Post falsely claims U.S. Supreme Court confirmed vaccines are ‘irreparable gene therapy’

What is the claim?

Posts shared on Facebook in late December 2023 allege that politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has won a case against “all the pharmaceutical lobbyists” in the United States Supreme Court. It also claims that the top court has ruled that the COVID-19 vaccines are "bio-weapon" injections and that the "harm caused by Covid mRNA gene therapies is irreparable."

Posts claiming the US Supreme Court has ruled that COVID-19 vaccines are bio-weapons. (Source: Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found no credible news reports stating that the Supreme Court had made any such ruling.

What is the truth?

mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been deemed safe by various reputable medical organizations around the world like the World Health Organisation, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Millions of people have been safely vaccinated with these vaccines. 

On its website, the EMA explains, “As with all medicines, COVID-19 vaccines have side effects, but these are far outweighed by the benefits in terms of protection against severe disease and death.” Research by a team at Brown University showed that the "risk of negative effects of both mRNA vaccines [Moderna and Pfizer] is exceptionally low."

The EMA reported that by May 2023, 12,000 cases of fatal side effects due to the vaccine were reported from the 768 million vaccine doses administered, a rate of 0.001 reported fatal outcomes for every 100 administered vaccine doses. Side effects mostly include anaphylaxis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myocarditis, and pericarditis.

The posts also claim that COVID-19 vaccines are "gene therapies" that cause irreparable harm. Logically Facts has previously debunked similar claims of COVID-19, as vaccines do not interact with the DNA of the recipient.

Regarding the remarks, Kennedy Jr. also told the Associated Press, "The article about the Supreme Court is misinformation." While Kennedy has a record of spreading public health conspiracy theories and advocating against vaccines including claiming that vaccinations cause autism, there is no record of such a case filed by him with the Supreme Court.

Variations of this claim have circulated for over two years, and despite being debunked by several fact-checkers, it continues to resurface.

The verdict

No such judgment was passed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and Kennedy Jr. has denied making such comments. mRNA vaccines for protection against COVID-19 infection are considered safe by leading health agencies. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.