Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is pushing a COVID vaccine myth that’s resurfaced.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Greene tagged the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic while reposting a video from the right-wing TV channel Real America’s Voice.
“.@COVIDSelect we need to investigate this by talking to embalmers,” Greene wrote.
The video claims that embalmers are finding “white fibrous clots” in “up to 50 percent or more of their corpses.” The clip claims that the clots only started appearing after the 2021 vaccine rollout.
This particular COVID vaccine myth is, like many, based in a very small grain of truth. Blood clotting is a side effect of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, according to a April 2021 PBS report, but they were very rare.
For example, out of 6.8 million people who had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the time, only 6 people developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—or, in layman’s terms, a blood clot in the brain. The clot stops blood from draining, and can cause a hemorrhage leading to a stroke, according to Johns Hopkins. Patients who took the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines were not affected.
It appears this vaccine myth of embalmers finding clots in many bodies originated with Richard Hirschman, an embalmer in Alabama, according to European news organization AFP. In a viral clip, Hirschman said he found clots in “50-to-70% of bodies,” and he shows a number of jars he says contains removed blood clots. His claims made up a good portion of the anti-vaccine documentary Died Suddenly, which is riddled with inaccuracies, according to McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.
“I am not a doctor or scientist not even a phlebotomy expert,” Hirschman told AFP. “But I am very familiar with embalming and I work with blood all the time.”
However, when AFP asked an actual doctor, they said it was impossible to tell what caused the clots from just looking.
“It is usually impossible to tell what caused the blood to clot in the first place by looking at the clot,” Pathologist David Dorward told the news service. “For example, a blood clot from a patient who had clots caused by Covid infection when compared to blood clots formed following prolonged bed rest after a major operation would look pretty much identical.”
Mortuary expert Monica Torres provided a more obvious explanation for the high number of clots.
“The blood clots are from refrigeration. It happens to many bodies,” Torres told AFP. “It’s just that there were so many bodies to process, many of them sat in refrigeration for long durations so they got blood clots. It’s not a big deal and these people are trying to make it a thing.”
Nikolaus Klupp, an associate professor of forensic medicine at the Medical University of Vienna, agreed with Torres’ explanation.
“The images look to me more like postmortem clots, mainly due to the color, the shape, and particularly because of the amount. Vital clots (clots that formed in a living person), for example in the context of disseminated intravascular coagulation are strongly attached to the vessel wall and are difficult to detach, in our experience,” he told HealthFeedback.org.
What’s more—according to esteemed medical journal The Lancet, a patient is much more likely to get blood clots from COVID-19 itself than any of the vaccines.