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LEEK, England (LifeSiteNews) – The U.K. government has awarded a multimillion pound grant to a chemical manufacturing facility in the English midlands to produce a crucial component for mRNA COVID shots, describing the inoculations as “gene therapies.”

Croda International, a chemicals manufacturer in England, has been granted an eye-watering £15.9 million grant ($20.85 million) “to increase the UK’s capacity to manufacture key vaccine ingredients,” the British government website states.

The public grant will be used by Croda to create lipids, an essential part of the current crop of mRNA-based COVID jabs, to help produce 3 billion doses of the shots from 2023 “as well as other gene therapies,” the government press release reads.

Continuing, the government revealed its intention to invest in mRNA innovations more broadly, funding the application of the technology in flu shots and “gene therapies for cancer and heart disease.”

At the same time, the government announced a £354 million ($465 million) injection for “UK life sciences,” including the Vaccine Taskforce, “to secure innovations and opportunities that have emerged during the pandemic as outlined in the ‘Living with COVID-19’ plan,” the press statement read.

Until now, the British establishment had denied the claim that mRNA-developed COVID jabs are actually gene therapies and not traditional vaccines, with key public figures often maligning those who vocally support the distinction.

In January, Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused those opposed to taking the novel therapy of being categorically against vaccination in general and described their objections to the coerced administration of the technology as “mumbo jumbo” and “complete nonsense.”

The state-funded BBC also accused podcaster Joe Rogan of spreading “false and misleading claims” earlier this year, taking umbrage with his comments affirming that the COVID shots are indeed gene therapies and not ordinary vaccines.

The BBC argued that the technology does not alter a person’s genes, misrepresenting Rogan’s claim as a way of discrediting him without grappling with his statement.

However, last year Stefan Oelrich, the president of Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, confirmed the British government’s renewed position on the jabs, explaining at an October conference that the mRNA technology found in Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID shots is a “cell and gene therapy” marketed as a vaccine in order to appease the public.

In comments delivered during the 2021 World Health Summit, Oelrich said that alongside manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, Bayer too was “really taking that leap [to drive innovation] … in cell and gene therapies,” adding that “ultimately the mRNA vaccines are an example for that cell and gene therapy.”

“I always like to say: if we had surveyed two years ago in the public – ‘would you be willing to take a gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?’ – we probably would have had a 95% refusal rate,” Oelrich stated.

Furthermore, mRNA technology pioneer Dr. Robert W. Malone has argued that a COVID shot which makes use of mRNA is “gene therapy applied to vaccines” and insisted that individuals therefore “have a right to be wary about a new technology that is not well understood.”

Indeed, Moderna submitted an appeal to the U.S. government in August 2020 to class its COVID shot as a vaccine and not a gene therapy, as it is recognized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in order to avoid any negative association between their new drug and the fledgling technology.

The company recognized that with “the European Union, mRNA has been characterized as a Gene Therapy Medicinal Product,” arguing that “side effects observed in gene therapy could negatively impact the perception of mRNA medicines.”

“In addition, because no product in which mRNA is the primary active ingredient has been approved, the regulatory pathway for approval is uncertain,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and CFO David Meline wrote.

Owing to the uncertain nature of mRNA technology, the executives were worried that “the classification of some of our mRNA investigational medicines as gene therapies in the United States, the European Union, and potentially other countries could adversely impact our ability to develop our investigational medicines, and could negatively impact our platform and our business.”

According to the U.K.’s Yellow Card Reporting System for medicinal adverse effects, the three available COVID jabs from Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca have given rise to 1,475,298 adverse event reports, 2,075 of which were deaths, from 450,567 individuals between the release of the shots in December 2020 and March 23, 2022.

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