This claim has been circulating on social media with a significant reach, garnering hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of views. According to these posts, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed on their website that the Covid-19 vaccine can cause Multiple Sclerosis.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disease that can cause significant disability and symptoms such as “mood changes, memory problems, pain, fatigue, blindness and even paralysis.” It is the result of immune system cells mistakenly attacking nerve fibre coatings, breaking them down over time.
The claim points to a single study as it’s basis, highlighting how it is listed on the WHO COVID-19 Research Database (where research on Covid-19 from around the world is collated). However, as a note on the site points out, the WHO database is a collection of research that is not endorsed, recommended, or verified by the WHO. One of the claim’s key prongs – that this information is “straight from the WHO” – is therefore inaccurate and misleading.
However, does the study itself demonstrate a causal link between the vaccine and MS?
Published in 2022 in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal by researchers from the University Hospital of Zürich in Switzerland, the study is a case report that examines and bases its conclusions on only 2 specific cases. It does not claim to be a widely applicable conclusive study, nor does it claim to have found a confirmed causal link between the vaccine and MS. Instead, according to its abstract, the paper tentatively concludes that in the 2 specific cases, the patients had received mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccinations, which could have induced MS.
As researchers have pointed out when contacted by AP Fact Check, rather than a observational case report, any significant findings about a cause and effect link between the vaccine and MS would have to be the product of an experimental study that has not been carried out yet. Alongside the false implication that WHO has announced or endorsed it, the claim that a study has found or proven a link between the vaccine and MS is also inaccurate. We therefore give it a rating of false.
While attempting to locate the actual study, we realised that the paper itself is not accessible online – nor has it even been published and peer-reviewed. Rather than being a “paper” or “study,” what is publicly available online is only an abstract which was presented at a conference in 2022. The link from the WHO database leads directly to the “abstract book” from that conference, where the abstract from this case report is listed amongst many others. Any claims made are therefore based not on the paper, but rather a short abstract.
This highlights an issue seen often in such claims; where screenshots or links to the abstract page of a paper are used as definitive proof. There seems to be a tendency to trust sources presented in claims as “studies” and to trust screenshots without reading further, accepting academic-looking presentation as evidence of scientific proof. This poses yet another challenge when it comes to identifying misinformation and seems poised to continue alongside future publications related to Covid-19 and vaccines.
