Examples of Top False Narratives Affecting Older Populations in the U.K.

The Facts

“Rife machines have not been demonstrated to treat or cure any cancer,” Dr. Skyler Johnson, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Utah, told fact-checking website Lead Stories in August 2022. “The energy created is not strong enough to damage cancer cells. The claims that it does cure cancer have been debunked multiple times.”

Martin Ledwick, head cancer information nurse for Cancer Research UK, told Reuters in July 2021, “There’s no reliable evidence that Rife machines work as a cure for cancer.”

According to a July 2019 Medical News Today article, a Rife machine “is a device that delivers a low energy electromagnetic frequency into the body, usually through the hands or feet.” The terms “Rife therapy” and “Rife machine” take their names from Royal Raymond Rife, the scientist who invented and promoted the treatment beginning in the 1920s.

A 1994 article published by the American Cancer Society explained that Rife claimed the machines used in his therapy were able to generate radio frequencies that could destroy bacteria, which he believed caused cancer, “in a manner similar to an opera singer’s voice breaking a crystal glass.” In fact, while sound waves can produce vibrations that shatter glass, the article noted that “radio waves cannot destroy bacteria due to their low energy level.”

The same 1994 article said interest in Rife therapy was revived by an 1987 book titled “The Cancer Cure That Worked: 50 Years of Suppression,” which baselessly claimed that Rife proved his therapy’s “cancer-curing ability in 1934,” but that Rife’s evidence was suppressed by the American Medical Association.

The False Narrative

Life insurance companies won’t pay out benefits to anyone who dies after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine because the vaccines are considered experimental.

The Facts

Paul Graham, senior vice president of policy development at the American Council of Life Insurers, addressed this claim in a March 2021 statement on the council’s website. “The fact is that life insurers do not consider whether or not a policyholder has received a COVID vaccine when deciding whether to pay a claim,” Graham said. “Life insurance policy contracts are very clear on how policies work, and what cause, if any, might lead to the denial of a benefit. A vaccine for COVID-19 is not one of them. Policyholders should rest assured that nothing has changed in the claims-paying process as a result of COVID-19 vaccinations.”

In a similar March 2021 statement, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) said getting a COVID-19 vaccine will have no effect on an individual’s life insurance coverage or benefits, including the ability to apply for future coverage.

“No one should be afraid and choose to not protect themselves from COVID-19 because they are worried about it affecting their benefits,” CLHIA president and CEO Stephen Frank said. “All of Canada’s life and health insurers are supportive of Canadians receiving government-approved vaccinations to protect themselves from serious illness and death.”

The Association of British Insurers said on its website, “Receiving a vaccination against Covid will not impact your insurance coverage, be it life insurance, private medical insurance or other forms of insurance.”

Contrary to the claim that the COVID-19 vaccines are considered “experimental,” each of the vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S. and Europe had to undergo multiple phases of clinical trials to test their safety and efficacy, although some phases overlapped to shorten development time. That data was then reviewed by health regulators such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the vaccines were authorized for emergency use.

The False Narrative

A person unvaccinated against COVID-19 can be harmed by receiving blood donated by a vaccinated individual.

The Facts

There are no known health risks from receiving blood from a person vaccinated against COVID-19, according to blood donation services. For example Canadian Blood Services says on its website, “There are no known COVID-19 vaccine-attributable harmful effects to a recipient of transfused blood collected from a vaccinated individual.” New Zealand Blood Services similarly states on its website, “Any COVID-19 vaccine in the blood is broken down soon after the injection. All donated blood also gets filtered during processing, so any trace amounts that may still be present poses no risk to recipients.”

Dr. Nina Turner, medical director of the New Zealand-based Immunisation Advisory Centre, told Radio New Zealand in November 2022 that blood from a vaccinated person is not contaminated in any way and does not pose a risk to young children. “If you work through the explanation of how vaccines work, there’s no scientific reason why there would be a risk.”

Baseless concerns about vaccinated blood being dangerous have led to reports of unvaccinated people asking for blood transfusions only from the unvaccinated, according to an August 2021 article from Kaiser Health News. Because there are no risks, blood banks in the U.S. are not required to separate blood by vaccination status, and those requests are refused. “I know of no one who has acceded to such a request, which would be an operational can of worms for a medically unjustifiable request,” Dr. Louis Katz, chief medical officer for Iowa-based blood center ImpactLife, told KHN.

Private services promising to offer transfusions of unvaccinated blood have sprung up, often being promoted on websites that NewsGuard has found to have repeatedly published false health claims. For example, a November 2022 article published by NaturalNews.com spoke favorably of such a service started in Switzerland called SafeBlood, and the article called vaccinated blood “contaminated” and “tainted,” while referring to the blood of the unvaccinated as “clean.”

In late November 2022, the myth gained international attention from news organizations ranging from The New York Times to The Guardian in the U.K. due to a court case involving a four-month-old infant in New Zealand. The Guardian reported that the child needed urgent surgery to treat a condition called severe pulmonary valve stenosis, but the parents refused unless doctors could guarantee that their son would receive blood from an unvaccinated donor.

“We don’t want blood that is tainted by vaccination,” the father said in the interview with Liz Gunn, a New Zealand anti-vaccine activist, posted on video platform Rumble on Nov. 28, 2022. (Court rules in New Zealand prevent the infant or his parents from being named, according to The Associated Press.)

Te Whatu Ora, New Zealand’s health service, was granted temporary medical custody of the infant on Dec. 7, 2022, by the High Court of New Zealand, so that the surgery could be performed. The AP reported that the child would be returned to the parents’ custody once he had recovered from the operation.

The False Narrative

Cholesterol does not increase risk of heart disease. High levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol are not linked to a greater risk of heart disease.

The Facts

The link between high LDL-cholesterol, often called “bad cholesterol,” and an increased risk of heart disease is backed by decades of research. The European Atherosclerosis Society, a medical group that issues clinical guidelines on preventing and treating heart disease, said in April 2017 that its review of evidence from 30 studies involving more than 200,000 subjects “definitively shows that LDL causes cardiovascular disease.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that “some types of cholesterol are essential for good health,” including high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, which can actually lower a person’s risk of heart disease and stroke. However, the CDC says, “LDL…makes up most of your body’s cholesterol. High levels of LDL cholesterol raise your risk for heart disease and stroke.”

The Cleveland Clinic states on its website that “LDL causes the build-up of fatty deposits within your arteries, reducing or blocking the flow of blood and oxygen your heart needs.” This build-up can lead to chest pain, heart attack, and atherosclerosis, which is the process of arteries hardening. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “atherosclerosis … is not limited to heart arteries, though. It also occurs in arteries elsewhere in the body, causing problems such as stroke, kidney failure and poor circulation.”

Mayo Clinic states on its website that poor diet, obesity, lack of exercise, and smoking are among the contributing factors for high LDL-cholesterol.

The False Narrative

Getting a flu shot increases a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The Facts

According to the website of the Alzheimer’s Association, “Several mainstream studies link flu shots and other vaccinations to a reduced [emphasis added] risk of Alzheimer’s disease and overall better health.” One such study, involving more than 9,000 patients and published in December 2020 in the Alzheimer’s Association journal, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, found that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s was lower among elderly patients who consistently received annual flu shots.

Websites that promote this myth often attribute the claim to Dr.Hugh Fudenberg, an immunologist who advanced the false claim that vaccines cause autism before his death in 2014. According to a January 2018 report by KWCH-TV in Wichita, Kansas, the quote attributed to Fudenberg stated, “If a person has had five consecutive flu shots, their chance of contracting Alzheimer’s disease is 10 times higher than the non-vaccinated person.”

Fudenberg supposedly made these comments at a 1997 conference hosted by the National Vaccine Information Center, an anti-vaccine group. A program for the conference does list Fudenberg among its speakers, but NewsGuard did not find any video or transcript to verify the quote, nor did Fudenberg publish any peer-reviewed research proving a link between flu vaccination and Alzheimer’s.

Nevertheless, the quote attributed to him has since repeated on multiple websites, and was paraphrased by liberal comedian and commentator Bill Maher in a December 2005 episode of “Larry King Live” on CNN.

Variations of this False Narrative

• Dr. Hugh Fudenberg found that the risk of developing Alzheimer’s is 10 times greater in individuals who have had flu vaccinations for five consecutive years.

The False Narrative

The aluminum ingredient in vaccines is toxic and can cause or increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The Facts

Aluminum exposure and Alzheimer’s has been studied since the 1960s. However, the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Research U.K., the U.K. Alzheimer’s Society, and the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada have all said existing scientific evidence has not found a causal link between aluminum and the development of Alzheimer’s. According to a statement on the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “An average adult in the United States eats about 7–9 mg of aluminum per day in their food.” The CDC also stated that, by contrast, the amount of aluminum present in vaccines is less than 0.85 mg per dose.

A 2014 review of 469 peer-reviewed studies published in the medical journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology found, “there is no consistent and convincing evidence to associate the aluminum found in food and drinking water at the doses and chemical forms presently consumed by people living in North America and Western Europe with increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Variations of this False Narrative

• Vaccines can cause dementia.

The False Narrative

According to a UK government report, COVID-19 vaccines are responsible for 500 additional deaths per week in England involving cardiovascular conditions like heart attacks and strokes since vaccinations began.

The Facts

This claim relies on misrepresenting a June 2023 report from the British Heart Foundation (BHF), a charity that funds cardiovascular research and is not a UK government agency. The report did find that there had been nearly 100,000 excess deaths in England involving cardiovascular disease — amounting on average to over 500 excess deaths a week — since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

However, the report did not mention or suggest that COVID-19 vaccination was a possible cause for the spike. In fact, the report said that most of the deaths occurred in the first year of the pandemic, and the UK did not authorize a COVID-19 vaccine until December 2020.

The report also stated that, “The benefits of receiving Covid-19 vaccines in reducing severe outcomes from Covid-19 infection in people living with cardiovascular disease greatly outweigh the risk of extremely rare side effects,” such as myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.

The BHF report did not conclude that there was any single cause for the excess deaths, and instead listed several possible explanations. “These include: epidemiological factors relating to direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19 infection; extreme disruption to the healthcare service stemming from the pandemic; changing patient behavior; and poorer wider population health in England in the years preceding, and since the onset of, the COVID-19 pandemic in England,” the report stated.

A BHF spokesperson told NewsGuard in a July 2023 email: “Reports of myocarditis and pericarditis have caused concern post COVID-19 vaccination. However, COVID-19 vaccine associated myocarditis has been rare. COVID-19 vaccination is not a major contributing factor to the 100,000 excess deaths involving cardiovascular disease.”

British health authorities have consistently recommended COVID-19 vaccines as safe and effective, and have monitored reports of any potential side effects, including those related to heart health. Dr. Alison Cave, Chief Safety Officer for the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), told Reuters in January 2023: “Following a careful assessment of the available data, we concluded that the evidence does not support an association between the COVID-19 vaccines and an increased risk of cardiac related death. This conclusion has been supported by the [UK’s] independent Commission on Human Medicines’ COVID-19 Vaccine expert advisory group.”

How the False Narrative Emerged

The claim apparently originated from a June 25, 2023, article published on ThePeoplesVoice.tv, a website formerly known as NewsPunch.com, which NewsGuard has found to have repeatedly published false information.

The article, headlined “UK Gov’t Admit COVID Jabs Causing ‘500 Excess Heart Deaths Every Week,” said, “The British government has been forced to admit that over 500 excess heart-related deaths per week are directly caused by the COVID-19 vaccines. According to an official British Heart Foundation (BHF) report, there has been a total of 96,540 excess deaths involving cardiovascular conditions like heart attacks and strokes since the jab rollout.”

Where the False Narrative Spread

The narrative was amplified in French in a June 28, 2023, tweet by Silvano Trotta, a French YouTuber with 131,000 followers on Twitter who has repeatedly pushed false and misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines and the Ukraine-Russia war.

“According to an official report by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), there have been a total of 96,540 additional deaths from cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes since the introduction of vaccination,” Trotta said in a tweet in French carrying a screenshot (translated into French) of the ThePeoplesVoice.tv article. The post was retweeted 1,800 times and liked over 2,100 times as of July 12, 2023.

Background

COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to rare cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining around the heart. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website in September 2022 that it was actively monitoring such cases, adding that these side effects were rare and generally mild, and were especially reported in adolescents and young men within several days after receiving either a Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

As of Nov. 23, 2022, for every one million doses given of the Pfizer vaccine, there were 10 reports of myocarditis and six reports of pericarditis, according to the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Over the same period, the agency said, there were 14 reports of myocarditis and eight reports of pericarditis for every million doses given of the Moderna vaccine.

The False Narrative

Thousands of elderly patients in the UK have been killed by COVID-19 vaccines.

The Facts

There is no evidence that thousands of elderly patients have been killed by the COVID-19 vaccines. In fact, there have been 55 deaths in England and one death in Wales between March 2020 and June 2023, with the COVID-19 vaccine believed to be the underlying cause, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) as of July 21, 2023. Only seven of those deaths occurred in people over 70 years old.

Moreover, COVID-19 vaccines are safe for use by the elderly, according to health authorities in the UK and around the world, including the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The UK’s Department of Health and Social Care’s guide to the spring 2023 COVID-19 vaccine booster campaign stated that, “all vaccines being used in the UK have undergone robust clinical trials and have met the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) strict standards of safety, effectiveness and quality.”

The False Narrative

During the COVID-19 pandemic, elderly people in care homes in the UK were routinely euthanised using the sedative drug midazolam. COVID-19 was used to cover up the deaths.

The Facts

There is no evidence to support claims that midazolam has been used to euthanize elderly patients in the UK. An unnamed spokesperson for the UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) told FullFact.org in June 2021 that, “These claims are deeply misleading. The government’s top priority throughout this pandemic has always been doing everything possible to save lives.”

According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, midazolam “is used to produce sleepiness or drowsiness and relieve anxiety before surgery or certain procedures.” A January 2020 article in the journal Palliative Care and Social Practice called the drug one of the “essential drugs needed for the promotion of quality care in dying patients.”

Those promoting the myth have often cited statistics showing an increase in prescriptions of midazolam in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began. For example, in an article titled “Overwhelming Evidence of Midazolam Murders By Government Policy” published on September 27, 2021 on Bernician.net, a graph shows a spike in all-cause deaths in care homes just following the spike in midazolam prescriptions.

Indeed, the Care Quality Commission, which regulates care homes in England, noted in its 2020 annual report that the prescriptions for midazolam that year were “up by 23% compared with 2019.” However, the same report also stated, “This is might be linked to the community based treatment of people with COVID-19 at the end of their lives,” and that the increase “also mirrored the trend that we saw for primary care and may have been as a result of providing treatment to a greater number of people at the end of their lives.” The report did not suggest that midazolam was being used to euthanize the elderly or that deaths were actually caused by midazolam.

How the False Narrative Emerged

The false narrative seemed to have emerged with claims made in July 2020 by Dr. Patrick Pullicino, a retired neurologist, Catholic priest, and anti-euthanasia activist. In a July 2020 article published by DailyMail.co.uk, Pullicino said he suspected the increase in midazolam prescriptions in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic were “effectively resulting in euthanasia pathways.”

In the same article, Dr Amy Proffitt, vice president of the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, pushed back on Pullicino’s claim, stating, “I absolutely do not believe that there have been cases of euthanasia in care homes related to Covid-19.” Proffitt also said that midazolam would likely have been prescribed to people having trouble breathing, which is a symptom of severe COVID-19.

Later articles explicitly connected the midazolam prescriptions to euthanasia covered up by COVID-19 deaths. A June 2021 article published by Expose-News.com, a UK-based site which NewsGuard has found to have repeatedly published false content, was headlined, “The Evidence – ‘You stayed at home, to protect the NHS, but they gave Midazolam to the Elderly and told you they were Covid Deaths.” The article stated, “Can you not see a strong correlation here between the over prescribing of Midazolam and the seemingly premature ending of life, with the associated deaths being put down as Covid-19?”

​​The false narrative was spread in articles from sites lowly-rated by NewsGuard, such as VernonColeman.com, GlobalResearch.ca, and TheWhiteRose.uk.

The False Narrative

A July 2023 Swiss study showed that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine caused heart damage in 1 in 35 recipients.

Variations of this False Narrative

• A July 2023 Swiss study found that heart injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine occurred 3,000 times more often than the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claimed.

The Facts

This claim was based on misstating the results of a study published in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Heart Failure in July 2023.

The study tested levels of troponin T, a protein in heart muscle cells which, when found in the blood, could indicate damage to the heart muscle, according to a March 2022 article on the Cleveland Clinic’s website. The researchers found that 2.8 percent of 777 hospital workers  — or 1 in 35 of the study’s population — had elevated troponin T levels three days after receiving a third dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

However, the study also said that none of the study participants showed changes on electrocardiograms, which is a test that measures the heart’s electrical activity, and that no patients had what the study called “major adverse cardiac events,” such as a stroke or heart attack, within 30 days. The study also did not find a definitive case of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, which is a rare side effect associated with Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines.

Moreover, the study said that the elevated troponin T levels it identified were “mild.” Dr. James de Lemos, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who was not involved in the study, told fact-checking site Lead Stories in July 2023 that the levels of troponin T found in the participants were “trivial,” and that “these small troponin elevations are not likely events of clinical significance.”

Similarly, Dr. Nicholas Mills, a professor of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh who studies troponin, told FactCheck.org in August 2023, “These increases in cardiac troponin are not clinically significant and would not be associated with any quantifiable effect on the heart using imaging.”

One variation of this claim compared the July 2023 study to an October 2022 study published in the European Journal of Heart Failure that was shared on the CDC’s website.

However, those studies were measuring different types of outcomes. The October 2022 study found that myocarditis cases confirmed to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccines occurred in one out of 100,000 doses, or 0.001 percent. As explained above, the July 2023 study focused on how many study participants had elevated levels of troponin T, and that research found “no definitive cases of myocarditis” among its 777 participants.

Nevertheless, a July 26, 2023, InfoWars article titled “Heart Injuries From COVID Vaccine 3000x Higher Than CDC Admits, Study Finds,” presented the two studies as if they were measuring the same outcome. “A disturbing study out of Switzerland found that the incidence of cardiac-related injuries following the COVID jab was 3000x higher than U.S. government figures,” comparing the 2.8 percent of people in the July 2023 study who had elevated troponin T levels to the 0.001 percent figure of actual myocarditis cases found in the October 2022 study.

How the False Narrative Emerged

The claim that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine caused heart damage in 1 in 35 recipients first appeared in a July 26, 2023, YouTube video from Dr. John Campbell, a former nurse educator and a regular purveyor of misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

In the video, Campbell stated: “After Moderna booster vaccines in a trial done in Switzerland, there were 777 working people followed up with 777 controls. Five-point-one percent of those who had the booster vaccine had increased troponins, indicating cardiomyocyte damage.” He continued: “So, 5.1 percent increased cardiac marker damage chemical in the blood. Two-point-eight percent of the 777, that’s one in 35, one in 35, had vaccine-associated myocardial injury. Quite astounding and incredible.”

As of Aug. 16, 2023, the video had been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

Where the False Narrative Spread

The claim spread on sites with low NewsGuard Trust Scores, including TheGatewayPundit.com, InfoWars.com, and NaturalNews.com.

For example, a July 27, 2023, Gateway Pundit article titled “KILL SHOT: Recent Peer-Reviewed Report Finds 1 in 35 People Who Took Moderna COVID Shot Had Signs of Heart Damage,” stated: “A new study from the European Journal of Heart Failure found that 1 in 35 people showed signs of heart damage after taking the Moderna COVID19 vaccine.”

The claim also spread on social media sites including Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter.

“DiedSuddenly,” a verified X account known for spreading false claims about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, shared a video with its approximately 491,000 followers on Aug. 7, 2023, in which Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts of the right-wing One Nation Party referenced the study. In a speech in the Australian Senate, Roberts stated: “1 in 35 recipients of a Moderna Covid booster experienced Myocarditis.” As of Aug. 16, 2023, the post had been liked 15,500 times and reposted 7,600 times.

Background

The Swiss study itself noted that “COVID-19 [infection] associates with a substantially higher risk for myocarditis than mRNA vaccination, and myocarditis related to COVID-19 infection has shown a higher mortality than myocarditis related to mRNA-vaccination.”

The study also said, “Even among males aged 12–17 years, the group with the highest incidence of cardiac complications after receipt of a second mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose, the risk was 1.8 – 5.6 times as high after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after vaccination.”