(LifeSiteNews) — Researchers with Stanford Medicine say they have identified the mechanism by which mRNA-based COVID-19 shots can cause heart damage in healthy young men, while continuing to insist the shots are safe overall.
On December 10, Stanford announced the findings of a study on why the shots can cause myocarditis, led by Stanford Cardiovascular Institute director Dr. Joseph Wu.
“One rare but real risk of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines is myocarditis, or inflammation of heart tissue. Symptoms — chest pain, shortness of breath, fever and palpitations — appear in the absence of any viral infection,” the announcement explains. “And they happen quickly: within one to three days after a shot. Most of those affected have high blood levels of a substance called cardiac troponin, a well-established clinical indicator of heart-muscle injury. (Cardiac troponin is normally found exclusively in the heart muscle. When found circulating in blood, it indicates damage to heart muscle cells.)”
Hoping to get a clearer picture of the process, Wu’s team examined blood drawn from COVID jab recipients, including individuals who developed myocarditis, and compared it to unvaxxed samples. “Two proteins, named CXCL10 and IFN-gamma, popped up. We think these two are the major drivers of myocarditis,” Wu said. The team later confirmed their hypothesis with experiments that involved vaccinating mice, subsequently finding “heightened levels of cardiac troponin, the widely used clinical marker of heart muscle damage.”
Wu also hypothesized that the effect could be mitigated with the use of “genistein, a mild estrogen-like substance derived from soybeans,”’ although it would likely have to be a specially-designed supplement because genistein “is only weakly absorbed when taken orally.”
However, Wu took great pains to stress that he still considered such dangers rare and usually mild, and the jabs overwhelmingly positive. “The mRNA vaccines have done a tremendous job mitigating the COVID pandemic,” he claimed.
Wu admitted that some rare complications have led to hospitalization and death, but continued to insist that “COVID’s worse,” claiming the virus itself was 10 times more likely to cause myocarditis. But various analyses over the past five years have indicated that COVID posed little danger to any but the elderly and immunocompromised. Last year, a Florida grand jury found that COVID was “statistically almost harmless” to children and most adults.
Further, while mainstream acknowledgment of the mechanism by which the COVID shots cause myocarditis is welcome, as LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a large body of evidence indicates that their risks are more significant than Wu describes.
The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,773 deaths, 221,257 hospitalizations, 22,362 heart attacks, and 29,012 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of August 29, among other ailments. VAERS submission are not proven cases on their own, but in 2022 U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published in the journal Vaccine last year “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April 2024, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 shots and offered several theories for a causal link. Most recently, studies published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases and International Journal of Medical Science raised the possibility of the shots carrying risks of not only respiratory diseases but even kidney injury.
Ever since, many have intently watched and hotly debated what President Donald Trump would do about the situation upon his return to office, given that the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative prepared and released them in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. Though he never backed mandates like former President Joe Biden did, for years Trump refused to disavow the shots to the chagrin of his base, seeing Operation Warp Speed as one of his crowning achievements. At the same time, during his latest run he embraced the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and its suspicion of the medical establishment more broadly.
So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current shots optional but not supporting work to develop successors.
In a July interview, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary asked for patience from those unsatisfied by the administration’s handling of the shots, insisting more time was needed for comprehensive trials to get more definitive data. The FDA has reportedly begun acknowledging child deaths caused by the jabs, but at the same time, the Trump Justice Department is in court arguing against the revival of a whistleblower’s lawsuit against Pfizer.
