Are tetanus shots tools of mass sterilization?

A video features a physician claiming that once she discovered her unvaccinated patients were more fertile, she discovered that tetanus vaccines contain agents of sterilization.

This rumor is based on a tiny bit of truth. Scientists did create a vaccine that contained a hormone (hCG) designed to temporarily prevent pregnancy in the early 1990s in India, using a protein similar to the tetanus toxin to carry the hCG. Only about 80% of women in the test made enough antibodies to prevent pregnancies. It didn’t cause infertility and wasn’t even effective enough as birth control to be released to the public.

Then, in Kenya, to combat neonatal tetanus, the WHO and UNICEF worked to improve vaccination rates among women of child-bearing age. Because of the persistence of the old rumors, testing was done on these vaccines. These tests detected a low level of “HCG-like activity,” thus launching the idea that the HCG was purposely placed in the vaccines to sterilize women.

The testing done was not to the standards that regulatory agencies such as the FDA would demand. If the HCG-positive results held, the amount of HCG that was detected would be far too low to affect fertility.

In the end, retesting was completed, and HCG was not detected in any vaccine, and Kenya attained neonatal tetanus elimination status.