Let me attempt to explain why I believe that Big Pharma’s push for monoclonal antibody treatments may have played a role in the development of the more contagious B.1.1.7 coronavirus mutant strain was discovered in the UK and is now spreading around the world at incredible speed.

The coronavirus is an RNA virus that mutates more often than DNA viruses because RNA is more unstable than DNA. When the virus makes millions of copies of itself in our bodies, we can end up with some viruses that by random chance are not exactly the same as their parent copies.

Normally, when our own bodies mount an immune response to the virus, we send an arsenal of different weapons against the invaders. We have T-cells that directly kill virally infected cells by recognizing a viral protein that the cell randomly expresses on its surface like a flag.

We also have B-cells that make antibodies that can attack specific parts of the coronavirus. But we don’t have just one kind of B-cell that recognizes just one tiny part of the coronavirus. We have many B-cells making many different antibodies that attack many parts of the virus.

We call them polyclonal antibodies because there are many different antibodies that function as different types of keys that attack different parts of the virus. The same concept is true for the T-cells which have different T-cell receptors recognizing different viral components.

But now let’s talk about monoclonal antibodies created in the lab. These antibodies come from just one kind of B-cell and are all exact clones of each other with no variation. They all bind to one tiny part of the coronavirus’ spike protein like a bunch of identical Agent Smiths.

Now imagine that you have millions of coronavirus copies with a few mutant ones floating around by random chance. If you have a natural immune response with many slightly different T-cells and B-cells attacking the viruses, it’s hard for a mutation to evade all defenses at once.

But if you receive monoclonal antibodies, then perhaps 99.9% of all the viruses can be destroyed by the highly specific key that fits into the highly specific lock on the virus. But if 0.01% of the viruses have a mutation that allows them to escape, those survivors will thrive.

If you think about it, antibodies are nature’s most highly specific keys that are far more specific and selective than the key to your door or the password to your bank account. If you send mere clones of them to fight the coronavirus, you apply selection pressure for a mutation.

Viruses having the random ability to mutate and adapt to individual single defenses is the reason why we use a cocktail of 3 different antiviral drugs at once including reverse transcriptase and fusion inhibitors to fight HIV before it mutates to adapt to each drug individually.