Clots

Is cayenne pepper "the most powerful blood thinner"? No, that's not true: A cardiologist told Lead Stories it's not the most powerful blood thinner and there is no evidence cayenne pepper is more effective than the drugs scientists have tested and have proven work on large groups of people. The claim appeared with a video on Facebook (archived here) on…

Does a social media post listing "1,884 Athlete Cardiac Arrests" and 1,310 deaths between January 2021 and July 2023 prove a connection between these mishaps and the COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: While the ultimate source of the information cited in the post lists hundreds of "athletes" who have died or collapsed for various reasons (some of them clearly…

Does a video on social media show an extremely long protein string from a vaccine being removed from a person's body? No, that's not true: The video shows a tapeworm being pulled out through a person's nostril. Vaccines work by triggering an immune response to a particular pathogen, like a virus, rather than by producing long protein strings in the…

Will eating a leaf with chlorophyll provide relief to a person bitten by a venomous snake? No, that's not true: A board-certified emergency medicine toxicologist specializing in herpetology and envenomation (exposure to poison from a bite or sting) treatment told Lead Stories, "Chlorophyll does not neutralize snake venom." A botany expert also told Lead Stories there is "no scientific basis…

Is water consumption so unhealthy that people "are not supposed" to drink it? No, that's not true: The claim on social media is an unsupported misrepresentation of the known facts about the mechanisms of hydration in the human body. The claim originated from a video (archived here) published on TikTok on September 29, 2022, and which then resurfaced on social…

Do COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and treatments for the virus come from snake venom and do the vaccines then cause humans to produce venom in their bodies? In addition, is nicotine the "perfect antidote" for COVID, making the vaccines unnecessary? No, none of those things are true: These assertions have no basis in science, infectious disease experts told Lead Stories. The…

Are knives or bullets coated with garlic juice deadlier than they would be without it? No, that's not true: While garlic does have anti-clotting properties, they're not strong enough to cause people to bleed out from a wound that wouldn't normally have killed them to begin with. The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by eattolivenottodie…

Do a paper published in a medical journal and a video based on it prove the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine causes brain and heart damage? No, that's not true: The paper looks at the case of a single elderly man with Parkinson's disease who died weeks after his final vaccination. It doesn't establish a causal link between the vaccine and the…

Did scientists warn that eggs are causing thousands of people to "suddenly" form blood clots? No, that's not true: The 2017 study by Cleveland Clinic researchers that is supposed to support this assertion makes no such connection. The medical center said, "The online article [making this claim] does not accurately represent the findings of our 2017 research." The claim appeared…

Did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) find a link between the Pfizer bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and strokes in the elderly? No, that's not true: The U.S. public health agencies did detect a possible safety signal for people 65 and older with the Pfizer shot, but the CDC said, "data currently…