The Claim:
A director of a misinformed documentary film is pushing the claim that pharmaceutical companies knew RSV vaccines could cause pre-term birth, but pushed the FDA to approve them nonetheless and for obvious nefarious reasons.
The Facts:
As a member of the FDA advisory committee, Dr. Paul Offit was directly involved in these discussions. During a publicly available webinar, Dr. Offit observed that an initial safety signal concerning pre-term birth appeared only in lower- and middle-income countries. But in those places, the presence of an additional vaccine is not linked to an increase in prematurity rates in the vaccine group.
Instead, there is a clear decrease in prematurity rates in the placebo group. Individuals in the placebo group were more likely to have received a COVID-19 or flu vaccine, reducing the risk of prematurity from those diseases.
This particular tweet goes on to make claims that pregnant people are also dying after receiving the RSV vaccine. The linked article, however, makes no mention of what, if any, vaccines were given to the pregnant woman who is the subject of the writing. Instead, the tweeter is using scare tactics by attempting to tie these events together.
Disclaimer: Science is always evolving and our understanding of these topics may have evolved too since this was originally posted. Be sure to check out our most recent posts and browse the latest Just the Facts Topics for the latest.
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