A general view of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Sept. 30, 2014. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it does not have documents backing its claim that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.
The CDC’s website calls it a myth that the vaccines cause variants.
“FACT: COVID-19 vaccines do not create or cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19. Instead, COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent new variants from emerging,” the website states.
“New variants of a virus happen because the virus that causes COVID-19 constantly changes through a natural ongoing process of mutation (change). As the virus spreads, it has more opportunities to change. High vaccination coverage in a population reduces the spread of the virus and helps prevent new variants from emerging,” it also says.
The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit, asked the CDC in Freedom of Information Act requests for documentation supporting the claim.
In one request, the group asked for “All documents sufficient to support that COVID-19 vaccines do not create or cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.”
Another requested “All documents sufficient to support that the immunity conferred by COVID-19 vaccines does not contribute to virus evolution and the emergence of variants.”
The CDC has now responded to both requests, saying a search “found no records responsive” to them.
The first response came in January (pdf); the second came on May 4 (pdf).
If the CDC is making declaratory statements, the agency should have documents supporting them, Aaron Siri, an attorney representing ICAN, told The Epoch Times.
The responses are “very troubling,” Siri said. “I thought the CDC was a data-driven organization, that they made their decisions based on the studies and the science and the data.”
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.
ICAN has been one of the more prolific requesters of information from the CDC during the pandemic. Many requests have yielded information. Others have not.
In this case, the CDC should act to ensure continued public trust, Siri says.
“Remove the language or provide the evidence,” he said. “There obviously are going to be instances where recommendations from the CDC might prove helpful or useful. And I think they do a disservice to everybody by hurting their own credibility by making statements that they either don’t have support or won’t produce the support for.”
Scientists outside the CDC have also said that vaccines can help prevent new variants.
“As more people get vaccinated, we expect virus circulation to decrease, which will then lead to fewer mutations,” the World Health Organization says on its site.
But many of the claims relied on the vaccines being able to stop infection from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19. The vaccines are increasingly unable to do so, particularly against the newest dominant strain, Omicron.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a virologist, is among those who say that the vaccines themselves are behind new variants.
“All COVID-19 vaccines fail in blocking viral transmission, especially transmission of more infectious variants. This is a huge problem as viral transmission is now increasingly taking place among healthy people in general and vaccinees in particular (as their S-specific Abs do not sufficiently neutralize S variants),” Vanden Bossche says on his website. “The resulting suboptimal S-directed immune pressure serves as a breeding ground for even more infectious variants.”