Original article (in Croatian) was published on 11/01/2022
The website Epoha contributes to the spread of disinformation placed by the international anti-vaccination organization, of which the Croatian Initiative Hipokrat is a member.
“The World Council for Health calls for an urgent halt to experimental ‘vaccines’ against Covid-19” – this is the title of an article (archived here) found on the website Epoha, which has been spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination. (1, 2)
The call for an urgent halt to “experimental vaccines” is signed by names we have encountered several times, revealing the inaccuracy of disinformation in the digital space.
Some of them are Dolores Cahill, an Irish scientist who often spreads disinformation and unfounded claims about the vaccine and about whom we have written on several occasions (1, 2, 3). There is also Sucharit Bhakdi, a retired microbiologist whose disinformation about the pandemic and vaccine have been recycled for months on the Internet (1, 2, 3). They are also accompanied by a former employee of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Michael Yeadon, whose inaccurate claims we also addressed in our writings (1, 2, 3).
People who are also included in the World Council for Health are Vladimir Zelenko, an American general practitioner who became famous after he began spreading pseudo-scientific claims about the Covid-19 vaccine, and a German doctor Wolfgang Wodarg, who incorrectly claimed that coronavirus is no more dangerous than the flu.
“All of them very persistently and consistently warn the world of the harmful effects resulting from experimental vaccines against Covid 19; warning of their long-term effects, which cannot be known at this time because most clinical trials will not be completed by 2023, and some only in 2025”, states Epoha’s article.
In addition, it is alleged that the Council states that any participation in the production, distribution, administration and promotion of vaccines violates fundamental principles of customary law, constitutional law and natural justice, as well as the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki and other international treaties.
The anti-vaxxers’ association
Although the World Council for Health sounds like a formal association with scientific authority, it is not.
More information on how the initiative came about can be found on the initiative’s official website.
In March 2021, with the help of donations, the company EbMCsquared CiC was established, which, according to the Council’s website, is focused on community health. The UK-based company today manages three new global health initiatives.
In addition to the World Council for Health, there is the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD), which aims to make ivermectin available worldwide for the treatment of Covid-19 (although claims that ivermectin treats Covid-19 have no clear basis in scientific knowledge). The company also includes the My Health Society initiative, which advocates a new holistic model of health care based on the principles of “not doing harm, taking responsibility for our own health and freedom to choose the way we stay healthy”.
As it can be found on the website, the World Health Council has over 100 initiatives in its membership around the world. One of them is the Initiative Hipokrat from Croatia.
As Faktograf has already written earlier, this is an alleged medical initiative for which it is not known who are the initiative’s members nor how many members it has. An unknown group addressed the media for the first time in November last year in an “open letter,” which most media, however, since it was anonymous, did not publish. In addition to spreading factually inaccurate and unfounded claims, the Initiative Hipokrat also participated in the organization of protests against epidemiological measures.
Disinformation
Here, we will only briefly look at the inaccurate and scientifically unfounded claims found in the World Council for Health statement published by the website Epoha.
First of all, as we have written many times (1, 2, 3, 4), vaccines are not experimental. They were experimental only when undergoing clinical trials before being approved for use and placed on the market.
Vaccines have received conditional approval, a common argument used by opponents of vaccination “to prove” that the vaccine is experimental, although this is not true. Conditional approval, as can be found on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) website, means that the approval process has been accelerated due to a major public health threat, which the Covid-19 pandemic certainly is.
“We now know that children are a hundred times more likely to die from these experimental injections than from Covid-19. Vaccinated athletes around the world are collapsing before our eyes. Even though reporting systems are limited and passive, millions of adverse effects of these vaccines have been reported, including death, paralysis, blood clots, stroke, myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attack, miscarriage, chronic fatigue and extreme depression”, states the article found on the website Epoha.
No specific data or scientific evidence is provided for these claims. So, for example, no research proves that children are a hundred times more likely to die from the vaccine than from Covid-19. If so, we would witness many children dying after vaccination, which is not happening at the moment.
According to a report published on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, Pfizer-BioNTech has been used in 3,109 children aged 5 to 11 in clinical trials. Most side effects were mild to moderate, and no serious vaccine-related side effects were reported.
The CDC also reviewed the side effects of the childhood vaccine reported to VAERS, the vaccine side effect reporting system administered jointly by the CDC and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although this is a database that anti-vaxxers often abuse to manipulate the number of side effects, and through which anyone can report side effects, whether or not they are related to vaccination, the recorded side effects of the childhood vaccine are actually minor.
According to the CDC, in the period between November 3 to December 19, 2021, approximately 8.7 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 were used. During that period, VAERS received only 4,249 reports of side effects after vaccination, of which 4,149 (97.6 percent) were not serious.
We have encountered similar unsubstantiated allegations about the vaccination of children before. In parallel with the start of vaccination of children, claims began to spread on social networks that the vaccine damages children’s brains, which we found to be incorrect.
As for the other claims in the Council’s statement, it is simple enough to look at the side effects data that the EMA regularly publishes on its website to conclude that the claim of millions of reported adverse effects of the vaccine is incorrect.
It is important to note that this is data from the EudraVigilance system, where the input of side effects data is also not limited to medical professionals. In other words, side effects can be reported by anyone, so there is no guarantee that the side effects and deaths reported to that database are indeed the final results of receiving the vaccine, which is stated on the EudraVigilance page as well.
The data, by December 1, 2021, looks like this:
To date, 479,000,000 doses of Pfizer / BioNTech have been administered, and 471,824 adverse reactions have been reported, of which 5,962 are fatal. For the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been received 68,800,000 times, 223,295 side effects have been reported, of which 1,303 are fatal. The Moderna vaccine has been administered in 61,600,000 doses, 108,583 adverse reactions have been reported, 588 with fatal outcomes. The vaccine Janssen was received in 18,100,000 doses, with 31,782 reported side effects, of which 233 were fatal.
According to EMA’s website, most reported side effects are mild and short-lived.
However, a few serious, but very rare side effects, have been reported with some vaccines.
For example, the European Medicines Agency has concluded that there is a possible link between vaccination and blood clotting, i.e., thrombosis, and it is therefore listed as a very rare possible side effect of vaccination. But despite this, the EMA still believes that the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risk of side effects (EMA).
Furthermore, the US CDC also notes that younger men are at greater risk of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination with Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, although patients who develop such conditions after vaccination tend to recover quickly. Therefore, in some countries, such as France and Sweden, it is not recommended to vaccinate people younger than 30 using the Moderna vaccine (1, 2).
Nevertheless, the CDC continues to recommend that everyone over the age of 12 should receive the Covid-19 vaccine, as the risks posed by the disease far outweigh those associated with vaccination.
There are no violations of the code and the convention
Finally, it should be noted that in the case of vaccination of the global population, there is no violation of the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki, and we have written about this on several occasions (1, 2).
The Nuremberg Code is the first international code of ethics in biomedical and biotechnological research examining new methods of treatment and the first document to mention the concept of mandatory or informed consent of the person under experiment. The Code was created after the trial of the Nazis for crimes against humanity, and in 1964, it was supplemented by the Declaration of Helsinki.
All individuals who participated in clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine did so voluntarily; no one forced them to do it.
In addition, for most people, vaccination against Covid-19 is also voluntary. Rare countries have prescribed vaccination obligations for all their citizens (Reuters). Croatia is one of the countries where there is no vaccination obligation.