And if you’re going to make grave warnings about the blood donor supply, you really ought to have specific explanation of what’s happening, why it’s bad, and the evidence of it.
People don’t receive organ transplants because their current organs are doing ok — too many people on transplant wait lists die waiting. Many people after transplant have a less than fully functional organ, but if it’s better than the one that was killing them, it’s just better! Less than optimal donated organs can save lives too. This is why I really found it a little horrifying a few years back when a prominent person on social media spread the problematic idea that people with post-covid conditions shouldn’t be allowed to be organ donors. And for days people were tweeting out how they thought nobody who’s had covid ought to be an organ donor. It was both ridiculous and dangerous, since some people who’d had covid were posting that they were taking themselves off organ donor lists. It made no sense and was based on people not understanding the dire situation transplant wait list patients are in, and seemingly not aware that obviously doctors can evaluate the condition of donor organs. Obviously these experts evaluate the condition of the organs since there’s a reason the organ donor is in fact dead.
This idea is yet again making the rounds on social media because of an article that claimed: “the blood and plasma of people with Long Covid should not be used for donation, agreed leading Long Covid experts” — but the piece only named one source by name (Resia Pretorius) who says this “Based on the levels of inflammatory markers and microclots we have seen in blood samples from both Long Covid and ME/CFS, I do not think the blood is safe to be used for transfusion” — but without specifying why.[1]
The article author refers to a “growing body of research that shows a variety of potential issues in the blood of people with Long Covid” but this reference is not cited in the article — there are no reference links or footnotes to back up this assertion, so I don’t know what they’re referring to. There are papers published on “Fibrin amyloid microclots” and the search term seems to only result in 14 entries and all since 2021, no earlier. All but 3 results are the same group of people centered around Etheresia (Resia) Pretorius, Douglas B Kell, and Gert Jacobus (Jaco) Laubscher. “Jaco” is someone mentioned in interviews by Jordan Vaughn, who describes Laubscher as a mentor, and Vaughn also mentioned in May 2023 he was planning on publishing something with Doug Kell.[2] Those 3 also are co-authors on the often cited “Triple Anticoagulant Therapy” preprint that apparently some long covid clinics are using to prescribe that or a similar “anticlot protocol” off-label, and that is both sought after and criticized by patients who’ve sought it out,[3] for example at a clinic promoted in a zine posted on the internet.[4] The “triple therapy” people talk about online seems to be based on the preprint from March 2023 that seems to have never been peer reviewed and is not yet actually published over a year later.[5]
The American Heart Association says that people with cardiac conditions may donate blood, but that low hemoglobin count, or people on blood thinners and anti-clotting medication are screened out from being blood donors because it might be harmful to the donor or the recipient, and that when donating blood people are screened for what medications they’re taking. So people taking medications for any clotting conditions would be ruled out just based on the medications screening. People are also screened out of donating on the basis of actively feeling sick. So there are already rules for both these scenarios.[6]
An article from January 2024 talks about a blood protein study, quoting one of the researchers who says that the “study provides evidence of an inflammatory signature restricted to patients with active long COVID”, but the article notes that the “factors underpinning long COVID are not well understood” according to the researchers.[7] People with Long Covid have an illness, but whether or not their blood should be shunned from blood donation across the board, even when having no symptoms, is unclear, and the reason for the claim is not explained in that article.
It also seems unlikely that patients suffering debilitating long covid or ME would even be likely to volunteer to be blood donors anyway, and in fact the article does note that patient advocates and the UK’s NHS had noted that blood donation “could worsen the symptoms of people with Long Covid or ME” — and that’s actually the NHS’s “reasoning” for the rule to exclude symptomatic Long Covid suffers from being blood donors — and not to do with concerns of unsafe blood.
Yet this article started out by referencing a former ban in the past on blood donation by people with ME based on a retracted study by researchers at a lab in Reno, Nevada. What The Sick Times piece curiously left out is more pertinent as well as arguably more interesting. This research, retracted over a decade ago, had claimed that a mouse retrovirus was involved in ME/CFS. The retraction in Science reported that multiple laboratories failed to reliably detect murine virus in CFS patients, and found “evidence of poor quality control” in the experiments.[8] The story is now notorious because the discredited scientist involved, Judy Mikovits, was featured in the covid contrarian conspiracy theory movie called “Plandemic” — a film in which it was asserted that the retracted and discredited research of Mikovits had “revealed the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases”[9] — invoking the erroneous idea of scientists in “biolabs” being responsible for cooking up infectious disease,[10] even though diseases have been circulating since long before modern medicine and laboratories.[11] Mikovits also inappropriately claimed in the film that the pandemic may have originated from U.S. government flu vaccine research and that supposedly “face masks activate dormant coronavirus particles implanted through flu vaccination” and that Anthony Fauci, then of the NIH, personally thwarted her anti-vax research.[12] Judy Mikovits is a covid denier who literally denied that her own husband died of covid. On a podcast called Things Fell Apart, Mikovits can be heard speaking about it — she said her husband had COPD after all, that he died of a heart attack, and also claimed “they murdered him and called it covid” — claiming the death certificate with covid on it was evidence that some authorities were retaliating against her. A point of contention for her with covid mitigations early in the pandemic was the closing of beaches because she said that the sand and the seawater had “sequences” and “healing microbes” and she also complained that infecting people was “the game” to “push the vaccines”.[13]
The Sick Times article mentions that public health agencies need to be clear how they communicate guidelines and the decision making process “so as not to increase stigma” and mentions that “questions arise” about the blood supply otherwise. But frankly the article itself seemed to raise more questions than it answered. And looking further into it didn’t lead anywhere sensible.
The last sentence of The Sick Times article states: “We need diagnostic testing to determine which blood is safe for donation.” But which blood how and who would be testing for what exactly?
In February 2023, Resia Pretorius tweeted that Jordan Vaughn had been running blood tests at his clinic, and tagged Putrino and Iwasaki as “analysing samples” as well — and Pretorius added: “Hopefully more publications soon!”[14] That was over a year ago. Then in late December 2023, Pretorius seemed to lament that “the establishment” hasn’t yet been convinced by researchers that there are already “diagnostic methods and treatments available” and warned about clinging to what was taught in medical school, and finishes the tweet giving a shout out to David Joff & Jordan Vaughn.[15] Jordan Vaughn is a doctor who seems to be at least a bit of a covid contrarian,[16] who was vocally campaigning against masks early on,[17] and is a colleague of the anti-vax ivermectin proponent Pierre Kory of the FLCCC, an organization that promotes the idea of “vaccine shedding”[18] that’s not actually supported by evidence,[19] and Kory has publicly denounced all vaccines, saying “it is actually “pro-vaccine activism” that is the major killing force globally”[20] and specifically complained about the WHO, Peter Hotez, and Bill Gates on Twitter in 2022, saying “they must be stopped”.[21]
My takeaways are:
- I doubt people on the transplant wait list are overly worried about the off chance of inheriting a long covid sufferer’s organ. Their priority is to get off the list by means other than a permanent resting place. Organ donors are heroes — and if one organ does happen to be damaged, maybe another is fine. One organ donor can often save multiple lives.
- Hand wringing over safety of the blood donor supply really feels like it’s evoking AIDS era tragedies in a way that feels off. There have been a lot of inappropriate comparisons between covid and AIDS floating around on social media with no basis in science, and yet the most obvious parallels of stigma and the social determinants of health are often ignored.
- It’s doubtful a lot of very ill patients are even trying to donate blood. Of course it’s reasonable to caution unwell people to refrain from doing anything that may worsen their situation, including having rules preventing it. And those rules already exist.
- A lot of dodgy anti-vax misinformation and covid contrarian bullshit seems to have been seeping into a lot of patient advocacy spaces more and more.
References
[2] The Genetic Link to Abnormal Clotting in Long Covid | With Dr Jordan Vaughn — Gez Medinger — May 30, 2023 Jaco is really kind of my um you know in many ways mentor on this therapy I mean this I I looked at Jaco as somebody who was brilliant and not only that took a chance and said let’s try this and his his you know what he’s done is really helping lots of people because for the most part my triple therapy or triple treatment is basically straight off what Jaco is doing um a couple things that I’ve added uh are related to what I’ve kind of found and I’m hopefully going to publish with Doug Kell pretty soon that there’s a subset of people uh that and it’s a fairly common genetic subset that have issues with fibrin breakdown to begin with
[3] Reddit — r/cfs — Can anyone share their experience as a patient at RTHM? princess20202020 • January 17, 2024 They have two benefits I can think of: They will run every test under the sun. If you are coming from a situation where your doctor won’t order tests and you are dying to know if there’s some simple test that’s been overlooked that could be the key to your recovery, their testing protocol could give you peace of mind. I probably got six figures worth of tests. Of course nothing really meaningful came up, as we know there is no test for CFS. But they found a few vitamin deficiencies, etc. Nothing that was a game changer. So you could argue that they are thorough or you could argue (like my PCP does) that their tests are a huge waste of money, blood, time, and effort. They will prescribe stuff. If you want to try a rare antiviral, they will prescribe it. You want to try blood thinners, they will prescribe it. You read about some treatment here on Reddit? They will prescribe it. You want an expensive and complex supplement stack? They will prescribe it. For me, this is why I cane to them. My PCP won’t prescribe anything off label and I wanted to be able to try things. Unfortunately none of the things I tried helped me, and god knows how much wear and tear I put on my liver and kidneys. So again this could be a pro or a con. You can have access to off label drugs. But you’re a Guinea pig for THE BENEFIT OF RTHM. If they find something that works, you know damn well they are going to monetize it. So they basically have a lot of desperate patients willing to offer themselves up for experiments, without any of the controls of a regulated drug trial. Initially I saw this as a positive because I was so desperate. Now I see that they are exploiting our desperation for their own financial gain. So bottom line those are the pros and cons. I certainly felt like my provider meant well. But the truth is there is no secret cure. If there were, we would know about it.
[5] [62] Gert J Laubscher, M Asad Khan, Chantelle Venter et al. Treatment of Long COVID symptoms with triple anticoagulant therapy, 21 March 2023, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2697680/v1]
[6] American Heart Association — Published: March 7, 2024 — Heart disease doesn’t have to keep you from donating blood — By Joyce Tsai, American Heart Association News The Red Cross recommends a six-month wait or longer for those who have had a heart attack, a recent episode of angina, bypass surgery or angioplasty, or if a change in their heart condition resulted in a medication change. People who use blood thinners or other anti-clotting or antiplatelet medications must disclose all their medications during their health screenings because donating blood may be harmful to them, as well as the recipients, Flowers said. Bottom line: It’s a good idea for those with heart conditions to check with their health care team before donating blood, Flowers said. Dr. Tochi Okwuosa, a cardiologist and director of the cardio-oncology program at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said as a general rule of thumb, individuals with a low hemoglobin count should not donate blood.
[7] Blood Protein Changes May Unravel Long COVID Mysteries — Links between complement and coagulation systems could lead to long COVID therapies by Judy George , Deputy Managing Editor, MedPage Today January 18, 2024 “Our multicenter, longitudinal study provides evidence of an inflammatory signature restricted to patients with active long COVID, with diagnostic accuracy 6 months after symptom onset and independent of any information on COVID-19 history, thus facilitating clinical applicability,” Boyman and colleagues wrote. Factors underpinning long COVID are not well understood, the researchers observed. Current hypotheses include tissue damage, viral reservoirs, autoimmunity, or persistent inflammation.
[8] Retraction Bruce Alberts — Science 23 Dec 2011 Vol 334, Issue 6063 p. 1636 DOI: 10.1126/science.334.6063.1636-a Multiple laboratories, including those of the original authors (2), have failed to reliably detect xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus (XMRV) or other murine leukemia virus (MLV )–related viruses in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients. In addition, there is evidence of poor quality control in a number of specific experiments in the Report.
[9] NPR — Seen ‘Plandemic’? We Take A Close Look At The Viral Conspiracy Video’s Claims May 8, 20204:52 PM ET By Scott Neuman In the video, filmmaker Willis says the paper “sent shock waves through the scientific community, as it revealed the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.”
[10] World Socialist Website — Promoters of “Wuhan lab” conspiracy theory fume as their claims fall apart — Andre Damon — 8 December 2021 Greenwald has for months promoted the conspiracy theory on Twitter, sharing talking points with fascists such as Steve Bannon, Raheem Kassam and the right-wing Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. But Greenwald is only one of the many figures previously associated with opposition to the Iraq war who have embraced the “lab leak” conspiracy theory that is central to US war drive against China. “Stop with the … logic,” raved comedian Jon Stewart in June, as he proclaimed that the COVID-19 pandemic was “caused by science.” Bill Maher, the former Iraq war critic, has likewise promoted the conspiracy theory. But just as these figures have been drawn to the US government’s right-wing campaign against China, they have been equally taken aback as the lies they embraced have fallen apart amid major new scientific discoveries and the determination by scientists to resist a right-wing campaign to scapegoat them for the pandemic.
[11] University of Cambridge — Neanderthals may have been infected by diseases carried out of Africa by humans, say researchers 11 Apr 2016 Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford Brookes have reviewed the latest evidence gleaned from pathogen genomes and DNA from ancient bones, and concluded that some infectious diseases are likely to be many thousands of years older than previously believed. There is evidence that our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals and exchanged genes associated with disease. There is also evidence that viruses moved into humans from other hominins while still in Africa.
[12] Harvard Kennedy School — OCTOBER 9, 2020 PEER REVIEWED The Twitter origins and evolution of the COVID-19 “plandemic” conspiracy theory — BY MATTHEW D. KEARNEY — SHAWN C. CHIANG — PHILIP M. MASSEY Throughout Plandemic, discredited former National Cancer Institute scientist Dr. Judy Mikovits is shown in a series of interview clips (Alba, 2020). Dr. Mikovits makes several demonstrably false or misleading claims about COVID-19, including: 1) coronavirus may have originated from US government research into the flu vaccine, 2) COVID-19 vaccine is being used to push a pro-vaccine agenda led by academia and industry, 3) Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, profited from the HIV/AIDS epidemic and suppressed Dr. Mikovits’ anti-vaccine research, and 4) face masks activate dormant coronavirus particles implanted through flu vaccination (Alba, 2020; Elliott, 2020; Frenkel et al., 2020; Funke, 2020a).
[13] Things Fell Apart Jon Ronson — S2. Ep 2: We’re Coming After You, Honey — Released On: 09 Jan 2024 Judy Mikovits: “The game is to prevent the therapies til everyone is infected and push the vaccines. Why would you close the beach? You’ve got sequences in the soil in the sand, you’ve got healing microbes in ocean in the saltwater. That’s insanity.”
[14] Resia Pretorius @resiapretorius 11:24 AM · Feb 13, 2023 from South Africa· 742 Views — Dr Jordan Vaughn has been running blood samples in his US LongCOVID clinic, and Dr @BeateJaegerMD too. Both @PutrinoLab and @VirusesImmunity are already analysing samples and many more labs are starting to analyse samples. Hopefully more publications soon!
[15] Resia Pretorius @resiapretorius 5:41 AM · Dec 30, 2023 One fine day @cstroeckw, one fine day. May researchers convince the establishment that there are diagnostic methods and treatments available. We cannot cling to old theories taught in med school. We need clinicians like @DrGrahamLJ @jfvaughnmd09 @DavidJoffe64
[17] Alabama Political Reporter — Masking policy hotly debated before Mountain Brook Board of Education Parents and doctors debated mandatory masking of school children before the Mountain Brooks Board of Education. By Brandon Moseley Published on August 19, 2021 There were doctors on both sides of the debate. Dr. Jordan Vaughn spoke at length about his opposition to the mask mandate and how there is, in his opinion, insufficient research into the long term effects of masking school children for anyone to mandate that children be masked 9 hours a day, five days a week for potentially an entire school year. “As a frontline physician, a researcher, a business owner, a mid-size employer and most importantly a father I am concerned with the decision this school system is making by mandating our children be masked during their education,” Vaughn told the board. “Our public health establishment has failed this country, this state, and the physicians that are tasked with treating and informing patients and most egregiously failed our most precious asset, our children. It was understandable a few months into this to be reticent and fearful, but now more than 18 months later continuing to rule with fear is inexcusable; especially in our supposed leaders.”
[18] Internet Archive Wayback Machine — Courses FLCCC Winter 2024 Conference Shedding is Real Lecture abstract: In “Shedding is Real,” Dr. Pierre Kory and Scott Marsland explore the phenomenon of vaccine shedding, specifically the transmission of gene therapy residues like spike proteins from mRNA vaccines between individuals
[19] Doctors Manitoba — Do vaccinated people shed spike proteins or the virus could be harmful to others? The short answer: no. The COVID-19 vaccines approved for use do not contain live virus, and thus it is not possible for any “viral shedding” to occur. Viral shedding is theoretically possible only for vaccines that contain a weakened live virus, though it is extremely rare for this to infect someone else with that virus. COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any live virus, and thus the vaccine cannot result in anything being shed that could infect or harm others.
[20] Pierre Kory, MD MPA @PierreKory 8:53 PM · Dec 24, 2022 Hotez & the WHO are doubling down, trying to bury the fact that, from the smallpox vaccine myth to the polio vaccine myth to now, it is actually “pro-vaccine activism” that is the major killing force globally. Immense data supports my conclusion.
[21] Pierre Kory, MD MPA @PierreKory 8:53 PM · Dec 24, 2022 Hotez is an indescribably dangerous man. The WHO is literally run by Gates & the vaccination industry (same thing). They must be stopped. Our health & our lives depend on it.