where he learned that children with BK hemorrhagic cystitis screamed so loudly from bladder pain that the hospital had to install soundproofing. “There are screaming children at the back of my mind after that experience,” he says.
在一篇公布最新研究结果的博客文章中，巴克回忆了他曾走访一家儿科医院的经历。在那里，他得知患有BK出血性膀胱炎的儿童因剧烈的膀胱疼痛而尖叫不止，声音之大甚至迫使医院加装隔音设施。“那次经历之后，我脑海中一直挥之不去的是那些尖叫的孩子，”他说。
In addition, organ transplant recipients may suffer organ damage from polyomaviruses. That happens because transplant recipients take immune-suppressing drugs given to prevent rejection of the donated organ. Kidney transplant recipients may lose the organ because their weakened immune systems allow dormant BK polyomavirus in the donor kidney to reawaken and cause damage.
此外，器官移植受者也可能因多瘤病毒而遭受器官损伤。这是因为移植患者需要服用免疫抑制药物，以防止身体排斥移植器官。对肾移植患者而言，免疫系统被削弱后，供体肾脏中原本潜伏的BK多瘤病毒可能被重新激活，从而造成损伤，甚至导致移植肾丧失。
Other transplant patients can develop a brain disease caused by BK’s cousin JC polyomavirus. But transplant patients who have high levels of antibodies against polyomaviruses prior to surgery are often protected from such complications. Buck says transplant surgeons practically shake him by the shoulders to demand polyomavirus vaccines for their patients.
其他移植患者还可能因 BK 的“表亲”——JC 多瘤病毒——而患上脑部疾病。但在手术前体内多瘤病毒抗体水平较高的移植患者，通常能够避免这类并发症。巴克说，移植外科医生几乎会抓着他的肩膀，强烈要求为患者提供多瘤病毒疫苗。
Those patients are part of what spurred Buck’s work — and his own experiences drove him to try and make it accessible outside the typical government approval process.
正是这些患者，成为推动巴克继续研究的重要原因之一——而他自身的经历，也促使他试图在传统的政府审批流程之外，让这种疫苗变得更容易获得。
Buck often recounts how a friend was denied the vaccine for human papilloma virus, or HPV, because he was an adult man at a time when vaccine access was limited to adolescent girls. The friend later died of head and neck cancer sparked by that virus. Buck says that withholding vaccines from people who want them is morally equivalent to the evils of the Tuskegee experiment, a deeply racist and unethical program in which Black men with syphilis were denied penicillin so scientists could observe the effects of not treating the disease.
巴克经常提起一位朋友的经历：由于当时人乳头瘤病毒（HPV）疫苗的接种对象仅限于青少女，这位成年男性朋友被拒绝接种。后来，他因该病毒引发的头颈癌去世。巴克认为，拒绝向希望接种疫苗的人提供疫苗，在道德层面上等同于塔斯基吉实验的恶行——那是一项充满种族歧视且极不道德的研究项目，研究人员故意不给患梅毒的黑人男性使用青霉素，只为观察疾病在未经治疗情况下的发展。
Ultimately, he hopes to win official approval for the yeast-based vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But, he writes in the blog post, “there’s a glacial wall of license-wrangling, technical barriers, and impenetrable regulatory bureaucracy between me and the desperate families literally screaming for my help.”
最终，巴克仍希望获得美国食品药品监督管理局对这种酵母基疫苗的正式批准。但他在博客中写道：“在我与那些因急切寻求帮助而几乎在尖叫的家庭之间，横亘着一堵冰川般的高墙——由许可纠纷、技术障碍以及难以穿透的监管官僚体系构成。”
The rise of a yeast-based vaccine
酵母疫苗的兴起
Buck’s NCI team has been working with a vaccine maker in India that holds the license to a traditional, injectable version of a polyomavirus vaccine that’s being tested in animals. That vaccine consists of BK polyomavirus’ outer shell protein, VP1, which is made in insect cells and then purified to strip out all but the viral proteins. These proteins naturally assemble into empty viruslike particles. When injected, the purified viruslike particles cause antibody levels in rhesus monkeys to shoot up well beyond a level that may protect against infection, the researchers reported in Vaccine in 2023. The protective response lasted for the length of the study; about two years.
巴克在美国国家癌症研究所（NCI）的团队一直与一家印度疫苗制造商合作，该公司拥有一种传统、可注射的多瘤病毒疫苗的许可，这种疫苗目前正在动物中进行测试。该疫苗由 BK 多瘤病毒的外壳蛋白 VP1 构成，这种蛋白在昆虫细胞中制备，随后经过纯化，去除除病毒蛋白之外的所有成分。这些蛋白会自然组装成空的类病毒颗粒。研究人员在 2023 年发表于《Vaccine》期刊的论文中报告称，注射这种纯化后的类病毒颗粒后，恒河猴体内的抗体水平会大幅上升，远高于可能具有保护作用的水平。这种保护性免疫反应在整个研究期间持续存在，约为两年。
The results were so encouraging that Buck wondered if the vaccine could be delivered in other ways. And he wondered if it was really necessary to purify viruslike particles at all. For his virus factories, Buck decided to use Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the baker’s and brewer’s yeast that leaven bread and ferment wines, many beers, chocolate and coffee.
这些结果令人振奋，以至于巴克开始思考疫苗是否可以通过其他方式递送。他也开始质疑，是否真的有必要对类病毒颗粒进行纯化。作为“病毒工厂”，巴克决定使用酿酒与烘焙中常见的酵母——酿酒酵母，这种酵母用于发面并发酵葡萄酒、许多种啤酒，以及巧克力和咖啡。
In his lab at NCI, his team sprayed ground-up yeast that make empty polyomavirus-like particles in mice’s noses, scratched it into their skin and fed it to them. Squirting particles up mice’s noses worked, though not as well as injecting purified particles did. Scratching the skin was also effective, Buck and colleagues report in their December papers. But feeding mice ground-up dead yeast didn’t work at all.
在 NCI 的实验室中，他的团队将能够产生空类多瘤病毒颗粒的酵母研磨后，分别喷入小鼠鼻腔、涂抹并划破皮肤，或喂食给小鼠。结果显示，将颗粒喷入小鼠鼻腔是有效的，尽管效果不如注射纯化颗粒；通过皮肤划痕递送同样有效，巴克及其同事在 12 月发表的论文中报告称。但将研磨后的死酵母直接喂给小鼠则完全无效。
That’s not a surprise, Chackerian says. Oral vaccines against rotavirus, cholera and polio exist, so it’s a viable strategy. But in this case, the viruslike particles probably “just fall apart” in the acidic environment of the stomach, Chackerian says. Another challenge with developing oral vaccines is that many viral particles don’t interact with cells in the intestine. Viruses like polio naturally infect intestinal cells, so it’s no problem for weakened viruses in the oral polio vaccine to invade intestinal cells and prompt the immune system to erect defenses. Many scientists, including Buck, used to think oral vaccines work only if they consist of live, weakened viruses or bacteria that can infect intestinal cells.
查克里安表示，这一结果并不令人意外。针对轮状病毒、霍乱和脊髓灰质炎的口服疫苗已经存在，因此这一策略本身是可行的。但在这一案例中，类病毒颗粒很可能在胃部的酸性环境中“直接解体”。开发口服疫苗的另一项挑战在于，许多病毒颗粒无法与肠道细胞发生相互作用。像脊髓灰质炎病毒这样的病原体本就会自然感染肠道细胞，因此口服脊灰疫苗中的减毒病毒能够顺利侵入肠道细胞，并激活免疫系统的防御反应。过去，包括巴克在内的许多科学家都认为，口服疫苗只有在由能够感染肠道细胞的活的减毒病毒或细菌构成时才会有效。
Polyomaviruses are primarily found in the urinary tract. And Buck’s group wasn’t making a live virus. The yeast produce empty viral shells that can’t establish infection. S. cerevisiae yeast also do not cause infections in people, so Buck didn’t expect an oral polyomavirus vaccine to work.
多瘤病毒主要存在于泌尿道中。而且，巴克的团队并未制造活病毒。酵母产生的是空的病毒外壳，无法建立感染。酿酒酵母本身也不会引起人体感染，因此巴克原本并不指望口服多瘤病毒疫苗会奏效。
Just to be thorough, the team fed mice whole, live yeast carrying the viruslike particles mixed with their kibble. The mice “love it and have a party when you give them the food,” Buck says.
为了更加严谨，研究团队还是将携带类病毒颗粒的完整活酵母与小鼠饲料混合后喂给小鼠。巴克说，小鼠们“非常喜欢，给它们这种食物时简直像在开派对”。
Live yeast sprayed in the nose didn’t work — but the party kibble produced antibodies in the mice. That indicates that if they make it through the stomach, empty polyomavirus-like particles can interact with immune cells in the gut to produce antibodies, Chackerian says. It’s also a sign that live yeast might be able to ferry other types of proteins to build immune defenses against other diseases. “That’s a very exciting possibility,” he says, “because that would potentially mean that his findings aren’t just limited to this vaccine.”
将活酵母喷入小鼠鼻腔并未奏效——但这种“派对饲料”却让小鼠体内产生了抗体。查克里安表示，这说明只要空的类多瘤病毒颗粒能够通过胃部，就可能与肠道中的免疫细胞发生相互作用，从而诱导抗体产生。这也表明，活酵母或许能够作为载体，将其他类型的蛋白质递送到体内，从而构建针对其他疾病的免疫防御。
“这是一个非常令人振奋的可能性，”他说，“因为这意味着他的发现或许并不仅限于这一种疫苗。”
With a little tinkering, Buck thinks yeast could deliver vaccines against a wide variety of diseases, including COVID-19 and H5N1 bird flu, as well as cancers caused by HPV.
巴克认为，只需稍作调整，酵母就有望用于递送针对多种疾病的疫苗，包括新冠病毒、H5N1 禽流感，以及由 HPV 引发的癌症。
A seismic shift in making a vaccine
疫苗制造的重大转变
The initial results from feeding mice the live yeast came as a shock even to Buck.
用活酵母喂养小鼠所得的初步结果，甚至让巴克本人都感到震惊。
“We repeated this experiment a couple of times. I was reluctant to believe it,” Buck said at the World Vaccine Congress Washington in April. “It felt like an earthquake when I first saw the results emerging.”
“我们把这个实验重复做了好几次。我一开始并不愿意相信，”巴克在4月于华盛顿举行的世界疫苗大会上说。“当我第一次看到这些结果逐渐显现时，那种感觉就像发生了一场地震。”
The rumbling he felt was triggered by his knowledge of the way food and drugs are regulated in the United States. Buck realized he may not need FDA approval to get a polyomavirus vaccine into the hands of people who might benefit from it. “If you can eat something, you can sell it as a dietary supplement product” or food, he says. Such products are regulated differently than drugs or vaccines.
这种“震动”源于他对美国食品和药品监管体系的理解。巴克意识到，他或许并不需要获得美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）的批准，就能将多瘤病毒疫苗送到可能从中受益的人手中。
“如果一种东西可以吃，你就可以把它作为膳食补充剂产品，或者作为食品来出售，”他说。这类产品的监管方式与药品或疫苗并不相同。
Vaccine and drug testing involves multiple rounds of clinical trials. These trials typically start with a few hundred people to establish whether there are obvious safety concerns. If there are no safety issues, larger trials involving thousands to tens of thousands of volunteers are conducted. There, scientists look for rare side effects that might not have been apparent in the smaller trial. Bigger trials can also give researchers clues about how well the vaccine works. Even after vaccines are approved, they are monitored for safety.
疫苗和药物的测试通常需要经历多轮临床试验。试验一般从几百人规模开始，用以确认是否存在明显的安全隐患；若未发现安全问题，则会开展涉及数千至数万名志愿者的大规模试验。在这一阶段，科学家会寻找在小规模试验中可能未显现的罕见副作用。更大规模的试验也有助于评估疫苗的实际效果。即便疫苗获批上市，其安全性仍会持续受到监测。
But Buck envisions vaccine beer as a food first. Food and dietary supplements don’t have to undergo multiple rounds of testing. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are supposed to establish their products’ safety before selling them, but that might be as simple as feeding samples to a few volunteers. Food and supplement makers also don’t have to prove to the FDA that their products work as advertised, although the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission ensure that manufacturers aren’t falsely advertising their products as cures for specific diseases.
但在巴克的设想中，疫苗啤酒首先是一种食品。食品和膳食补充剂不需要经历多轮临床测试。膳食补充剂生产商在销售前应当确认其产品的安全性，但这一步骤有时可能仅限于让少数志愿者食用样品。食品和补充剂制造商也无需向 FDA 证明其产品确实具备宣传中的功效，不过 FDA 和美国联邦贸易委员会会监管企业，防止其将产品虚假宣传为治疗特定疾病的手段。
Buck says the ingredients in his vaccine beer are already part of the food supply, and that the components meet the FDA definition of “generally regarded as safe” for people to eat. In addition, polyomaviruses are shed in massive quantities in urine and are aerosolized with every flush to float in the air and coat every bathroom door handle, so people probably unwittingly breathe in or consume millions of them daily, he says.
巴克表示，他的疫苗啤酒所含成分本身已是食品供应体系的一部分，而且这些成分符合 FDA 对“普遍认为安全”（GRAS）的定义。此外，多瘤病毒会以极大量存在于尿液中，并在每次冲水时形成气溶胶，漂浮在空气中，附着在几乎每一个浴室门把手上。因此，人们很可能在不知不觉中，每天吸入或摄入数以百万计的多瘤病毒。
People who don’t drink beer could pour off the alcohol and eat the yeast. Buck is also experimenting with dried yeast chips or capsules of yeast but doesn’t have manufacturing infrastructure to produce large quantities of yeast. He hopes to enlist companies that make yeast for home brewers to make his vaccine beer yeast.
不喝啤酒的人可以把酒精倒掉，直接食用酵母。巴克也在尝试将酵母制成干燥的酵母薄片或胶囊，但目前还缺乏能够大规模生产酵母的制造基础设施。他希望能联合那些为家庭酿酒者生产酵母的公司，来生产他的疫苗啤酒用酵母。
And here’s where things get sticky. “Vaccines are drugs. We all know this. There’s no hiding or costuming of vaccines. You should think of it as a drug,” Buck says. “But just because something is a drug does not mean it can’t also be a food.”
而问题也正是在这里变得棘手起来。
“疫苗就是药物，这一点大家都很清楚。疫苗不存在什么隐藏或伪装的问题，你应该把它当作一种药物，”巴克说，“但仅仅因为某样东西是药物，并不意味着它不能同时也是一种食物。”
For instance, wormwood has been used for hundreds of years as a remedy against malaria. Nobel laureate Tu Youyou developed its active ingredient into the malaria drug artemisinin. Wormwood can be sold as dietary supplement or food but by law can’t claim to treat or prevent malaria. Vague claims, such as “supports immune health,” are allowed. But if someone wants to sell a product as both a drug and a food or supplement, the product must first be a food or supplement before being developed as a drug.
例如，苦艾在数百年来一直被用作治疗疟疾的药材。诺贝尔奖得主屠呦呦将其中的活性成分开发成了抗疟疾药物青蒿素。苦艾可以作为膳食补充剂或食品出售，但依法不能宣称其能够治疗或预防疟疾。像“有助于免疫健康”这类模糊表述则是允许的。但如果有人希望将某种产品既作为药物销售，又作为食品或补充剂销售，那么该产品必须首先以食品或补充剂的身份存在，之后才能被开发为药物。
Andrew Buck set up a corporation specifically to sell the yeast strains Chris developed and has made sales to two scientists who are friends and supporters. The Buck siblings flirted with calling their invention “vaccine-style beer” to indicate that it is reminiscent of a vaccine, much the way India pale ales or Belgian-style beer are made in the mold of beers from those countries. They finally decided to call it vaccine beer so people would know its intended purpose even though the siblings don’t have irrefutable evidence that it works. “The place that we cannot go is saying that it is effective for any specific disease state,” Buck says. “The only way to do that is with full FDA approval” of the yeast as a vaccine.
安德鲁·巴克专门成立了一家公司，用于销售克里斯开发的酵母菌株，目前已向两位科学家朋友兼支持者出售过产品。巴克兄弟一度考虑将他们的发明称为“疫苗风格啤酒”，以表明它在概念上类似疫苗，就像印度淡色艾尔或比利时风格啤酒，是按照特定国家啤酒的风格酿造的一样。最终，他们决定直接称之为“疫苗啤酒”，让人们清楚其设计初衷，尽管兄弟二人并没有确凿证据证明它确实有效。
“我们绝不能做的，是宣称它对任何特定疾病具有疗效，”巴克说，“唯一能这样做的途径，是让这种酵母作为疫苗获得 FDA 的全面批准。”
Stirring up debate about trust in vaccines
引发关于疫苗信任的讨论
Buck drank the first batch a pint a day over five days in late May. He followed that with two five-day booster flights seven weeks apart. Buck pricked his finger before and at regular intervals after drinking the beer to measure whether he was making antibodies against the virus. He already had antibodies against one of the four subtypes of BK polyomavirus but he was reassured to see levels of antibodies against BK type IV slowly climb after he drank beer containing the protein from that subtype. Antibodies against subtype II shot up even more rapidly.
巴克在5月下旬连续五天每天饮用一品脱第一批疫苗啤酒。随后，他又进行了两轮为期五天、间隔七周的加强“疗程”。在饮用啤酒前以及之后的定期时间点，巴克都会扎破手指取血，以检测体内是否产生了针对病毒的抗体。他原本就对 BK 多瘤病毒的四个亚型之一存在抗体，但在饮用含有该亚型蛋白的啤酒后，看到针对 BK IV 型的抗体水平逐渐上升，这让他感到安心。而针对 II 型亚型的抗体水平上升得更为迅速。
Antibodies against subtypes I and II reached the threshold considered protective for transplant patients, but those against type IV didn’t make the mark. There are no blood test results from his brother or the other family members who quaffed the beer.
针对 I 型和 II 型亚型的抗体水平达到了被认为对移植患者具有保护作用的阈值，但针对 IV 型的抗体未能达到这一标准。至于他哥哥以及其他饮用过这种啤酒的家人，目前并没有相应的血液检测结果。
Buck says his self-experiment illustrates that a person can be safely immunized against BK polyomaviruses through drinking beer. But even though Buck produced antibodies, there is no guarantee others will. And right now, people who drink the vaccine beer won’t know whether they produce antibodies or if any antibodies they do produce will be sufficient to protect them from developing cancer or other serious health problems later.
巴克表示，他的自我实验表明，人们可以通过饮用啤酒的方式，安全地对 BK 多瘤病毒产生免疫反应。但即便巴克本人产生了抗体，也无法保证其他人同样如此。而且目前，饮用疫苗啤酒的人并不知道自己是否会产生抗体，或即便产生了抗体，这些抗体是否足以在未来保护他们免于罹患癌症或其他严重健康问题。
Other scientists familiar with Buck and his yeast project also have conflicting opinions about how it might influence public trust and acceptance of vaccines.
其他一些熟悉巴克及其酵母项目的科学家，对这一做法可能如何影响公众对疫苗的信任与接受程度，也持有不同看法。
If something were to go wrong when a person tried to replicate Buck’s beer experiment, Imperiale worries about “the harm that it could do to our ability to administer vaccines that have been tested, tried and true, and just the more general faith that the public has in us scientists. Right now, the scientific community has to think about everything it does and answer the question, ‘Is what we’re doing going to cause more distrust amongst the public?’”
如果有人在尝试复制巴克的啤酒实验时出了问题，因佩里亚莱担心，“这可能会损害我们推广那些经过充分测试、行之有效的疫苗的能力，也会伤害公众对我们科学家的整体信任。如今，科学界在做任何事情之前，都必须问自己一个问题：‘我们正在做的事情，会不会让公众更加不信任我们？’”
That’s especially true now that health officials in the Trump administration are slashing funding for vaccine research, undermining confidence in vaccines and limiting access to them. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans are still confident that childhood vaccines are highly effective at preventing illness. But there has been an erosion of trust in the safety of those vaccines, particularly among Republicans.
在特朗普政府的卫生官员大幅削减疫苗研究经费、削弱公众对疫苗的信心并限制疫苗获取的背景下，这种担忧显得尤为突出。皮尤研究中心最近的一项民调显示，大多数美国人仍然相信儿童疫苗在预防疾病方面非常有效，但人们对这些疫苗安全性的信任正在下降，尤其是在共和党人中更为明显。
“Coming up with new modes of administration of vaccines is way overdue,” Caplan says. But given all the controversies swirling around vaccines, Buck’s do-it-yourself approach could backfire and “take a good idea he has and ruin it,” he says. “Vaccine doubts and fears and antivaccine attitudes could easily undercut what could be something useful.”
“开发新的疫苗接种方式早就该提上日程了，”卡普兰说。但在围绕疫苗的各种争议之下，巴克这种“自己动手”的方式可能会适得其反，“把他原本的一个好点子给毁了”。他说，“疫苗相关的怀疑、恐惧以及反疫苗情绪，很容易削弱本来可能非常有价值的东西。”
Preston Estep, a geneticist and entrepreneur who made his own DIY nasal spray vaccine against COVID-19, disagrees with Caplan’s assessment. “Bioethicists and public health officials often say that X, Y or Z is going to erode public trust in vaccines, and they actually don’t have any idea either whether or not that’s true,” says Estep, founder and chief scientist of the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative, a COVID-19 vaccine research and development nonprofit group. The group of scientists and citizen scientists from around the world tested Estep’s nasal vaccine on themselves months before COVID-19 vaccines became available, though there is only anecdotal data on its effectiveness. In 2024, the group shifted to a vaccine formulation that has been shown to produce immunity in animals.
遗传学家兼企业家普雷斯顿·埃斯特普（Preston Estep）曾自制针对新冠病毒的鼻喷疫苗，他并不同意卡普兰的判断。“生物伦理学家和公共卫生官员经常说，某种做法会削弱公众对疫苗的信任，但他们其实也并不知道这是否真的如此，”埃斯特普说。他是新冠疫苗研发非营利组织“快速部署疫苗协作组织”的创始人兼首席科学家。该组织由来自世界各地的科学家和公民科学家组成，在新冠疫苗正式问世前数月，就已在自身身上测试了埃斯特普的鼻喷疫苗，尽管其有效性目前仅有零星的轶事性证据。2024 年，该团队转向了一种已被证明能够在动物中诱导免疫反应的疫苗配方。
If the vaccine beer proves effective and safe, it could build, not erode, public trust, Estep says. “It allows people to experience vaccines in a really prosaic sort of comfort food or comfort beverage approach.” And since Buck’s brother is selling yeast that people would need to homebrew into a liquid vaccine, “what I argue is that they’re not selling a vaccine, they’re selling a vaccine factory,” Estep says.
埃斯特普认为，如果疫苗啤酒最终被证明既安全又有效，它可能会增强而非削弱公众信任。“它让人们以一种非常日常、像安慰性食物或饮料那样的方式来接触疫苗。”此外，由于巴克的兄弟出售的是需要人们自行酿制成液体疫苗的酵母，“我认为他们卖的并不是疫苗，而是一个‘疫苗工厂’，”埃斯特普说。
Buck says it’s more important than ever for people who want protection against diseases to have another option. Even with the Trump administration’s “saber-rattling, they cannot stop people from cooking in their own kitchen.” It’s not ideal to have to home brew your own vaccine, he admits. But “if nothing else works, or if the administration goes bananas and tries to shut it all down commercially, this is what we’re going to have to resort to.”
巴克表示，对于那些希望获得疾病防护的人来说，拥有另一种选择比以往任何时候都更为重要。即便特朗普政府不断“虚张声势”，也无法阻止人们在自家厨房里动手操作。他承认，自行酿制疫苗并不理想，但“如果其他办法都行不通，或者政府真的发疯，试图在商业层面彻底封堵这一切，那这就是我们不得不采取的方式。”
Buck feels a moral imperative to move forward with his self-experiments and to make polyomavirus vaccine beer available to everyone who wants it. “This is the most important work of my whole career,” he says. “It’s important enough to risk my career over.” What he’s doing in his home lab is consistent with his day job, he adds. “At the NIH in my contract it says my job is to generate and disseminate scientific knowledge,” he says. “This is my only job, to make knowledge and put it out there and try to sell it to the public.”
巴克认为，自己在道德上有责任继续推进自我实验，并让所有有需要的人都能获得多瘤病毒疫苗啤酒。“这是我整个职业生涯中最重要的工作，”他说，“重要到值得我为此冒上职业生涯的风险。”他还补充说，自己在家中实验室所做的事情，与他的本职工作是一致的。“在 NIH，我的合同里写明，我的职责是产生并传播科学知识，”他说，“这就是我唯一的工作——创造知识，把它公布出来，并努力让公众接受。”
He doesn’t see himself as a maverick. “I’m not a radical who’s trying to subvert the system. I’m obeying the system, and I’m using the only thing that is left available to me.”
他并不认为自己是一个特立独行的人。“我不是试图颠覆体制的激进分子。我是在遵循体制规则，只是利用了我所剩下的、唯一可用的途径。”
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这是我至少两周以来听到的最酷的事了！一路顺风，兄弟！一路顺风！
This is amazing, never thought a beer could be a vaccine
太惊人了，从没想过啤酒还能当疫苗。
Why not drink a few. Go for it. the world will be a better place after it.
那就多喝几杯吧，放手去做。之后世界会变得更好。
Giving this to my newborn
要把这个给我刚出生的宝宝用。
So many health science breakthroughs were discovered like this, and with pharmaceutical companies sadly more interested in researching for profitable over life saving we might have to go back this way
很多健康科学的突破都是这样发现的。而如今制药公司遗憾地更关注盈利而非救命，我们或许不得不回到这种方式。
I predict a slight dropoff of the anti-vax movement, that will begin to get more and more steep, when you start including variety in flavors
我预测，一旦开始加入不同口味，反疫苗运动会先小幅下降，随后下降趋势会越来越明显。
How is this beer a vaccine? Does the beer have a vaccine injected in it or does the yeast make virus protein?
这啤酒是怎么成为疫苗的？是往啤酒里注射了疫苗，还是酵母自己产生病毒蛋白？
Excuse me?! Say less?!? Where can I get a keg????
等等？！别说了？！我在哪儿能买一桶？？？？
God bless that man for trying to get the MAGA crowd vaccinated.
愿上帝保佑这个努力让 MAGA 群体接种疫苗的人。
注：特朗普的狂热支持者
It greatly reminds me of Broncho-Vaxom, which is an oral vaccine used to help prevent certain bacterial respiratory illnesses. One thing I’m curious about is how it might affect gut health. Since the primary mechanism of vaccines is inducing inflammation, could oral forms contribute to leaky gut syndrome or other gastrointestinal issues?
这让我很想起 Broncho-Vaxom，一种用于预防某些细菌性呼吸道疾病的口服疫苗。我好奇的一点是，它会如何影响肠道健康。既然疫苗的主要机制是诱导炎症，口服形式是否可能导致肠漏综合征或其他胃肠道问题？
hey I was thinking the same thing but not bear exactly but kind of a drink, which can reduce inflammation, boost Immunity and some antimicrobial effect
嘿，我之前也在想类似的事，不过不一定是啤酒，而是一种可以减轻炎症、增强免疫力并具有一定抗菌作用的饮料。
Transplant recipient here! Thanks Chris!
我是器官移植受者！谢谢你，Chris！