Fact Check: This Video By Dr. Richard Fleming Does NOT Prove Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine 'Attacks Human Blood, Creating Clots'

Fact Check

  • by: Dean Miller
Fact Check: This Video By Dr. Richard Fleming Does NOT Prove Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine 'Attacks Human Blood, Creating Clots' No Such Data

Does Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine attack human blood and cause dangerous clots? No, there's no publicly available evidence to support the claim. There is no website at the address the video maker sends viewers to for details on the blood exam. The Food & Drug Administration in 2009 barred this video's maker, Dr. Richard Fleming, from working with anyone seeking FDA approval of a drug or medicine, citing his conviction on federal fraud charges.

This clot demonstration has not been confirmed by independent experts. The claim is the opposite of what has been described in professional science journals. At the time this fact check was written, more than 245 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine had been administered and neither the FDA nor CDC have issued warnings or other reports on clots resulting from the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. Pfizer says there is no evidence to support the clotting claim.

The claim originates in an October 26, 2021, video (archived here) posted to the Alex Jones/InfoWars platform titled "Medical Bombshell: Pfizer Vax Attacks Human Blood Creating Clots Under Microscope," which opened:

Highly respected medical doctor and inventor, Richard Fleming, has released a 32-minute detailed presentation documenting his shocking findings. In late 2020, before the Pfizer shot had even been rolled out, top scientists and experts around the world warned the Pfizer and Moderna shots posed extreme risk of causing blood clots, myocarditis and other cardiovascular problems. One year later, Pfizer and Moderna have been forced to issue warnings confirming their controversial MRNA vaccines can indeed cause a long list of problems not just limited to the cardiovascular system. Now, research scientist, Dr. Richard Fleming, has has tested the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine on fresh human blood samples in-vitro and made a string of nightmare discoveries confirming the medical community's findings. To find out more about this ground-breaking research, visit Fleming-Method.com

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Medical Bombshell: Pfizer Vax Attacks Human Blood Creating Clots Under Microscope

Highly respected medical doctor and inventor, Richard Fleming, has released a 32-minute detailed presentation documenting his shocking findings. In late 2020, before the Pfizer shot had even been rolled out, top scientists and experts around the world warned the Pfizer and Moderna shots posed extreme risk of causing blood clots, myocarditis and other cardiovascular problems. One year later, Pfizer and Moderna have been forced to issue warnings confirming their controversial MRNA vaccines can indeed cause a long list of problems not just limited to the cardiovascular system. Now, research scientist, Dr. Richard Fleming, has has tested the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine on fresh human blood samples in-vitro and made a string of nightmare discoveries confirming the medical community's findings. To find out more about this ground-breaking research, visit Fleming-Method.com

Fleming's 33-minute video makes multiple claims about the vaccine. This fact check addresses the main claims about the clotting video.

False claim: You can "find out more about this ground-breaking research" at Fleming-Method.com

No supporting data or evidence is available at that web address, only this for-sale message from the website hosting service :

Fleming-Method free.JPG

(Source: fleming-method.com screenshot taken Thu Nov 4 at 21:08:07 2021 UTC)

Claim: The clotting was found by "Highly respected medical doctor and inventor, Richard Fleming ..."

Fleming was trained as a cardiologist and in nuclear medicine. His medical license was revoked by Nebraska in 2010. The FDA announced in 2018 that it has banned Fleming from working on any applications for approval of new drugs and medicines. In its notice that he was barred for 10 years, the FDA wrote:

... Fleming was convicted of two felonies, healthcare fraud and mail fraud. ORA considered that he billed Medicare and Medicaid for procedures other than those that he had performed, that he falsified clinical trial data, and that his actions 'have the potential for causing significant loss of public confidence in the healthcare system.'

Claim: Dr. Richard Fleming "made a string of nightmare discoveries confirming the medical community's findings"

Online captions for the video say "Dr. Richard Fleming, has tested the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine on fresh human blood samples in-vitro and made a string of nightmare discoveries confirming the medical community's findings." But medical research into clotting effects found the opposite.

At the 31:00 mark of the video, after describing the blood samples and light microscope used (as opposed to electron microscope, which has a higher resolution and magnification), Fleming says: "We show that the red blood cells responded normally to normal saline, that nothing unusual will happen but add the Pfizer vaccine and the red blood cells lose their oxygen-carrying capacity and the red blood cells start to clot ... This is exactly what we're seeing with neurologic harm with with heart, with cardiac harm, with blood clots occurring in the body. This is proof positive that these vaccines cause this type of damage."

The consensus of working physicians with expertise in treating COVID and of lab professionals studying it does not match Fleming's declarations.

For instance, in the Journal of Autoimmunity, authors of an August 2021 paper on the AstraZeneca and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines found that while AstraZeneca did favor clot creation, the Pfizer vaccine did not. That paper has since been cited by the authors of seven other papers, according to the National Library of Medicine, which indexes a million titles.

Asked if the drugmaker has observed clotting problems associated with its COVID vaccine, Pfizer's spokesperson replied by email on November 4, 2021:

There is no evidence to suggest this claim.

Clotting is not on the CDC's list of possible serious side effects of the Pfizer vaccine it is monitoring to learn if some patients' adverse health events are caused by the vaccine or are coincidental, occurring after vaccination but for other reasons.

The FDA and CDC are responsible for long-term follow-up to watch for adverse reactions to the COVID vaccines. The FDA vaccine safety web page information makes no mention of clotting as a potential side effect of the Pfizer vaccine.

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Lead Stories is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers who are fighting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about the alliance here.


  Dean Miller

Lead Stories Managing Editor Dean Miller has edited daily and weekly newspapers, worked as a reporter for more than a decade and is co-author of two non-fiction books. After a Harvard Nieman Fellowship, he served as Director of Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy for six years, then as Senior Vice President/Content at Connecticut Public Broadcasting. Most recently, he wrote the twice-weekly "Save the Free Press" column for The Seattle Times. 

Read more about or contact Dean Miller

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