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| - Fact Check: Was HIV used to make the Covid vaccine? Here's what you need to know
One vaccine used only a small fragment of the HIV protein. The vaccine project, however, was halted immediately after the first phase of the human trial and the vaccine was never given to the public.
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India Today Fact Check
One vaccine used only a small fragment of the HIV protein. The vaccine project, however, was halted immediately after the first phase of the human trial and this vaccine was never given to the public.
As the call for withdrawing the mRNA vaccine grows louder, the infodemic around Covid-19 has made a comeback. One particularly dangerous social media post is a video that allegedly shows the BBC admitting to the use of HIV in making the Covid-19 vaccine.
In the video featuring the BBC logo, a man can be seen explaining the structure of the Covid-19 vaccine. This is followed by an animated demonstration and a voice-over explaining the action of the Covid-19 spike protein. The narrator explains how a vaccine could be manufactured using a small fragment of HIV protein. The archived version of such posts can be found here and here.
AFWA found that while it is true to an extent that HIV was used to manufacture a vaccine, only a small fragment of the HIV protein was used to design the vaccine. This vaccine project, however, was shelved immediately after the first stage of the human trial, and it never saw the light of day.
AFWA Probe
To resolve the mystery surrounding the video and the viral claim, we performed an image reverse search of the keyframes of the video. This led us to an array of links and tweets carrying similar videos and keywords. One of these links took us to the complete video hosted on Vimeo. The title of the video read: "Horizon Special 2021 - The Vaccine."
The description under the title of the video said: "The extraordinary inside story of the biggest scientific challenge of our age – following a small band of vaccine scientists around the world who took on Covid-19 and ultimately delivered the weapon to beat it. As news of the coronavirus broke around the globe, a small group of scientists jumped into action to tackle one of the greatest medical challenges of our time: to create a vaccine against a virus no one had ever seen before and to do so in record time, all during a deadly, global pandemic."
Thereafter, we searched for "Horizon Special 2021- The Vaccine" to get to know more about the video.
The first result landed us on a page on the official website of the BBC. The page spells out a detailed description of what it says is the world's first documentary to showcase behind-the-scenes access to front-running vaccine research teams during 2020 and 2021. This feature-length film was shot on five continents and first aired in June 2021.
This documentary features five research teams from around the world, one of which is from the University of Queensland, Australia. The man seen in the viral video is Keith Chappell, an associate professor at the University of Queensland. The viral clip, which is a very small part of the documentary, is time stamped and can be seen here.
Chappell is a Molecular Virologist and his research is focused on vaccine development. He is the co-leader of UQ's Covid-19 vaccine program, which produced one of the first vaccines to enter clinical trials, within six months of the announcement of the pandemic. Australian biotech company Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) was one of the co-founders of the program.
Chappell is one of the inventors of the "molecular clamp" vaccine technology. The technology works by “locking” viral infection proteins into a shape to trigger an optimal immune response. However, to ensure that the molecule stays in shape, the research team led by him introduced a small fragment of a similar protein from the HIV virus to lock onto the coronavirus spike proteins. He explained in the documentary that by no chance would this introduce HIV into the subjects.
The vaccine entered the first phase of human trials in July 2020. The subjects were injected with different dosages of the test vaccine. It was observed that the vaccine was effective in generating antibodies against the Covid-19 virus. Unexpectedly, the vaccine triggered the production of HIV antibodies in the volunteers being tested. This resulted in false positives for HIV. However, on being tested further for actual HIV, the infection was found to be absent.
The false positives among the test subjects caused panic and chaos among the public. Consequently, the Australian Department of Health and CSL halted the project and stopped its funding. In December 2020, the research team officially announced that the trial could not enter phase two of human trials due to its interference with HIV diagnostic tests. The statement, however, made it clear that there was "no possibility the vaccine causes” HIV infection.
Hence, it's clear that the viral clip takes matters out of context to cause mass hysteria around vaccines.
(Written by Vikas Bhadauria)
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