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<\/p>\nA video post claims pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine contains ingredients that will cause infertility, and that immunized men can make unvaccinated women sterile, which would cause a\u00a0global population decline. This is false; the drug company does not have its own Covid-19 vaccine, and doctors say such shots could not cause infertility.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig Pharma whistleblower: \u201897% of corona vaccine recipients will become infertile,\u2019\u201d reads the title of an 11-minute\u00a0video\u00a0published on June 17, 2020, on the website of ex-soccer pro and conspiracy theorist David Icke, which has\u00a0circulated on social media\u00a0as recently as March 2021.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The video, a segment from\u00a0former Infowars host\u00a0David Knight, features a man identified as Ben Fellows.<\/p>\n
Fellows claims that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for a researcher to run human trials for the vaccine from Britain\u2019s\u00a0GlaxoSmithKline\u00a0(GSK), and that the shot contains ingredients that will cause sterility in both men and women, with immunized men able to make unvaccinated women infertile through sex.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re looking at a global population reduction,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
February 2021 Facebook posts\u00a0here\u00a0and\u00a0here\u00a0and an Instagram post\u00a0here\u00a0make similar claims involving GSK, although they do not mention Covid-19.<\/p>\n
GSK\u00a0has not produced its own Covid-19 vaccine and is instead collaborating with partner organizations by contributing its adjuvant technology. Those partnerships have yet to result in a vaccine available to the general public.<\/p>\n
An adjuvant is an ingredient added to some vaccines that help create a stronger immune response in people receiving it, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
Both the video and text claims refer to human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH).<\/p>\n
HCG is a hormone produced during pregnancy, which pregnancy tests are designed to detect.<\/p>\n
GnRH is a reproductive regulatory hormone present in both men and women. In men, it helps control sperm production and in women, it is key during menstruation and pregnancy.<\/p>\n
A company spokesman confirmed that GSK\u2019s pandemic adjuvant does not contain GnRH or any hCG or GnRH antagonists that would inhibit hormone function.<\/p>\n
Ingredient information for the three vaccines that have received a US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization are available for Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. None list hCG or GnRH.<\/p>\n
Dr Kate White, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at Boston University School of Medicine, said: \u201cThere\u2019s no vaccine in the world that can cause infertility.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was confirmed by Dr John Amory, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.<\/p>\n
And while the video claims that the vaccine causes infertility, the doctors noted that there is not even an injectable male contraceptive approved for use.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are multiple products in development, but none are close to being commercially available,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
Asked if she would recommend that patients trying to conceive get a Covid-19 shot, White replied \u201c100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The risk of contracting Covid-19 is much higher than the remote risk of yet-to-be-seen vaccine side effects, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreserving fertility is very important to my patients,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I still recommend that all of them get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the video, Fellows claims that sperm could be damaged as a result of vaccination, and then cause infertility in unvaccinated women.<\/p>\n
Amory, who has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers about male reproduction and contraception, disputed that assertion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no possible way that dead sperm from any cause would make a woman infertile,\u201d Amory said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve encountered many couples in whom the men have \u2018dead\u2019 (usually severely deformed) sperm\u2026 Most of these couples eventually conceive using in vitro fertilization and\/or donor sperm, so exposure to bad sperm doesn\u2019t have any impact on the fertility of their female partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
White agreed, explaining that \u201cmen have low sperm counts with damaged sperm all the time and it doesn\u2019t affect their partner\u2019s fertility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snippets of the video and text claims borrow phrasing from a 1989 study on fertility in baboons.<\/p>\n
For example, \u201cthe principle of anti-hCG vaccine is to induce antibodies which can bind to hCG and render it biologically inactive\u201d appears in the abstract section of the 32-year-old study, and almost word-for-word in the text claims.<\/p>\n
In the video, Fellows says \u201csperm-specific mitochondrial antigen produced an antibody response in baboons and reduced fertility in the females.\u201d This is also in the study abstract.<\/p>\n
White clarified that the phrase \u201creduced fertility\u201d may refer to contraception rather than infertility.<\/p>\n
Plus, \u201cwe can never extrapolate the results from animal studies to imply how they\u2019ll work in humans \u2014 it\u2019s why human trials are always required.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both the video and the text posts say the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided a \u00a328 million \u2014 or about $39 million \u2014 grant to Dr Andrew Preston to conduct human trials for the supposedly infertility-causing shots.<\/p>\n
In an email, the foundation called the claims \u201cfalse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preston, a researcher at the University of Bath, also responded to the claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story is false, and mistakenly refers to a large EU project of which I am a partner. The total project funding is \u20ac28m, ($33.4 million) however only \u20ac7 million of this is from the Gates Foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The PERISCOPE project\u00a0is dedicated to researching whooping cough vaccines, and \u201chas nothing to do with Covid-19,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the funding is not for him directly, but rather for the project as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe notion of Covid vaccines being designed to cause infertility is simply ridiculous,\u201d Preston said.<\/p>\n
He advised people to \u201cinsist on seeing the evidence behind any stories that suggest Covid-19 vaccines are designed to do anything other than prevent Covid-19 disease. Not rumors or conspiracies, the factual evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vaccine-related conspiracy theories about Gates are not new. AFP Fact Check has debunked claims about the philanthropist\u00a0here,\u00a0here, and\u00a0here, and a claim about Pfizer\u2019s Covid-19 vaccines causing female sterilization\u00a0here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A video post claims pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine contains ingredients that will cause infertility,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"yoast_head":"\n