https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/autopsy-covid-vaccine-deaths-lancet-censored/?utm_id=20240625‘Unprecedented censorship’: Autopsy study linking COVID shots to deaths finally published after Lancet removed itA systematic review of autopsy-related literature following COVID-19 vaccination finding that 73.9% of the 325 deaths were linked to the shots was published on June 21 in the peer-reviewed journal Forensic Science International.
by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
June 25, 2024
A
systematic review of autopsy-related literature following COVID-19 vaccination found that 73.9% of the 325 deaths were linked to the shots, suggesting “a high likelihood of a causal link” between the shots and death.
The review, published on June 21 in the peer-reviewed journal
Forensic Science International, was first posted on July 5, 2023, on
The Lancet preprint server, SSRN, an open access research platform.
However,
Preprints with The Lancet removed the study from the server within 24 hours, “because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology,” according to a statement on the SSRN page,
The Daily Sceptic reported.
The paper had been viewed over 100,000 times.
Authors submitting papers to Lancet journals for review post their work to the SSRN to make it publicly available while it undergoes peer review.
University of Michigan researcher
Nicolas Hulscher authored the study, along with
Dr. William Makis,
Peter A. McCullough, M.D., MPH, and several of their colleagues at
The Wellness Company.
The authors said autopsies should be performed on all deceased people who have received one or more
COVID-19 vaccines and that vaccinated people should be clinically monitored for at least one year following vaccination. They called for further research into the issue.
McCullough told
The Defender:
“Our study faced unprecedented
censorship from the Lancet SSRN preprint server and was taken down after massive downloads by concerned physicians and scientists across the globe.
“Lancet did not want the world to know that among deaths that were autopsied after COVID-19 vaccination, independent adjudication found that the vaccine was the cause of death in 73.9% of cases.
“The most common fatal vaccine syndromes were myocarditis and blood clots. Investigative journalists should probe Lancet to uncover who was behind unethical suppression of critical clinical information to the public.”
Makis announced the publication of the “Lancet censored” paper on X last week:
BREAKING NEWS: Our LANCET CENSORED Paper is now peer reviewed and available online!
“A Systematic REVIEW of Autopsy findings in deaths after COVID-19 vaccination”
“325 autopsy cases”
“We found that 73.9% of deaths were directly due to or significantly contributed to by…
pic.twitter.com/HCXfeXh0Gk — William Makis MD (@MakisMD)
June 21, 2024McCullough also noted the
project was approved through the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and used a standard scientific methodology to evaluate the studies for inclusion in the review.
The authors subsequently posted on the
Zenodo preprint server, while the review underwent peer review at Forensic Science International. It was downloaded over 125,000 times.
Preprint servers were established to address inefficiencies in academic publishing. The peer-review process typically takes months or more, delaying the real-time sharing of scientific findings with the public.
Also, many journals are proprietary and can only be accessed through expensive personal or institutional subscriptions.
Preprint servers offer a location for scientific reports and papers to be available to the public while the paper goes through peer review — making scientific findings available immediately and for free and opening them up to broader public debate.
There is no peer-review process for preprints, although there is a vetting process.
Preprint servers are intended to be neutral and to post all research conducted with a clearly explained and reproducible methodology, according to
Vinay Prasad, M.D., MPH, who reported last year that his COVID-19-related work was subject to similar censorship.
Thirty-eight percent of Prasad’s own lab’s submissions to preprint servers were rejected or removed — even though those same articles eventually were published in journals and extensively downloaded.
Preprint servers have become “gatekeepers” for what science gets published, Prasad said.
When The Lancet took down the paper, The Daily Sceptic’s Will Jones wrote that given the credentials of the authors, “It is hard to imagine that the methodology of their review was really so poor that it warranted removal at initial screening rather than being subject to full critical appraisal. It smacks instead of raw censorship of a paper that failed to toe the official line.”
The Lancet Preprints did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.
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Findings have wide-ranging implications
The authors searched the published literature archived in PubMed and ScienceDirect for all autopsy and necropsy — another word for autopsy — reports related to COVID-19 vaccination, where the death occurred after vaccination.
They screened out 562 duplicate studies among the 678 studies initially identified in their search. Other papers were removed because, for example, they lacked information about vaccination status.
Ultimately 44 papers containing 325 autopsies and one necropsy case were evaluated. Three physicians independently reviewed each case and adjudicated whether or not the COVID-19 shot was the direct cause or contributed significantly to the death reported.
They found 240 of the deaths (73.9%) were found to be “directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination” and the mean age for death was 70.4 years old.
Primary causes of death included sudden cardiac death, which happened in 35% of cases, pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction, which occurred in 12.5% and 12% of the cases respectively.
Other causes included
vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia,
myocarditis,
multisystem inflammatory syndrome and cerebral hemorrhage.
Most deaths occurred within a week of the last shot.
The authors concluded that because the deaths were highly consistent with the known mechanisms for COVID-19 vaccine injury, it was highly likely the deaths were causally linked to the vaccine.
They said the findings “amplify” existing concerns about the vaccines, including those related to vaccine-induced myocarditis and myocardial infarction and the
effects of the spike protein more broadly.
They also said the studies have implications for unanticipated deaths among vaccinated people with no previous illness. “We can infer that in such cases, death may have been caused by COVID-19 vaccination,” they wrote.
The authors acknowledged some potential biases in the article.
First, they said, their conclusions from the autopsy findings are based on an evolving understanding of the vaccines, which are currently different from when the studies evaluated were published.
They also noted that systematic reviews have bias potential in general because of biases that may exist at the level of the individual papers and their acceptance into the peer-reviewed literature.
They said publication bias could have affected their results because the
global push for mass vaccination has made investigators hesitant to report adverse events.
They also said their research did not account for confounding variables like concomitant illnesses, drug interactions and other factors that may have had a causal role in the reported deaths.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's from the University of Texas at Austin."
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/autopsy-covid-vaccine-deaths-lancet-censored/?utm_id=20240625
