- Hey y'all, welcome back.
I'm Mama Doctor Jones.
A board certified OB/GYN and mom to four.
And today we're talking about the COVID vaccination
and if it can cause infertility.
Where did this claim come from?
Is there anything to actually back it up?
And what do you need to know?
My good friend and fertility Doctor, Natalie Crawford, MD,
who also has a YouTube channel has made
a great video on this as well.
So after you watch this one,
if you want a second opinion,
hop on over to her channel and check it out.
I will link her video in the description box below.
If you're new here, please consider subscribing.
We talk about all things reproductive health,
pregnancy, gynecology, periods and so much more.
We'd love to have you.
Now, let's jump into the video.
(upbeat music)
As always, nothing in this video is meant to serve
as medical advice specifically for you.
This should just be a jumping point for you
to get more information and have a conversation
with your own doctor or advanced practice provider.
All of this information is rapidly changing,
and this is up to date to the best of my ability
as of the day of upload.
So where do these claims come from?
The basis of these claims is a real wormhole
of misinformation and confusing kind of
thinking out loud posts from people who just post in
Reddit threads and things like that.
They are scientists and so it makes sense to
at least read them and understand where the concerns
are coming from.
But I do want to note right off the gate,
there's no scientific evidence of anything
that's being claimed in the blog post
that made these initial claims, which basically went viral.
That initial blog post was posted with a title
that said "Former Head of Pfizer Research
"Says That COVID Vaccine Causes Infertility"
So let's just start with who this person is
not because an ad hominem attack is the right way
to go against misinformation,
but I do think it's important to know where
this information is coming from.
This person has not worked for Pfizer
in at least nine or ten years.
And so they are not someone that is really close
to the vaccine development or anything like that,
even though the title is somewhat misleading
when you read it because it kind of seems like
they might be a little more adjacent to it.
It's also somebody who has made claims very recently
that the pandemic is effectively over and not something
that we need to worry about anymore.
So I just think it helps to understand the mindset
of the person who is making these claims.
Now, this post contained a lot of information.
Now, I'm simply gonna focus on the one where they say
that, "Oh my gosh, the vaccine causes infertility,"
let me read you what they say in the post.
The vaccinations are expected to produce antibodies
against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2.
This is true.
We talked about this in my last COVID vaccination video.
The way that this vaccine works is by mRNA,
which is a message to your own body to produce antibodies
which keep the spike protein of Coronavirus
or SARS-CoV-2 from entering into your respiratory system.
So that's accurate so far.
However, spike proteins also contain
Syncytin-1 homologous proteins,
which are essential for the formation of
the placenta in mammals such as humans.
It must be absolutely ruled out that
a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 could trigger
an immune reaction against syncytin-1
as otherwise infertility of indefinite duration
could result in vaccinated women.
There's a lot to tackle in that.
So first we need to talk about what is Syncytin-1?
This is a protein that is integral to
placental development in the embryo.
And it is basically used to get the placenta
to effectively attached to the uterine wall
so that the embryo can continue growing past
about eight or nine weeks.
The idea that these two proteins are so similar
that your antibodies could mount an immune response
is a bit of an extremist claim.
Are they similar?
They do have some similarities,
but a lot of viruses have similarities.
So they would need to be extremely similar.
And we're just not finding that when you actually
look at the genetic sequencing of the spike protein
on SARS-CoV-2 and the syncytin-1 protein
that they're talking about.
This would almost be like claiming
that you could get vaccinated against Ebola,
and that would protect you against SARS-CoV-2,
because those are also relatively similar.
So this is not really a claim that we've seen substantiated,
not only in this exact topic,
but really in any other topic of discussion,
as far as other viruses and vaccines being able to
protect against similarly homologous proteins.
So it is a little bit of a outrageous claim
that comes with really no scientific basis.
They don't have any evidence of this.
It's basically someone thinking out loud about what ifs.
So I agree, we should definitely be considering this
as a possibility, we should be keeping an eye on that,
but you can't just make these claims and say that
people shouldn't be vaccinated because of this.
Should we study it and make sure? Absolutely.
Is the biologic plausibility high enough
that this should be a concern that keeps you
from being vaccinated, particularly when
the antibodies they are claiming would mount
an immune response against that syncytin-1 protein
are the same antibodies you would make if you've got
a natural COVID infection?
So it would make sense to think about this
from the aspect of, well, if those antibodies from a vaccine
would mount an immune response against syncytin-1
after vaccination,
you should be seeing that same effect from antibodies
of people who have had COVID.
So let's talk about that.
Are there people who have had COVID
who then go on to have infertility?
This is also a little bit of a touchy subject for me
because the way that this would actually work
with the syncytin-1 protein would not be
to cause infertility, it would be to cause miscarriage.
The placenta doesn't really fully develop
and start growing the embryo until nine weeks or so.
And if you had a placenta problem,
it wouldn't cause you to not be able to become pregnant,
which has infertility,
it would cause problems with the placenta or miscarriage.
So have we seen people who have COVID-19 end up having
a higher chance of miscarriage?
I have made a video on this before
and the evidence is a little bit lacking still.
However, the evidence that we have right now
does not support an increased risk of early miscarriage,
which is what this would cause in people who've had COVID-19
meaning people who've had COVID-19 and have these antibodies
are not having increased risk of miscarriage.
So why then would we think that people who have antibodies
from the vaccine will be at higher risk of miscarriage?
Could this change?
Could we get some information that we don't have right now?
Absolutely.
This is pandemic medicine and that could happen.
Do I think it's likely that that will happen?
Absolutely not.
It does not seem that the biologic plausibility
is high enough and it is not substantiated by
the current evidence we have regarding COVID-19 infection.
Additionally, if we do wanna talk about it
from an infertility angle, even though that's really not
what antibodies to syncytin-1 if they existed would cause.
We have people who even though it was
highly recommended against and they had to sign paperwork
saying they would be on a reliable form of birth control,
who in the studies were vaccinated against COVID-19
and ended up having surprise pregnancies,
you would really not expect to see that if there was
a vaccine causing infertility, right?
You wouldn't expect to see that even though people
were on contraception or said they were on contraception
and were specifically told to avoid pregnancy
during the trial, ended up getting pregnant.
It's only a small number in the trial,
but it's still enough for us to go,
"You know, I don't know that that really makes sense."
So I think there's a lot of information
that really debunks this claim
as having any substantial evidence at this point.
Again, should we continue to research this? Absolutely.
Should we hold off on vaccinating against a pandemic virus
that is both deadly and dangerous because of some claim
that is essentially pulled from thin air?
I don't think so.
I think that is the wrong way to look at this.
I do think it is really interesting as well
to think about these people who are making claims about
how antibodies to the vaccine would cause all of
these problems,
are also telling people that they don't need to
worry about COVID-19 or try to avoid infection
when it absolutely makes complete sense
the antibodies to infection would react exactly the same
as antibodies that your body made in reaction
to the vaccine.
So it's very incongruent messaging,
they're very worried about antibodies,
but only when they come from the vaccine,
which doesn't make sense because it's the same antibody
that's made just in a little slightly different way,
but it is the same exact antibody when your body makes it.
So that is a little bit of an incongruent message to me
that is concerning and just adds another layer of
this unsubstantiated evidence is being given by people
who seem to have an ulterior motive.
How are we going to continue to gather information on this?
There are ongoing data collection from both the trials
that were done so everybody who got the vaccine
in the original trials is being followed extensively,
as well as post licensure data collection
for anybody who has received the vaccine
under the emergency use authorization from the FDA.
You can, if you've gotten the vaccine
and when you do get your vaccine
and enter in any side effects or complications
that you're having into V-safe, which I will link below,
which is a data tracking place for vaccine side effects.
So please feel free to register for that,
enter any side effects that you might be having
and contribute to this data collection
because I do think it's important.
I do think we need to continue to be curious
and get this information, but at the same time,
this is pandemic medicine and we need to get
our people back to a place of safety.
So I think that the vaccine is safe.
I don't think that there is enough substantiation
of these claims for people to avoid vaccination
for this reason.
And I hope that you will consider getting a second opinion
from Dr. Natalie Crawford if you're still
concerned about it.
I have mostly been talking about infertility
in females in this video,
but there is also some discussion about male infertility
or lower sperm counts.
And we see this with a lot of viruses,
viral infections often cause decreases in sperm count
until the person has completely recovered.
This is not usually permanent,
although there are some rare infections
that can cause permanent infertility or lower sperm counts,
but it's usually something that is recoverable.
So there's an ongoing clinical trial right now
looking at this for both COVID and for COVID vaccination
in people and their sperm counts.
So I think that's worth being aware of,
but I think the fact that we're seeing that with
the infection is more of a reason to look into this with
the vaccine than when we're not seeing it with
the infection in production of pregnancies
or miscarriage and things like that.
So in conclusion, we know COVID-19 is dangerous.
We know this vaccine is effective
at preventing severe COVID-19 infection.
The trials indicated overwhelming efficacy
as well as safety of this vaccine.
And at this time, the biologic plausibility
and thinking out loud about the potential
side effect of infertility is not enough in my opinion
to encourage people to avoid vaccination because of that.
I think that is a dangerous road to take
given how unlikely that would be as a side effect.
So I hope you will grab a second opinion
from Dr. Natalie Crawford, if you so wish.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.
Thank you so much for being here today.
If you wanna subscribe, we would love to have you.
Be kind to yourself, to each other, to me.
In the comments, be kind,
and I will see you next time.
My camera's too far away to put my hand over today.
Bye.