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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,667 published reviews in this topic

Factcrescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

WHO Has Revealed Any Link Between Fully Vaccinated Women And Babies With Heart Defects!

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim reviewed was that WHO had announced that women vaccinated against COVID-19 were having babies with heart defects. Factcrescendo says it investigated whether WHO had made such a statement; its account reports that the claim appeared in Facebook posts. The review’s reported checks found no indication of the alleged announcement in prominent international media and no such statement on WHO’s official website. This addresses the specific assertion that WHO made the announcement, rather than proving that every possible pregnancy outcome has been ruled out.

The Dispatch Fact CheckHealth & medicine

Vaccines are not subject to placebo-controlled testing.

Publisher’s rating: Missing context

The review evaluates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s July 10, 2023, statement in a Fox News interview that vaccines are “exempt from pre-licensing controlled placebo trials.” It finds that the broad claim leaves out the role placebo trials play in vaccine testing: the FDA account cited by the review says such trials are a standard feature of phase 3 clinical trials for new vaccines, generally comparing thousands of recipients with people given a placebo. The review also describes limits to that general practice. Some previously authorized vaccines do not undergo placebo trials when they are redeveloped. It gives Prevnar 13 as an example, noting that its predecessor, Prevnar 7, had been licensed in 2000. The review also cites a 2014 World Health Organization report that raised ethical concerns about trials in which the control group would be deprived of an existing vaccine, and recommended placebo trials only in certain circumstances. These qualifications do not support the categorical claim that vaccines are not subject to placebo-controlled testing; the review says they do not change the fact that such trials are standard in the licensing process. The review further explains that the disagreement partly concerns what counts as a placebo. It reports that an advocacy group cited a CDC guideline defining a placebo as having no effect on living beings to argue that only water or saline qualify. In contrast, the review says the FDA’s approved definition includes inactive or inert substances that produce no immune response, including substances with sugar or starch components. The review therefore distinguishes the use of placebo-controlled trials from disputes over whether particular control substances meet a narrower definition of “placebo.”

YouturnHealth & medicine

ஆப்பிள் சாப்பிடுங்க ப்ரண்ட்ஸ் ஹெல்த்துக்கு ரொம்ப நல்லது… நல்லா பலபலனு இருக்க ஆப்பிளா பார்த்து வாங்கி சாப்பிடுங்க. அதுதான் இந்தமாதிரி பெயிண்ட் அடிச்சி வச்சிருப்பாங்க

Publisher’s rating: False

Folha de S.PauloHealth & medicine

Vídeo exibe recortes do depoimento do reverendo Amilton Gomes de Paula à CPI da Covid, realizada em 2021, com os textos sobrepostos: “Ele se arrependeu por esconder os efeitos colaterais que estão matando as pessoas” e “Ele tanto pediu pras pessoas tomarem a vacina que não tinha efeitos, nem causava doenças, ele por guarda a verdade pessoas estão ficando doentes no Brasil (sic)”.

Publisher’s rating: Enganoso

The video uses excerpts from reverend Amilton Gomes de Paula’s testimony to Brazil’s CPI da Covid in 2021, but the review says the overlaid text falsely frames his regret as being about hiding vaccine side effects. The review reports that the testimony instead concerned his role in negotiations to buy AstraZeneca vaccine: “Na verdade, ele se referia ao seu papel como atravessador nas negociações de compra da vacina Astrazeneca com suspeita de superfaturamento.” To check the video, the Comprova team searched for the identity of the crying witness, then compared the posted excerpts with the Senate’s full hearing transcript. It found that the video put separate portions of the testimony together. In the first, senator Marcos Rogério asks about Amilton’s role; in the second, senator Omar Aziz asks what he regretted. Amilton’s answer was “de ter estado nessa operação das vacinas,” not that he regretted hiding side effects. The review places the testimony in the context of an investigation into alleged irregularities in proposed vaccine purchases. It says Amilton was an intermediary between the federal government and Davati Medical Supply in negotiations involving 400 million AstraZeneca doses, amid suspicions of attempted overpricing and bribery. This context, and the separated excerpts, show why the captions give the testimony a different meaning from the one supported by the cited exchange.