Is There a Plausible Basis For Fertility Concerns?

In my own community, the most prominent concern on the minds of many of the vaccine hesitant, especially young women of childbearing age, is the fear of an adverse effect on fertility. Possibly because of this, fertility concerns have also been derisively dismissed by the doctors with more passion and vengeance than for any other type of adverse effect being attributed to the vaccines. Thus, it seems to me that compiling a list of reasons to legitimately worry that these vaccines maybe negatively affect fertility is something that would be useful to people. What follows is a simplified, straightforward explanation in layman language of a few of the more reasonable arguments why these vaccines might affect fertility.

Failure of the FDA to require vaccine manufacturers to conduct standard tests on the genetic therapy part of the vaccines

The vaccines currently in use in the US all utilize what is known as a “genetic therapy”, in the sense that it utilizes a host cell to translate genetic material into a protein. Gene therapies are supposed to be rigorously tested in ways that standard vaccines or therapies are not, in order that we understand how the gene therapy part works in real life and make sure that there isn’t any unanticipated action going on.

These tests include assessing the toxicity (ie does it interact with anything in the human body in a harmful way) of the genetic material delivery vehicle, where they end up in the human body (distribution), the duration of protein production, the quantity of protein production, the distribution of the protein in the human body, and the toxicity of the produced protein.

Critically, this also includes a special battery of tests to specifically assess reproductive toxicity. None of these tests were conducted in human subjects, and most don’t seem to have been done in animals either, a deeply troubling failure that goes well beyond “cut corners”. Remember, a test or trial is only as good as its design and execution, and to my knowledge, there is no official documentation of rigorous testing for these things available in the public domain, implying that they don’t exist.

A further concern is that pregnant women were excluded from all of the vaccine trials, so there has not yet been a proper study with a control group to see if there are any differences in pregnancy loss or congenital defects between vaccinated and unvaccinated women. Additionally, the trials were irreversibly terminated after just a few months when the control arms were vaccinated, ending the possibility (threat?) of any long term data emerging from the trials. Fertility is something that by definition requires a long term study to properly assess, which will obviously no longer be forthcoming in any form from the actual clinical trials

So right off the bat, the trials never established that the vaccines didn’t affect fertility, the “experts” just assumed that they didn’t. Expert opinion is not considered evidence of drug safety for good reason, namely that experts are usually wrong when it comes to predicting things, especially regarding novel drugs (for a variety of widely ranging reasons). Regrettably, experts seldom recognize the limits of their own expertise, and vis a vis covid seem unaware that any exist altogether. Were expert opinion a valid method of adjudicating safety concerns for new medical products, the FDA could be retired, as experts almost always assume new drugs won’t have any unanticipated side effects. Thus the contention that “experts say” is an empty and meaningless pile of nonsensical drivel.

Driving home this point is the fact that the NIH is now funding a $1.76 million study to investigate the potential relationship between the vaccines and widely reported severe menstrual irregularities, a surprising turnabout after months of “experts” claiming that there was no conceivable way that the vaccines could affect menstrual cycles and that these reports were probably mostly overexaggerated or false. So much for “expert” opinion that this wouldn’t happen. This makes one wonder what else might the vaccine cause that the experts are similarly claiming without basis can’t be caused by the vaccines.

One note before getting to the more granular part: pretty much all of the following points, even if true, would only be true within certain parameters - for example, you’d need a minimum amount of spike proteins to cause any damage. But since they skipped the tests, we don’t really have a good idea of these numbers, hence the concern.

LNP’s (Lipid Nano Particles)

Both mRNA vaccines utilize a mixture of lipid compounds as a “delivery vehicle” to transport the mRNA itself into a host cell where the mRNA can then “hijack” the cell to produce spike proteins. There are a few potential concerns with these LNP’s:

1. The biodistribution report in Pfizer’s pharmacokinetic pre-clinical animal study submitted to the Japanese government found that LNP’s were accumulating in the ovaries in significant numbers.

   

   Obviously, the presence of accumulating foreign material in the ovaries, which are also a particularly sensitive organ, is cause to wonder just what the actual effects are on ovarian function. Maybe there aren’t any. And maybe the LNP’s only go to the ovaries in rats but not in humans. Thing is, this was never tested in human subjects, so we just don’t know.

2. By necessity, positively charged lipids - cationic lipids - were needed to make the LNP vehicle work (more specifically, to enable the LNP’s to properly bind with the mRNA molecules to form a lipid “shell” around the mRNA). Cationic lipids are known to have toxicity in humans. One of the earliest and most persistent hurdles in developing mRNA technology was the lipid toxicity. While the vaccine manufacturers (of course) think that they have solved this problem, there was never any proper testing to see if the “fix” used holds up everywhere in the body where the LNP’s can accumulate. And there definitely isn’t a long track record of public use of the mRNA platform that we could see shows no signs of LNP toxicity. Again, this particular one maybe it isn’t toxic at all, maybe they succeeded in suppressing any toxic property of this lipid enough to avoid toxicity issues, but this would require testing.

3. Nanoparticles in themselves have been previously thought to be possibly causing a decrease in fertility - such as what is documented in the study Potential adverse effects of nanoparticles on the reproductive system.

Spike Protein

All of these vaccines cause host cells to produce a piece of the covid virus known as the spike protein. The function of the spike protein for the covid virus is to bind with a surface protein on cells, which would enable the covid virus to “break into” that cell. When the vaccines were designed, conventional wisdom was that the spike protein was just a sort of “key”, nothing more. Unfortunately, in the intervening months a lot of new research came out that showed very clearly that the spike protein was the piece of the covid virus that did most of the damage, which is relevant because the same mechanisms largely apply to reproductive organs too. We know that the spike protein circulates all over the body, so it is plausible that some make it to the ovaries.

1. Spike protein, by merely binding with the ACE2 receptor, can trigger cellular dysfunction and even kill the cell. (Interestingly, one of the modifications made to the spike protein that the vaccines produce is to lock the S1 into an open conformation with the RBD exposed (very short sort-of-layman version), something that is virtually guaranteed to enhance the binding affinity of the S1 with cellular receptor proteins.) ACE2 receptors are ubiquitous throughout the human body, including reproductive organs/tissues, thus the reasonable fear that circulating spike proteins in sufficient quantities binding with ovarian ACE2’s might be deleterious to fertility.

2. Spike proteins trigger immune system overreaction, leading to very harmful inflammation and other harmful physiology. Spike proteins accumulating in the ovaries would therefore potentially cause an immune reaction against, or that affects, ovarian tissues, with potentially dire consequences for the ovaries.

3. If any of the LNP’s with mRNA still inside end up in the ovaries, ovarian cells would produce spike proteins, precipitating an immune response targeted directly against ‘infected’ ovarian cells, again with potentially dire consequences for the ovaries.

Decreased Fertility in Animal Trials

Moderna’s EMA from the EU included the admission that rats lost 14% of pregnancies in the vaccine group vs only 7% in the control group. Pfizer’s reported a limited reproductive toxicity study that found a “~2x increase in pre-implantation loss - ~9.77% vs 4.1% in controls”, and “among fetuses […] there was a very low incidence of gastroschisis, mouth/jaw malformations, right sided aortic arch, and cervical vertebrae abnormalities, although these findings were within historical control data”. These should have merited follow up studies to determine if this effect was vaccine induced or just a statistical artifact. Being within historical control data doesn’t mean that the result is therefore a product of random chance, and a clear signal that certain abnormalities were more prevalent in the vaccine arm compared to the placebo is a legitimate concern that elementary caution requires that you resolve through proper, rigorous testing.

Cross-Reactive Antibodies

Much has been made over the allegation that the spike protein was similar enough to a protein critical to pregnancy called syncytin-1, that antibodies produced to bind with the spike protein would “accidentally” bind with syncytin-1. I initially thought that this claim was unpredicated. However, the only study that I am aware of that attempted to look into this found a clear relative increase in what they were measuring as a proxy for anti-syncytin-1 antibodies between pre-vaccination and post-vaccination (Addressing anti-syncytin antibody levels, and fertility and breastfeeding concerns, following BNT162B2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, Figure 2B). (This study is a particularly messy wreck of poor methodology and wildly unpredicated claims by the authors, something way beyond the scope of this essay to properly address.) I think that this result should be investigated further to make sure that this is not the case.

Another study recently was published as a preprint that found certain spike protein antibodies from covid infection could result in pregnancy loss (among other things) in mice, which is a signal that this can potentially occur in people as well:

Pathogenic antibodies induced by spike proteins of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV viruses

Abstract 

This study, using a virus-free mouse model, explores the pathogenic roles of certain antibodies specific to the spike proteins of highly pathogenic coronaviruses such as the COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV viruses. Our data showed that these pathogenic antibodies, through a mechanism of Antibody Dependent Auto-Attack (ADAA), target and bind to host vulnerable cells or tissues such as damaged lung epithelium cells, initiate a self-attack immune response, and lead to serious conditions including ARDS, cytokine release, and death. Moreover, the pathogenic antibodies also induced inflammation and hemorrhage of the kidneys, brain, and heart. Furthermore, the pathogenic antibodies can bind to unmatured fetal tissues and cause abortions, postpartum labors, still births, and neonatal deaths of pregnant mice. Novel clinical interventions, through disrupting the host-binding of these pathogenic antibodies, can be developed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the new concept of ADAA explored by this study may be applicable to other infectious diseases, such as the highly pathogenic influenza infections. It should be noted that the majority of anti-spike antibodies are non-pathogenic, as only 2 of 7 monoclonal antibodies tested showed significant pathogenic effects.

I came across an affidavit penned by Dr. Byram Bridle, a brilliant scientific luminary on the covid vaccines, that included the following related to potential auto-immunity and other harms relevant to fertility:

The broad distribution of an mRNA vaccine throughout the body implicates other mechanisms that could lead to autoimmune disease.

First, the mRNA vaccines promote robust inflammation. This is why many people have sore shoulders after being immunized.

Promotion of inflammation in critical tissues, such as the ovaries, after being seeded with the vaccine could have dire consequences. Tissues like the ovaries are not supposed to become inflamed. This is because inflammation causes a lot of bystander damage to normal tissues, which is unwanted in an organ designed for reproduction.

Also, the vaccine-encoded spike protein is designed to remain anchored on the surface of the cell that has manufactured it. If antibodies are present, such as would be the case several days after vaccination or natural infection, they could bind to the spike proteins on cells throughout our body, resulting in their destruction.

Let’s take the ovaries, again, as a theoretical scenario. If they were to undergo any type of tissue destruction, there is the possibility of proteins being released that the immune system has never seen before. This is because our immune systems learn to tolerate ‘self’ at a very young age. However, organs like the ovaries and testes start to express new proteins during puberty that the immune system has not been tolerized against. If these get released due to tissue damage, this could provide the same two signals that a vaccine needs to activate the immune system; signal 1 (target protein) and signal 2 (damage associated danger signals). This could result in an autoimmune response against the organ. In this example (ovaries), such damage might not become apparent until years later when attempting to have a baby.

This is speculation but is based on a huge body of scientific literature looking at how autoimmune diseases get started. Notably, this could potentially happen in any of the tissues seeded with the vaccine if they start to express the spike protein. This is certainly worthy of investigation before the mass vaccination of children, adolescents, and young adults of childbearing age.

Clinical Outcomes, Especially Widespread Menstrual Irregularities From Vaccines

Whatever the merit of any of the aforementioned propositions individually, there has been an undeniable avalanche of vaccine side effects that implicate fertility:

1. Menstrual Problems - This is probably the most widespread serious side effect. A University of Chicago survey that hoped to get 500 women who had experienced post-vaccination menstrual irregularities has so far eclipsed 140,000! The UK has more than 30,000 official reports in their version of VAERS (Yellowcard). Remember, this is something that to many if not most women is an intensely private matter, meaning that the underreporting might be even more pronounced than for other vaccine side effects. And some of these reports went well beyond things like missing or extra heavy/uncomfortable periods. It is axiomatic that anything affecting menstruation is automatically noteworthy concerning fertility unless proven otherwise.

2. Lost Pregnancies - Over 1,000 in VAERS so far, which grossly underreports everything. I have heard or seen a number of individual cases of weird (and on occasion horrifying) placental damage where the treating OBGYN thought that the vaccine was the most likely indication. We need a proper massive prospective control study that is honestly designed and executed to see if there are more pregnancy losses in the vaccine arm than in the control arm, which would tell us whether and in what way vaccinating pregnant women impacts the pregnancy.

We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

We have no idea what we may discover down the line in a year, or maybe 5 or even 10 years. We don’t even know about things that we might’ve caught had there been proper rigorous testing. For all we know, there might be a secondary or tertiary consequence of some other vaccine interaction that impacts fertility. This is why new drugs are subjected to long term testing, spanning at least a few years, so we can see if there are unexpected results that the genius expert scientists weren’t quite genius enough to foresee. “Experts assume” that something won’t happen yields little if any useful information as to whether it will indeed not happen, especially when the big ‘experts’ are mostly either corrupt or under the thumb of political diktats of others.

Bottom Line

Young people, especially women - in other words, those who become pregnant - carry a practically insignificant risk from covid itself. The “pregnancy is a comorbidity” trope is just one of a litany of absurdly exaggerated claims disseminated as a fearmongering tactic, so even a miniscule risk to fertility is a legitimate consideration for most women who are or wish to at some point become pregnant.

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If anyone spots an error, or something I wrote that isn’t entirely accurate, or something that I missed, please feel free to comment below. Thanks so much!