Covid vaccines cause infertility and alter your DNA. Those are two myths making the rounds.

Myth: Infertility

“Vaccine is female sterilization,” claimed the Facebook post, which the social media site labeled as “false information.” According to the post, the Pfizer vaccine contains a spike protein that trains the body to attack syncytin-1, a protein in the placenta.

Syncytin-1 is “completely unrelated to the SARS spike protein,” says Ian Jones, professor of virology at the UK’s University of Reading. The notion of infertility is “therefore essentially fictitious.”

Anti-vaccine activists have also falsely claimed that vaccines for polio, hepatitis B, and HPV (human papillomavirus) cause infertility.

Myth: Altered DNA

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA (messenger RNA) to teach the immune system to attack the coronavirus. Although mRNA is similar to DNA, the vaccines can’t change your DNA. Like the mRNA your cells make, the vaccine’s mRNA is destroyed by the cells’ enzymes after it has done its job.

Photo: Pixel-Shot/stock.adobe.com.

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