Dr. Anthony Fauci greenlit a COVID-19 vaccination study on pregnant women to “fill gaps in our knowledge” after he privately theorized that the injection could possibly cause miscarriages in the first trimester.According to never-before-seen texts from Fauci’s government-issued iPhone, which quickly caused a stir on social media after their release on Monday, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases initially expressed worries about the abortifacient effects that a second dosage of the coronavirus vaccine could have on expectant mothers.One text thread showed Fauci hypothesizing in January 2021 that the immunization shot, which had just been authorized for emergency use a month prior, carried a risk of early pregnancy loss.
Later that year, Fauci backed an NIAID-sponsored clinical study, known as the “MOMI-VAX trial,” that examined the shot’s safety for new and expectant mothers, as well as the maternal immune responses in pregnant and postpartum women who had received or will receive the coronavirus vaccine.In a statement accompanying the study’s announcement in June 2021, Fauci acknowledged that the United States still did not have sound clinical data — half a year after the shot’s approval for emergency usage — on how the COVID-19 vaccine affected so-called “pregnant and breastfeeding people.”“Tens of thousands of pregnant and breastfeeding people in the United States have chosen to receive the COVID-19 vaccines available under emergency use authorization,” Fauci said at the time. “However, we lack robust, prospective clinical data on vaccination in these populations. The results of this study will fill gaps in our knowledge and help inform policy recommendations and personal decision-making on COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy and in the postpartum period.”The observational study stipulated that participants were not provided with the vaccine as part of the data collection process. NIAID was simply recording the vaccine’s effects on unborn babies and breastfeeding newborns when administered to women who voluntarily sought out the shot during pregnancy or within two months of delivery.Researchers enrolled up to 750 pregnant women and 250 postpartum mothers, along with their infants, in the MOMI-VAX study group to examine the transfer of vaccine-induced antibodies from mother to child across the placenta or through breast milk. The study ultimately concluded that maternal vaccination against the coronavirus safely prevented SARS-CoV-2 infection in early infancy, though several of the study’s researchers were either hired contractors for Pfizer, received grant money from the vaccine developer to conduct clinical research, worked on federally funded trials of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, or served as paid advisers to the two pharmaceutical corporations, according to conflict-of-interest disclosures. Moderna’s and Pfizer’s versions of the COVID-19 vaccine were among the iterations assessed in the study.In the press release publicizing the study’s rollout, NIAID’s parent agency, the National Institutes of Health, told prospective recruits, “So far, COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe in these populations.”However, five months before the study started recruiting pregnant participants, Fauci privately told his colleagues that he believed the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine might have the potential to inadvertently kill babies in utero.“I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” Fauci texted a group chat on Jan. 25, 2021, including Dr. Rochelle Walensky, then the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and then-Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.
