Skip to main content

PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

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

13,672 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche WelleHealth & medicine

Abortion rates in the US have been declining for decades already

Publisher’s rating: misleading

The claim under review was that US abortion rates had been declining for decades, based on a Twitter post using Guttmacher Institute figures. DW reports that the figures shown in the post chart a long decline: the rate fell from 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 1981 to 13.5 in 2017. The review’s objection is that the chart left out later figures, so the earlier trend does not describe the full period available to the fact-checkers. DW says the subsequent Guttmacher figures moved upward: the rate was 14.2 per 1,000 women in 2019 and 14.4 in 2020. It also reports increases in the number of abortions counted: CDC data recorded 629,898 in 2019, compared with 619,591 in 2018, while Guttmacher counted 930,160 in 2020, compared with 916,460 in 2019. These figures do not erase the earlier decline, but they qualify the assertion that the rate had continued declining through the latest years discussed in the review. The review cautions that CDC and Guttmacher figures are not directly interchangeable because the organizations use different methods; it notes that CDC figures often do not include every state. Its conclusion rests on the more recent figures missing from the social-media chart, while recognizing that the two organizations publish different totals.

dpaHealth & medicine

Roemenië sluit alle vaccincentra omdat de bevolking zich niet wil laten vaccineren.

Publisher’s rating: De bewering is onjuist en misleidend. Vanaf begin juni 2021 zijn in Roemenië veel vaccinatiecentra gesloten. De reden is dat het hoogtepunt van de vaccinatiecampagne toen achter de rug was. Er is nooit een plan geweest om alle vaccinatiecentra te sluiten. De vaccinatiegraad in Roemenië is wel laag vergeleken met die in andere Europese landen. Toch is volgens recente data meer dan de helft van de volwassen Roemenen gevaccineerd.

The claim concerns Romania’s COVID-19 vaccination centres and alleges that all were closed because the population refused vaccination. The review distinguishes between the closure of many centres and the much broader claim that every centre was shut. It says numerous centres closed from early June 2021, after the vaccination campaign’s peak, and that there was no plan to close them all. It also notes that Romania’s vaccination rate was low compared with other European countries, but says more than half of adults had been vaccinated by the time of the review. The evidence described in the review gives a timeline and numbers for the closures. Data supplied by Romania’s National Committee for the Coordination of Vaccination Activities to Radio Free Europe showed nearly 1,000 active centres at the early-June 2021 peak and about 600 by mid-August. The review reports that around 400 centres were temporarily closed over the summer. Those figures indicate a substantial reduction, not the closure of every centre. It also cites a Romanian doctor’s comment that the number of people willing to be vaccinated had reached a limit; that is evidence of reduced demand, but does not establish that centres were closed because the population collectively refused vaccination. The review also checks the source cited in a Korean YouTube video: a Times of India article dated 7 July 2021. As described in the review, that article reported 117 centres closed and activity reduced at another 371 because they were vaccinating well below capacity. It said the centres could reopen quickly if demand increased. The review further says that a CNCAV map showed 24 centres still active at the time of its reporting. Taken together, the cited material supports the distinction between closures and reduced activity in response to lower demand, and the claim that all Romanian centres were closed.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Neue vertrauliche Dokumente von Pfizer enthüllen, dass die Covid-Impfung zu einer Entvölkerung führen wird.

Publisher’s rating: Es gibt keine Hinweise darauf, dass eine Corona-Impfung Schwangeren oder Ungeborenen schadet. Der Blogbeitrag deutet Daten aus einer seit Monaten bekannten Pfizer-Analyse grundlegend falsch - ein vermeintliches Massensterben ist selbst berechneter Nonsens. Die Impfung wird Schwangeren und Frauen mit Kinderwunsch explizit empfohlen, da Schwangere ein erhöhtes Risiko für einen schweren Verlauf von Covid-19 haben.

The claim concerns a blog post asserting that new confidential Pfizer documents revealed Covid vaccination would cause depopulation. The review identifies the document as a Pfizer safety analysis submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration after the vaccine was authorized. It says the document had already been public for some time and was republished, rather than newly revealed; the reissued version made some figures on one page readable that had previously been redacted. That page, the review says, did not concern claims about pregnant people. The blog’s central calculation treated 28 reports of a pregnancy ending in fetal or newborn death as 28 losses among just 32 pregnancies with known outcomes, and then presented this as roughly 90 percent. But the analysis listed 270 reports of vaccinated pregnant women, and outcomes were unreported for 238 of them. The remaining reports included one normal birth, five pregnancies still ongoing when reported, and the 28 deaths. The review explains that excluding the large group with unknown outcomes makes the blog’s calculation invalid; the reports also do not establish how many pregnant people were vaccinated in the period, which would be needed to calculate a rate. The review further cautions that these were reports of suspected adverse events, not findings that vaccination caused them. It says the analysis itself noted missing information and that causation could not be inferred from the reports. As additional context, it cites at least 30,494 pregnant women vaccinated in the United States by February 16, 2021, and notes that pregnancy loss occurs in the general population. The review concludes that the figures presented in the blog do not demonstrate vaccine-caused mass pregnancy loss or depopulation.

dpaHealth & medicine

Het coronavaccin veroorzaakt eer miskramen dan de abortuspil.

Publisher’s rating: De beweringen van dr. Mumper kloppen niet. De abortuspil is bijna 100 procent effectief voor wie een zwangerschap wil afbreken. Er zijn bovendien meerdere studies gedaan naar coronavaccins tijdens een zwangerschap en die laten geen toegenomen aantal miskramen zien. De studie waar dr. Mumper aan refereert laat dat ook niet zien. Haar percentage ontstaat doordat zwangerschappen waarvan de afloop niet bekend is, onterecht buiten beschouwing worden gelaten.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

A person who died by drowning can be brought back to life by covering the body with salt

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a social-media claim that covering the body of a person who died by drowning with salt could restore life. Its review says it searched the internet for scientific support and found no credible evidence. It also compared the claimed practice with suggested treatments for people who have drowned, reporting that none of those treatments involve covering the body with salt. The review additionally refers to past instances in which drowned people were covered with salt as a superstition. It reports that none of those people were brought back to life. On the basis of its search, comparison with suggested treatments, and those reported cases, FACTLY concluded that the claim was unsupported. The excerpt does not identify the cases or provide details about the treatment guidance it consulted, so those particulars cannot be assessed from the supplied text.

dpaHealth & medicine

La Cour suprême des États-Unis a annulé la vaccination universelle.

Publisher’s rating: Il s’agit d’une vieille fake news, déjà démentie par le passé - y compris par Robert F. Kennedy Jr. La Cour suprême n’a pas rendu de tel jugement. On ne trouve même pas trace d’une affaire de la sorte qui aurait été menée devant la plus haute juridiction américaine.

The claim concerned a supposed US Supreme Court ruling that ended “universal vaccination,” allegedly after a case brought by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The dpa review says the post making this claim also alleged that pharmaceutical companies had failed to prove their vaccines safe. The review found no record of the supposed ruling or case: searches of the Supreme Court’s website using “universal vaccination” returned no results, and searches for Kennedy did not identify the alleged lawsuit. The only Kennedy-related results it describes were petitions from 2004 and 2010, both rejected—years before COVID-19 appeared. The review also checked the claim’s other named figures. Searches for Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, who the post said were defendants, yielded no recent results or none at all. It reports that the story of a successful lawsuit against “universal vaccination” had circulated in 2021 and that Kennedy himself had denied the allegations to US fact-checkers. These checks do not support the post’s account of a Supreme Court case. The review distinguishes the false claim from actual Supreme Court action on COVID-19 vaccination. In January 2022, the Court blocked Biden’s vaccination requirement for employees at businesses with more than 100 workers, while upholding a vaccination requirement for staff at federally funded healthcare facilities. The review says those rulings were unrelated to “universal vaccination” and did not call vaccine safety into question.