Geez Sparky, this guy has caused thousands of deaths in Idaho, since he was listened to... and they fired or they quit Health directors who knew what they were doing.... He's giving you FAKE NEWS.
Please for the love of God, fact check these white coat doctors and their videos!!!! Please, please, please!
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A viral video features a doctor making dubious claims about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments at a forum hosted by Idaho's lieutenant governor. Dr. Ryan Cole claims mRNA vaccines cause cancer and autoimmune diseases, but the lead author of the paper on which Cole based that claim told us there is...
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SciCheck Digest
A viral video features a doctor making dubious claims about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments at a forum hosted by Idaho’s lieutenant governor. Dr. Ryan Cole claims mRNA vaccines cause cancer and autoimmune diseases
, but the lead author of the paper on which Cole based that claim told us there is no evidence mRNA vaccines cause those ailments.
How do we know vaccines are safe?
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Update, Aug. 27: The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which was previously authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, received full approval from the agency on Aug. 23 for people 16 years of age and older.
More than 565,000 people have
died from COVID-19 in the U.S., but two effective mRNA vaccines are now available.
Some treatments for certain patients, such as those hospitalized or receiving oxygen, have also been approved or authorized by federal agencies, and they continue to be studied.
Since the pandemic began, however,
politicized social media posts have featured doctors, some looking authoritative in white coats, spreading dubious claims about both vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. The most recent example in this misinformation niche is Dr. Ryan Cole, who owns a medical lab in Idaho.
Cole is featured in a video that has amassed more than a million views. He makes a variety of claims, some of which we’ve addressed before.
The video was recorded while he spoke at a forum on March 4 hosted by Idaho’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, a Republican, and it was posted by a Libertarian organization called the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
McGeachin was featured in an October post by that group, posing with a Bible and a gun in a video that advocated against public health measures related to the pandemic and asked viewers to sign a statement saying that “any order issued in the future will be ignored.”
Cole said in an interview with FactCheck.org that he’s “not affiliated with any political party, group or organization.” According to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office, Cole is registered as a Republican.
In the March 4 video, Cole makes claims suggesting that federal agencies have acted nefariously, as well as claims that undermine vaccines and promise miracle treatments.
We’ll address his four main claims.
- Although there is no evidence to support this, Cole suggested that some of the COVID-19 vaccines could cause cancer or autoimmune diseases.
- Again, without evidence, Cole suggested that the federal government withheld a treatment for COVID-19 in order to “vend” a vaccine.
- Studies haven’t proved that ivermectin is effective in treating COVID-19, but Cole claimed that federal agencies “have suppressed this life-saving medication.”
- Cole said public health officials should encourage people to take vitamin D supplements rather than wear masks or stay physically distant from others
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These are the first vaccines using mRNA technology authorized in the U.S., but scientists have been developing and testing mRNA vaccines for years, including in people during clinical trials. Still, misinformation exploiting fears of this new technology has been common online.
To those bogus claims, Cole has now added: “mRNA trials in mammals have led to odd cancers. mRNA trials on mammals have led to autoimmune diseases — not right away, six, nine, 12 months later.”
We asked Cole to provide support for those claims, and he referred us to a 2018 paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery that reviewed trials and studies of various, earlier mRNA vaccines.
But that paper doesn’t support his statement.
Norbert Pardi, a research assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, was the lead author of the paper. He told us in an email, “No publications demonstrate that mRNA vaccines cause cancer or autoimmune diseases.”
Pardi’s 19-page paper does make one passing reference to autoimmune diseases, which is what Cole highlighted to us.
The paper says: “A possible concern could be that some mRNA-based vaccine platforms induce potent type I interferon responses, which have been associated not only with inflammation but also potentially with autoimmunity. Thus, identification of individuals at an increased risk of autoimmune reactions before mRNA vaccination may allow reasonable precautions to be taken.”
But, Pardi explained, he and the other researchers included that passage because they wanted to note some potential concerns. However, he emphasized that “no scientific evidence has confirmed that these concerns are real.”
It’s also worth noting that the paper predated the COVID-19 pandemic by two years, so it doesn’t include any information specifically about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Simply put, “there is no scientific evidence that shows that mRNA vaccines cause autoimmune diseases,” Pardi said. “Multiple clinical trials have been performed with mRNA vaccines in the past 10 years and none of them found that mRNA vaccination caused autoimmune diseases. Further, we are not aware of any studies showing an autoimmune disease appearing many months after vaccination as Dr. Cole inaccurately suggests.”
