Health

Does having an autoimmune disease mean a person also has a parasite? No, that's not true: An infectious disease specialist told Lead Stories that "parasitic infections are not causes or triggers of autoimmune disease." While some evidence suggests that "parasitic infections can serve as a trigger factor of autoimmune reactivity," there is no scientific consensus that parasites cause all autoimmune…

Did a flagger working for "NPL Pipeline Company in the Chicago suburbs" die after being given a bottle of water "suspected" of being "laced with fentanyl"? No, that's not true: NPL told Lead Stories that the report is "entirely false." The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) published on July 20, 2023, under the title "Stay safe…

Did public health experts discredit the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies got emergency authorization from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA)? No, that's not true: While the new vaccines were being developed, ivermectin was also being studied as a potential treatment for COVID. Field trials did not find conclusive evidence that…

Was a Pfizer manufacturing site in North Carolina that was damaged by a tornado "stocked with" COVID-19 vaccines? No, that's not true: A Pfizer spokesperson told Lead Stories that COVID-19 vaccines are not made or stocked at the facility. The claim appeared in a post published to Instagram on July 19, 2023. It included a video that contained text reading…

Did an unnamed source with the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG) disclose to Real Raw News that there are about 19,000 sealed indictments held on U.S. physicians and medical staff for criminally coercing patients to get the COVID-19 vaccine in an unlawful and unethical partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of…

Are Masonic Lodges injecting children with "'free child identification chips' to 'help combat abduction,'" also collecting those children's DNA? No, that's not true: There is no credible evidence or reliable information to support such a claim. Multiple Masons organizations across the United States said their child-identification programs don't put tracking chips in children and any DNA information is retained by…

Did The Washington Post report that Bill Gates was "being held under armed watch at Guantanamo Bay" after having been "charged with war crimes against humanity"? No, that's not true: A search through the newspaper's digital database returned no such results, and no credible news publication or official government statement describing such an event was publicly available as of July…

Did a helicopter release a swarm of deadly mosquitoes over the crowd at Baltimore's African American Festival (AFRAM) on June 18, 2023? No, that's not true: An urban entomologist told Lead Stories that day-active mosquitoes in that region do not swarm the way videos showed. The Baltimore Health Department has not had any reports of mosquito-borne illness from the festival.…

Did the U.S. government approve the sale of "lab-grown" meat "without any labeling"? No, that's not true: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on June 14, 2023, that it gave label approval to GOOD Meat and UPSIDE Foods; companies that produce chicken in a laboratory "grown directly from real animal cells." Their labels will say "cell-cultivated chicken." The claim…

Did the celebrity gossip website TMZ report that Madonna was "clinically brain dead"? No, that's not true: An image of the headline made to look like it was from TMZ is counterfeit and never appeared on the site. A real TMZ story with a headline about Madonna was posted at the exact time as the fake post but said she…

Are health care professionals being "urged" to call vaginas "bonus holes" to avoid offending "trans or non-binary patients"? No, that's not true: There is no widespread or official push to change the terminology. A single charity in the United Kingdom suggested it as an option. In health care, professionals typically use anatomically correct and medically appropriate terminology when referring to…

Did a large plume of smoky air from Canada, which spread poor air quality conditions to many places in the U.S. in late June 2023, originate from gold and lithium mining operations in Sakami, Quebec, and not from forest fires? No, that's not true: There were many large and well-documented forest fires burning in the region near Sakami in northern…

Does a new study prove that the Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine causes "turbo cancer"? No, that's not true: The study cited in the social media post doesn't show that the Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine induces something called "turbo cancer." Additionally, a cancer expert wrote, "'Turbo cancer' is not a thing." It's not a recognized medical term. The claim appeared in…

Did a preprint paper submitted to The Lancet on July 5, 2023, find that 74 percent of the deaths in the autopsies it reviewed were caused by the COVID-19 vaccine? Additionally, was it also a legitimate study from The Lancet? No, neither is true: The preprint paper never made it past the submission stage with the medical journal because The…

Do "all diseases come from mineral deficiencies"? No, that's not true: While some conditions stem from mineral deficiencies, it is "absolutely not" true that all diseases are caused by not consuming enough minerals, an expert in the study of vitamins and micronutrients told Lead Stories. To say that staying in an "alkaline way of eating" and avoiding "acidosis" is a…

Did the United Nations declare that pedophilia is a "human right"? No, that's not true: The person making the claim referenced a UN report that never says that pedophilia is a "human right" or that it should be legal or allowed. The report discusses the enforcement of criminal law regarding consensual sexual relations between minors. There is no explicit or…

Is lab-grown meat cultivated using cancerous or pre-cancerous animal cells? No, that's not true: Cell-cultured meat is cultivated using animal cells that have been modified to replicate indefinitely. Cell-cultured or lab-grown meat is regulated in the U.S. under the same stipulations as conventionally grown and slaughtered meat, poultry, and seafood. Furthermore, regulatory agencies do not allow for cancerous animal meat…

Did COVID-19 vaccines cause a massive mortality spike in breast cancer female patients below the age of 45, reaching 297,000 deaths during the first six months of 2023? No, that's not true: Posts on social media distorted a report published by the American Cancer Society (cancer.org), conflating the number of projected new cases with expected mortality. The story appeared in…

Did Bill Gates hatch a convoluted plan to create a demand for anti-malaria drugs he funded by also funding malaria-fighting programs while developing a means to introduce malaria to the United States through genetically modified mosquitoes? No, that's not true: Genetically modified male mosquitoes being tested in the U.S. - the type that don't spread malaria and also don't bite…

Did Dutch physicians start to euthanize people with autism and "other minor disabilities" against their patients' will in order "to save the planet"? No, that's not true: The source of the claim distorted the findings of a recent study that concluded that, in some cases, people requesting assisted death do not cite physical suffering. The results did not imply that…