Are there really ‘immortal’ parasites in Covid-19 vaccines? Nope, that’s fake news
Videos claiming to show live parasites present in Covid-19 vaccines have been widely circulating on Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms since early October. Some of the videos claim that the parasite is something called hydra vulgaris, which they say is “immortal”. Leading immunologists say that these videos are easy to debunk – the vaccine definitely doesn’t contain parasites.
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The Stew Peters Show, an American TV show that often features vaccine-related conspiracy theories, shared this video, which they claimed shows a living parasite that has been detected in the Moderna vaccine.
Dr. Carrie Madej, an osteopath who often speaks publicly against the vaccine, claimed that she recorded these images using her microscope. She says the “tentacled creature” that she saw looks like the hydra vulgaris. Hydra vulgaris is a real freshwater organism that has the capacity to regenerate, hence the idea that it is "immortal".
Other videos posted on Twitter and Facebook since early October also falsely claim that they show an “immortal” parasite present in Covid-19 vaccines.
This video does not provide proof that there's a parasite in the vaccine
In this video, a woman identified as Madej shows footage that she claims shows living parasites in the Moderna vaccine. She says they look like the "hydra vulgaris”. At 8:57 in the video, she suggests that these parasites can grow within vaccinated people and influence their thoughts.
"If these organisms are able to keep growing [...] let's surmise that they can create their own neural network outside of yours. This is not good, that means it's own communication system. [...] Would you start thinking things that aren't really your thoughts?"
Jérôme Martin, the co-founder of the Drug Policy Transparency Observatory (l'Observatoire de la transparence dans les politiques du médicament) says that it would be impossible for parasites, or any other living creature, to exist in the Covid-19 vaccine.
“The water and other liquids within the vaccine are purified under strict conditions, which prevents any parasites or other living organism within the vaccine," Martin told the FRANCE 24 Observers team.
Virginie Serein, a researcher at French laboratory CEMES (Centre d’Élaboration de Matériaux et d’Études Structurales) and the secretary-general of the European Society for Microscopy (EMS), says that "these photos are in no way scientific proof”.
She says that Madej's observation of the so-called parasites wasn’t properly conducted in a scientific manner. “It wasn’t carried out at a low temperature, with a scientific procedure and a controlled environment,” she says. Thus, the organism in the image could be just about anything.
Vaccine manufacturers have also published a list of the ingredients in their Covid-19 vaccines. None of them contain an organism capable of regenerating. You can check out the list of the ingredients in the Pfizer vaccine by clicking here, Johnson & Johnson here and Moderna here.
On her Instagram page, Madej calls herself an osteopathic internal medicine doctor, who practices “The Truth in Jesus Through Medicine”. Several fact-checking organisations, including the US outlet PolitiFact, have debunked previous statements Madej has made about the vaccine.
Other videos also falsely claim that the hydra vulgaris parasite is present in vaccines
A video posted on Twitter on October 11 shows some kind of black plant moving in water. The tweet claims that it shows “what's in the v4ks under magnification”. The phrase “v4ks" is used as a code name for vaccines, with the number “4” representing the letter “a”. In a bid to get around mechanisms used by Twitter to filter out fake or unfounded claims about Covid-19, people opposed to the vaccine often substitute numbers for letters in sensitive words like "vaccine".
In reality, the squiggly thing in the video is a crinoid, which is a real sea creature. The video was filmed by Singaporean Denise McIntyre, at Raja Ampat, Indonesia on December 9, 2019. It was posted on YouTube on December 27, 2019.
Another post shared on BitChute on October 4 features what looks like a TV program on the hydra vulgaris. The caption refers to it as “an immortal hydra” and “a mini-monster that clones itself” that is present in vaccines.
It turns out this footage is actually from a news item on the hydra vulgaris put together by American radio station KQED and published in 2021.
A French Twitter account that regularly shares anti-vaccine views tweeted a link for a BitChute video with a caption in French: “For those who take ‘Covid injections', look what there is inside them: Hydra Vulgaris, an immortal creature living inside Covid-19 injections.”