A claim has gone viral on social media that says that the “Pfizer’s head of research” had warned that the drug company’s new COVID-19 vaccine would cause sterilization in women.
However, we found no such mention in any of the studies published on the vaccine. The vaccine, which has already been approved by the United Kingdom has proven to be 95 percent effective in preventing infections, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety concerns.
CLAIM
The viral claim reads, "The vaccine contains a spike protein (see image) called syncytin-1, vital for the formation of human placenta in women. If the vaccine works so that we form an immune response AGAINST the spike protein, we are also training the female body to attack syncytin-1, which could lead to infertility in women of an unspecified duration."
It was shared widely on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
The source of the claim is a blog called Health and Money News that contains several direct quotes from Dr Michael Yeadon. However, the claim wrongly identifies Yeadon as the head of research at Pfizer when in reality, he left the company nine years ago in 2011. According to his biographical information in the blog “Lockdown Sceptics”, where Yeadon has written in the past, he was the vice president and chief scientist for allergy and respiratory illnesses.
Pfizer’s publicly available study on the vaccine does not mention any risk of sterility. Pfizer has obtained permission to administer the vaccine in at least two countries - the United Kingdom and Bahrain.
The vaccine trials are also being tracked by the World Health Organisation and it has found that none of these potential vaccines differentiate between male and female test subjects.
Pfizer, in a press statement, said that the final analysis of the Phase 3 trial of the vaccine showed it was 95 percent effective in preventing infections, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety concerns.
Pfizer also became the first pharmaceutical firm to seek emergency use authorisation from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Thus, there is no study to prove that vaccines against COVID-19 will affect fertility.
Moreover, both Dr Wodarg and Dr Yeadon are repeat offenders and have spread misinformation on COVID-19 and the coronavirus vaccine before. Dr Wodarg has previously claimed that the mRNA vaccines will alter human DNA - a claim that was fact-checked by The Quint. Dr Yeadon, in a blog post, had falsely claimed that the “pandemic is effectively over” in October.
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