mRNA COVID Shots May Cause Myocarditis — But Nothing Else, HHS-Funded Report Concludes
In what one critic called a “whitewash of the horrible truth regarding COVID-19 vaccines,” a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine confirmed a causal link between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis — but rejected a causal link between the vaccines and a host of other adverse effects.
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A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) confirmed a causal link between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis — but rejected a causal link between the vaccines and a host of other adverse effects including female infertility, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Bell’s palsy, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome and heart attack.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, called the NASEM report a “whitewash of the horrible truth regarding COVID-19 vaccines.”
Hooker told The Defender:
“The propaganda is so thick in the report it is difficult to know where to start. Although the NASEM report authors found a link between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, they said it was mild — which couldn’t be further from the truth. It is shameful that they would downplay such a debilitating and life-changing adverse event from COVID-19 vaccines.”
The Health Resources and Services Administration, a subagency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), sponsored the report. According to a NASEM press release, Health Resources asked NASEM to convene a committee to review the evidence of adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccines used in the U.S.
The Health Resources and Services Administration oversees the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, which handles claims by people seeking compensation for a COVID-19 vaccine injury.
NASEM’s 15-member committee reviewed evidence of 19 potential harms related to COVID-19 vaccines for which people had submitted compensation claims. The committee sought to “make conclusions about the causal association between vaccines and specific adverse events,” the report said.
The list of conditions people sought compensation claims for included Guillain-Barré syndrome, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, Bell’s palsy, transverse myelitis, chronic headache, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), sensorineural hearing loss, tinnitus, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, immune thrombocytopenic purpura, capillary leak syndrome, myocardial infarction (heart attack), ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, venous thromboembolism, myocarditis, pericarditis, sudden death and female infertility.
“Our committee found that in many cases, if not most, evidence was insufficient to accept or reject causality for a particular potential harm from a specific COVID-19 vaccine,” said Committee Vice Chair Anne Bass, professor of clinical medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, and a rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Presbyterian Hospital.
“In other cases, we did find sufficient evidence to favor rejection, favor acceptance, or establish causality,” she added.
‘Insufficient evidence’ to draw conclusions about COVID shots and kids
Bass and the other committee members examined evidence related to Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA shots (Comirnaty and Spikevax, respectively), the non-mRNA Novavax shot and the non-mRNA Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) shot.
They said the evidence established a causal relationship between both mRNA vaccines and myocarditis.
However, they concluded there was inadequate evidence to accept or reject a causal relationship between any of the vaccines and pericarditis without myocarditis, and inadequate evidence to accept or reject a causal relationship between either the Novavax or Janssen shots and myocarditis.
The authors said the evidence was strong enough to reject a causal relationship between the two mRNA vaccines and infertility, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Bell’s palsy, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome and heart attack, while noting the Janssen shot may cause thrombocytopenia and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
They also said there was inadequate evidence to accept or reject a causal relationship for ischemic stroke for all vaccine types — except Pfizer’s shot for which they considered the evidence strong enough to warrant rejecting a causal relationship.
The committee also reviewed studies on adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccines in children under 18 and said it found insufficient evidence to make conclusions specific to children.
“At the time of the committee’s review,” the press release said, “data on children were only available for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, due to later authorization of COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use in children, and decreased uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in children, particularly those younger than 11.”
Meanwhile, a 2024 peer-reviewed study that analyzed data in VigiBase — the World Health Organization’s global individual case safety report database — found evidence of harm to youth ages 12-17 following COVID-19 vaccination.
By July 2023, there were 80,018 reports in VigiBase of adverse events related to the COVID-19 shots — and 3,594 were flagged as adverse events of special interest, such as myocarditis/pericarditis, multisystem inflammatory syndrome/Kawasaki disease, anaphylaxis, Guillain-Barré syndrome and immune thrombocytopenia, the study authors said.
Additionally, many children have individually gone public with their experiences of being harmed by COVID-19 vaccines, according to Real Not Rare, an “independent, grass-roots movement comprised of thousands of people who have become united through our human suffering.”
Hooker pointed out NASEM’s report was directed by Kathleen Stratton, Ph.D., “who was in charge of covering up the relationship between vaccines and autism for the Institute of Medicine back in 2004.”
“She retired from NASEM after that fraudulent report just to be brought back for the COVID-19 ‘vaccine’ fraud,” Hooker said. “Her condemnation is well-deserved.”
According to their website, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that “provide independent, objective advice to inform policy with evidence.”
The institutions operate under an 1863 congressional charter and receive funding from the U.S. government and “other sponsors.”
Lorri Wilkening Jennings, an advocate for people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines, pointed out that although NASEM is reported as an “independent non-profit,” its 2022 financial statements — which list $18 million in revenue from HHS — suggest otherwise.
Jennings — who began advocating after her mom developed an autoimmune disease following COVID-19 vaccination — told The Defender, “We need truly independent bodies assessing safety and informing doctors of the risks so they can properly give informed consent.”
Ronald N. Kostoff, Ph.D., a former public policy researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology, agreed.
The committee members’ biographies showed most had previously received grants or contracts from HHS, the U.S. Department of Defense and/or the pharmaceutical industry, Kostoff said.
“Most of the data they used for the study appear to be from the literature which we know was censored heavily 1) in favor of articles that promoted the shots and 2) against articles that revealed the damage … [so] the outcome could have been predicted before the first dollar was expended,” according to Kostoff.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, called NASEM a “corrupt organization.”
“Their Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats,” McCullough told The Defender, “includes two of the co-conspirators and creators of SARS-CoV-2, Drs. Ralph Baric and Peter Daszak. Daszak was called back to Congress and is set to appear May 1, 2024, for more questions regarding his role in the Wuhan lab cover-up.”
NASEM “cannot be trusted on any aspect of the pandemic and certainly not the vaccines,” he added.
Report doesn’t match VAERS data
The NASEM report authors did not include Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data as evidence in their review.
VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
VAERS data show 1,635,048 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and March 29, 2024.
Many of the adverse event reports cited the conditions that the NASEM report concluded couldn’t be linked to COVID-19 vaccination, including:
- 3,575 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome.
- 9,378 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccines, including 5,445 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
- 18,036 cases of Bell’s palsy.
- 5,516 cases of myocardial infarction.
Vaccination linked to shoulder injuries
The Health Resources and Services Administration also asked the NASEM committee to review the evidence regarding any vaccine administration — not specifically COVID-19 vaccines — and shoulder injuries, to help its National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program better understand whether vaccination can cause very specific types of shoulder injuries, or a more general syndrome known as “shoulder injury related to vaccine administration.”
The report authors concluded that vaccination may cause four specific shoulder injuries:
- acute subacromial/subdeltoid bursitis caused by direct injection of a vaccine into the bursa;
- acute rotator cuff tendinopathy caused by direct injection into or adjacent to a tendon;
- bone injury caused by direct injection into or adjacent to bone;
- and axial or radial nerve injury due to direct injection into or adjacent to the nerve.
They also said evidence suggests that intramuscular vaccine administration does not cause chronic rotator cuff disease.
Report on COVID harms ‘clearly biased’
Regarding the report’s findings on COVID-19 vaccine harms, Hooker and other critics said they failed to include many studies in their review — and failed to consider the full scope of injuries that have been reported in association with COVID-19 vaccination.
Mark N. Mead, an epidemiologist and public health research scientist, told The Defender the authors’ review of studies was “highly selective” and “clearly biased” in support of “the ‘safe and effective’ narrative.”
The report “completely overlooked the essential findings from Fraiman’s re-analysis of Pfizer and Moderna trial data, revealing alarming rates of serious adverse events (SAEs), with about one SAE for every 800 vaccinees,” Mead said.
The report also failed to cite “virtually all of the most relevant reviews and studies that concern the serious cardiovascular, neurological, hematological, reproductive, and autoimmune events that have been linked with the COVID-19 mRNA products,” he said.
For instance, the report didn’t mention a nearly 400-page 2022 Pfizer report requested by the European Medicines Agency. “By that point,” Mead said, “Pfizer had documented about 1.6 million adverse events covering nearly every organ system … including many different types of tumors, cardiac and vascular disorders, blood and lymphatic disorders, psychiatric disorders, and neurological disorders.”
Kostoff also criticized the report’s narrow scope. “Why wasn’t the committee asked to look at all adverse effects from the COVID-19 injections, or at least all major adverse effects?” he asked.
Kostoff told The Defender he recently wrote an op-ed on the published COVID-19 injury literature in which he identified the full scope of injuries. “My database consisted of 12,000+ Pubmed articles, and showed damage across approximately 25 thematic disease areas.”
Most of these disease areas — such as endocrine disorders, metabolic disorders, kidney disorders and cancer — were not included in the NASEM report, he said.
‘From a cautionary perspective, you want the public to know this’
According to Mead, epidemiological reviews of COVID-19 vaccine safety that focus on proving the vaccine caused a particular outcome are problematic.
“Because most of this published research is observational and non-randomized,” he said, “establishing causality based on those studies alone is an exercise in futility.”
But “causality can certainly be inferred … by applying a mechanism-based rationale to the many studies and trial re-analyses showing strong associations,” Mead said.
In other words, researchers may find it difficult to outright prove causation, but they can highlight evidence that suggests a risk so people are aware. “From a cautionary perspective, you want the public to know this.”
The report authors deceptively used the language of causality in their report, Mead said. For example, the report cites evidence suggesting the Pfizer shot does not cause ischemic strokes. “However, this emphasis on causality is a bit of linguistic subterfuge.”
Mead said, “Ischemic stroke is clearly one of the strongest signals produced by both the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA products, as evidenced in the large disproportionality analysis by Ming-Ming Yan and colleagues — which NASEM again conveniently fails to mention.”
Jessica Rose, Ph.D., told The Defender she found the authors’ conclusions about causality “alarmingly passive” and wanted to know how they reached their conclusions. “For example, were the Bradford Hill criteria used, and how many criteria had to be satisfied to indicate causation?”
Bradford Hill criteria is a set of principles commonly used in epidemiology for establishing a causal relationship.
NASEM did not respond when asked by The Defender what criteria were used to establish or deny causality.
NASEM also did not respond to The Defender’s request to clarify the committee’s literature review timeframe — as in whether the committee considered recently published studies or looked only at those published from 2020 to 2023.
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