11-29-2021, 03:22 PM
Can mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines cause prion disease or Alzheimer’s? | Science-Based Medicine (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
Quote:Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began and antivaxxers made common cause with COVID-19 cranks, deniers, and conspiracy theorists, I’ve been repeating a simple message: Everything old is new again. The pandemic has resulted in a lot of scientists and other people paying attention to the antivaccine movement in a way that they never have before. Many of these newbies have been amazed at some of the antivaccine misinformation and disinformation that have been spread about the new COVID-19 vaccines. False antivax claims about these vaccines include a veritable antivax “greatest hits” of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and distortions, a veritable playbook of claims that COVID-19 vaccines kill, cause miscarriages and/or infertility, cause autoimmune disease, “permanently alter your DNA“, are unnecessary because COVID-19 is not dangerous, that the number of cases are exaggerated, and that the vaccines are filled with “toxins” (in the case of the mRNA vaccines, the lipid nanoparticles used to encapsulate the mRNA coding for COVID-19 spike protein). Now two more famous antivax claims from the past are popping up in my social media feeds, and they are related. I’m referring to the false claim that the COVID-19 vaccines cause prion disease and that they cause Alzheimer’s disease. We have “immunologist” Dr. J. Bart Classen to thank for this disinformation and antivaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for spreading it.