Notes on “COVID Vaccines and Fertility”: An Issues, Etc. Interview with Lyman Stone

Summary: Lyman Stone, of Demographic Intelligence, discusses the issues of COVID-19 vaccines and whether or not there is evidence they affect fertility. Mr. Stone suggests that, after collecting data for more than nine months, there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines negatively affect fertility, or cause miscarriage. Mr. Stone believes that contracting COVID-19 is a bigger risk to the health and survival of a baby in-utero than receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. There are ethical concerns surrounding the vaccines since fetal cell lines are used in their development, manufacturing, and testing. For this reason, individuals should be careful to look at all the available data regarding the vaccines and should be allowed to make their own choice of whether or not to be vaccinated.

Listen to the interview here.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a public database to report adverse reactions after receiving a vaccine. VAERS only became widely known during the pandemic. It has existed for decades. There is, however, no verification process for claims. People can report that anything happened.

To pharmaceutical companies, vaccines are important, but they don’t make a lot of money on them. They are often “loss leaders.” Pharmaceutical companies pay into a fund designed to pay out for adverse reaction claims. There is a low standard of evidence for adjudicating these claims.

Hospitals are legally required to report to VAERS. The database has experienced a rise in private reports during the pandemic.

The general public has expressed concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines and their possible effects on fertility and pregnancy. This is probably because people remember the problems surrounding drugs such as Thalidomide. These issues were horrific, highly publicized, and deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness. Also, drug trials are generally not conducted on pregnant women for ethical reasons, so data is lacking. In April 2021, before the vaccines were widely in use, these concerns were reasonable.

As of November 2021, there are dozens of studies examining COVID-19 vaccines and their effect on fertility. During randomized control trials, all the involved pharmaceutical companies were required to report miscarriages among the population of pregnant women who were vaccinated. The study showed that incidents of miscarriage were lower among vaccinated pregnant women than among non-vaccinated pregnant women. Approximately 60,000 women took part in these randomized control trials. About 24 became pregnant.

Since COVID-19 vaccines have been in use, there has not been an excess of miscarriages. In fact, Mr. Stone says that there has been a slight baby boom from the pandemic.

VAERS included 2,000 reports of miscarriage. There have been between 200,000 and 300,000 pregnant women vaccinated since the vaccines received emergency approval for use. That works out to a miscarriage rate of approximately 1%. The regular rate of miscarriage for the general population is about 15%.

It is harder to test whether or not the vaccines affect a woman’s ability to become pregnant. One of the reasons is that such a study would need approximately nine months to a year of follow-up. Enough time to properly assess this issue has not yet elapsed. There have been roughly six studies at IVF clinics that examined the survival of human embryos implanted in vaccinated women versus those implanted in un-vaccinated women. So far, there has been no difference in the survival rates.

The vaccine can affect a woman’s menstrual cycle in the short term. Usually, those using hormonal birth control or hormone therapy for other reasons are affected. The data shows that these groups can experience a disruption in their menstrual cycle for a month, but it subsequently returns to normal.

Moreover, according to Mr. Stone, none of the COVID-19 vaccines contain synctocin-1 or similar chemicals, which have been of concern to those skeptical of vaccines.

COVID-19 itself has risks for pregnancy. According to a large population study out of California, COVID-19 infection in pregnant women increases the odds of low birth weight and early delivery. This makes sense for a respiratory disease that has the tendency to reduce blood/oxygen levels.

COVID-19 is not good for babies in the womb. After more than a year of vaccinations and increasing data, there are fewer concerns about the vaccines harming fertility. People should take care not to follow bad advice from the internet, but they should be allowed to make their own decision on whether or not to be vaccinated.

Mr. Stone believes that the United States should leave the World Health Organization. He says that the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control are not trustworthy. When deciding whether or not to become vaccinated, he advises individuals to cite studies and look at data, not just what the CDC says. One must look at actual data and where it came from.

Mr. Stone is concerned about abortive cell lines in vaccine production. A lot of other vaccines, however, also use abortive cell lines. This usually means that the vaccine was tested on fetal cells, not that the vaccine contains fetal cells to be injected into a person’s body. Mr. Stone admits that such testing is a huge ethical problem. It equates to the dismemberment of children for medical research. We can’t, however, have a double standard, Mr. Stone says. If we are going to refuse the COVID-19 vaccines, for this reason, we must also reject the others, like the chickenpox vaccine.

Mr. Stone unequivocally stated that the harvesting of fetal cells should stop. The cell lines used to produce these vaccines, however, are old. “It’s not like they were harvested yesterday,” Mr. Stone said. None of the cells were inside a human being. In fact, they are approximately 80 generations away from the aborted baby. While this is ethically worrying, Mr. Stone says that it is not the same as abortions performed today. While we should ban fetal cell harvesting, Mr. Stone questions whether existing fetal cell lines should be abandoned.

Chinese vaccines contain fetal cells. mRNA vaccines use them in research, development, and testing. The Lozier institute provides a comprehensive list of all the vaccines and their connection with fetal cell lines.

There are alternate versions of many vaccines which do not make use of fetal cell lines. Pharmaceutical companies also do not want to use fetal cell lines for many different reasons. Chief among those reasons is that they are hard to work with. Their use also comes with a lot of bad press. They use them, however, because they are effective. mRNA technology is a big step in doing away with using fetal cells in the production of pharmaceuticals. ###

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Issues, ETC., Episode 3133, “COVID Vaccines and Fertility.” Interview with Lyman Stone. November 9, 2021. Collinsville: Lutheran Public Radio.

On Mandated COVID-19 Vaccinations

The individual rights given to man by God, and enshrined in the US Constitution should not be violated merely because a large faction of the population have given into an unreasonable fear of sickness and death. Nevertheless, we are dangerously close to seeing municipal employees, whom we hailed as heroes a year ago for continuing to work during the pandemic, be forced to choose between their consciences and their jobs. People who have a moral objection to vaccines in general, but to the COVID-19 vaccines in particular should not be forced to take them. People who have recovered from COVID-19 infection and have been shown to have antibodies present in their blood should not be forced to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Bodily autonomy and integrity should be respected; no one should be forced to receive a medical treatment against their will. Governments are instituted among men in order to secure and protect individual rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Forcing people to choose either between becoming vaccinated, or becoming second-class citizens is destructive of these ends.

First, people who have a conscientious objection to the COVID-19 vaccine should not be forced to take it. The three vaccines approved for use in the United States all use abortion-derived cell lines in either their development and production, or during the lab testing phases. As an evangelical Lutheran Christian, I find it morally unacceptable to receive such vaccines. Scripture teaches that babies in the womb are alive, and are human persons from the time of their conception. To end that life without moral justification is murder, and a sin against God’s command. God calls us in the the 5th Commandment not to harm our neighbor in his body, but to help and support him in every physical need. To receive the benefits of such a vaccine developed from abortion-derived cell lines, however tangentially, makes me feel complicit in that murder.

Next, People who have recovered from COVID-19 infection and are producing antibodies should not be forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The National Institutes of Health has found that most people who have recovered from COVID-19 infection come away from their illness with long-term immune protection from the disease. A recent study from Tel Aviv University in Israel, the country with the highest vaccination rate in the world, has determined that natural immunity to COVID-19 is “far superior to vaccine-induced immunity.” Yet, in the United States, we are treating people with natural immunity as though they pose a danger to the health of the general public, if they do not receive a vaccination. We should recognize the benefits of natural immunity through infection recovery and at least consider it to be on the same level as vaccination-induced immunity. We should not require people with natural immunity to be vaccinated.

Finally, the rights of individuals to seek out or refuse medical treatment should be respected. No one should be pressured to get a vaccination if they do not believe it is in their best interest. All the currently available COVID-19 vaccines were developed quickly and authorized for use under emergency use approval by the FDA. We have no clear idea what the long-term effects of these medicines will be on the human body. People willing to accept that risk should certainly be allowed to take the vaccine. People who do not want to take that risk, no matter how ignorant others may consider that decision to be, should not be forced to do so. Moreover, though these medications are being called vaccines, that is not truly what they are. These treatments are, in reality, therapeutics similar to the flu shot. They may not prevent a vaccinated person from contracting the disease; they may lessen the severity of the disease and its duration. While our society strongly encourages everyone to get a flu shot each year, we do not mandate it, and influenza kills tens of thousands of people every year.

Every day we seem to get a little closer to a vaccine mandate here in Hodgkins. The federal government is on the cusp of mandating companies which employ 100 or more people to require their employees to be vaccinated. Private corporations, institutions of higher education, and municipalities all over the country are instituting vaccine mandates as a condition of employment. Hodgkins’ neighbor, Countryside, has instituted such a mandate for their city employees, punishable by measures up to and including termination of employment. Mandates are being challenged in the courts all across the country. Some are being upheld, and some have been struck down. The best course of action would be to allow workers to make their own choices about the vaccines, and let them live at the level of risk at which they are comfortable. It is clear that the most reasonable compromise would be to allow exemptions to those people who have a conscientious objection to the vaccines, as well as to those who can demonstrate natural immunity through antibody testing, and to require from this group continued social distancing along with regular COVID-19 testing in lieu of forced vaccination.

Such constant testing and social distancing is itself divisive and, I suspect, useless. It could be endured as a compromise with those who are still afraid and want to retain the illusion that these superstitious measures protect them.

The general public is becoming conditioned to to believe that their friends and neighbors who choose not to get vaccinated for COVID-19 are somehow endangering the lives of those who are vaccinated. This certainly isn’t true. We should resist this misconception and respect the rights and choices of all individuals. ###