A VIDEO THAT has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and been shared by Irish social media users features medical misinformation being spread by Robert W Malone, a scientist who claims, somewhat dubiously, to have invented mRNA vaccines.

Among other baseless claims, Malone says that spike proteins produced in the body after a person receives an mRNA vaccine are toxic and will cause organ damage.

“A viral gene will be injected into your children’s cells,” Malone says in the video. “This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These proteins can cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs.

“These types of damages include: damages to their brain and nervous system; their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots; their reproductive system; and these vaccines can trigger fundamental changes in their immune system.”

The spike protein is a part of SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and, despite its name, is actually a complex, not-particularly-spikey-looking structure that helps the virus attach to cells.

As this structure is needed for SARS CoV-2 to infect cells, scientists quickly highlighted it as a potential site to target in order to stop the spread of COVID-19.

More particularly, the mRNA vaccines were designed to spur on the production of these proteins, or part of them, inside the body so that the immune system learns to recognise and destroy them.

The same process is at play when the body fights off a COVID-19 infection; however, with the vaccine there is no mechanism for the spike protein to infect cells or reproduce in the body, so only a limited amount are created, cells aren’t hijacked, and the body is not overwhelmed.

A curious corollary of this is that avoiding a mRNA vaccine might not reduce a person’s exposure to the spike protein – a COVID-19 infection would see literally billions of virions (the complete infectious virus particle) being unleashed inside the body, each with dozens of spike proteins on their surface.

However, there is no clear reason to avoid spike proteins created by mRNA vaccines at all.

“There is absolutely no evidence that the spike proteins generated in response to the Covid-19 vaccine are toxic,” American Academy of Pediatrics fellow Deborah Greenhouse told AFP.

“The spike protein is a useful target for the vaccine because it is different than other proteins that humans can produce. So our immune system is able to recognize it as foreign and mount an immune response against it. There is also no evidence that the spike protein remains in the body longer than other typical proteins and no evidence that it causes significant damage.”

Some studies suggest that the spike protein is responsible for inflammation about the heart; however, evidence for this comes from patients who were infected with COVID-19, not people who had been exposed to the spike protein through mRNA vaccines. 

Rare serious side effects have been reported following mRNA Covid-19 vaccination, including by younger men who have developed myocarditis or pericarditis – inflammation of or around the heart.

“Myocarditis is clearly a consequence of the mRNA vaccine. It’s rare, but it’s real,” Paul Offit, infectious disease physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told AFP. But the condition is “short-lived, transient and self-resolving.”

It is also not clear that this effect is caused by the spike protein itself.

Alexandra Yonts, a paediatric infectious diseases physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington DC, told AFP that rigorous safety follow-up and data collection from the many millions of doses of mRNA vaccines that have been administered “don’t show any evidence of toxicity on a gross scale”.

The European Medicines agency says its continuous monitoring of about 950 million vaccine doses in the European Economic Area shows that they are safe, effective and “serious safety problems are extremely rare”.

The Health Products Regulatory Authority, which monitors medical products in Ireland, found that, of the first 6.5 million mRNA vaccine doses administered in Ireland, “the national reporting experience continues to support the favourable assessment that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the risks”. 

Verdict

There is no evidence that spike proteins produced after a mRNA vaccine will cause permanent organ damage. Malone’s claim is FALSE.

- Additional reporting by AFP

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