The rap star relayed on social networks the testimony of a man accusing the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 of having caused the death of his wife. A statement devoid of any scientific proof.
Booba, new anti-vax muse? Until now, the rapper was better known for his crusade against influencers than for his anti-vaccine positions. The star nevertheless relayed on the social network X, Thursday January 18, the testimony of Marc Doyer. This man accuses the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 of having caused the death of his wife, who died in May 2022 from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a neurodegenerative condition.
Marc Doyez he says “the truth”, as Booba assures its more than 6 million subscribers? Franceinfo looked into the subject.
A misinterpretation of a report on the Pfizer vaccine
On X, Marc Doyer discusses an announcement from the controversial doctor Didier Raoult which, according to him, would support his accusations. “I will detail how the injected RNA produced unknown proteins which perhaps explain the unexpected occurrence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob type encephalopathy linked to prions [protéines malformées et infectieuses] made on this occasion, what Professor Montagnier predicted”assures the former director of the IHU of Marseille, in a publication shared more than 10,000 times.
Three months before the death of Mauricette Doyer, franceinfo met Marc Doyer. “Mauricette gets vaccinated (…) mid-May [2021] and the first symptoms appear at the end of May, beginning of June”, he detailed. After a stay in the emergency room, his wife was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, also known by the nickname “mad cow disease”. She died a year after being vaccinated.
Since then, Marc Doyer has presented himself as spokesperson for Verity France, an association disseminating content hostile to anti-Covid vaccination, particularly from media “with a strong conspiracy tropism”according to the NGO Conspiracy Watch.
Romain Doyer, son of Mauricette and Marc, also publishes messages on this subject very regularly. “Pfizer has just admitted in the expert file for the death of my mother Mauricette that the Covid-19 vaccine caused mad cow disease (…) as known side effects”he argued on Xearly January.
An erroneous interpretation according to Checknews, which consulted the document in question. “It is (…) strictly impossible to establish a causal relationship between the vaccination received by Ms. Doyer and the illness to which she suffered”, write on the contrary the authors of the pre-report mentioned by Romain Doyer. Questioned by franceinfo, Pfizer recalls that“To date, while more than three billion doses of our vaccine have been administered worldwide, no health authority across the world has reported a suspected or established link between our Covid vaccine- 19 and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”
No causal link retained
No scientific expertise to date establishes a link between this disease and the messenger RNA vaccine used to fight the pandemic. According to figures obtained by franceinfo from the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM), nearly 162 million doses have been administered since the start of the French anti-Covid vaccination campaign in December 2020. .
Over the same period, 23 cases of suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease were declared to the pharmacovigilance network, including six after vaccination (one with the Comirnaty vaccine from Pfizer, two with Spikevax from Moderna and three with Vaxzevria from AstraZeneca, the latter not being a messenger RNA vaccine). “It is important to note that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a very slowly evolving pathology, and therefore that the short onset time also does not make it possible to retain the role of vaccines against Covid-19 in the occurrence of these case”, declares the agency to franceinfo.
“Analysis of these cases finds no evidence to establish a link between the vaccine and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”
The National Medicines Safety Agencyat franceinfo
Transmissible subacute spongiform encephalopathies, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, remain rare conditions: since 1990, 100 to 150 new cases per year have been diagnosed, with a decrease in 2022 and 2023, according to the National Institute of Health and Welfare. medical research (Inserm) and Public Health France. The most common form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is the so-called “sporadic” form, which represents 85% of diagnoses. In this case, it occurs randomly, without mutation or exposure to an exogenous prion. It also exists in infectious form (caused by contamination) and in genetic form (due to the mutation of a gene).
Coincidence, the most probable hypothesis
“In all the contamination accidents we have had [à la maladie de Creutzfeldt-Jakob], the incubation period is always very long, around ten years. There, we do not see how this vaccine, which was finally generalized during the year 2021, could cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases now.“, estimated to franceinfo Jean-Philippe Brandel, neurologist and director of the national reference cell for Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, in February 2022. An analysis which is consistent with the conclusions of the ANSM.
How can we explain the six cases of this brain condition occurring after vaccination? For Jean-Philippe Brandel, coincidence is therefore the most probable explanation. As of February 6, 2022, 79.3% of the population had received a first injection according to Health Insurance.
This rate rose to 80%, or 54.2 million patients as of January 1, 2023. It therefore appears normal in the eyes of the neurologist that the probability of having been vaccinated when one develops this pathology is high. “It is obvious that there are so many people vaccinated, that among these 53 million, some will unfortunately develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. That is not why there is a link”supported the specialist.
Booba, a long conspiratorial drift
By relaying Marc Doyer’s video, rapper Booba therefore shared scientifically unfounded accusations. Despite his lack of expertise, the rapper is not his first anti-vax outing. “If the vaccine is ‘study’ that means that the labs have no perspective and that we are simply laboratory animals!”he denounced on Xearly 2022. A conspiratorial drift that has lasted for several years, notes Tristan Mendès-France, teacher in digital cultures at Celsa and the University of Paris-Cité, in a series of messages published on X.
During the pandemic, the artist had already relayed dubious theses on the health crisis. In the song Variant (2021), he sang: “They want to change my DNA”, in reference to this received idea according to which the messenger RNA vaccine would modify the DNA, notably relayed by the controversial former geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude. In the song TN (2021), its punchline “You are vaccinated so you are located” is probably inspired by the desire attributed to businessman Bill Gates to implant chips under the skin through vaccines, in order to track the population.
Booba also shared on X a video by Christian Tal Schaller, former Swiss doctor adept at urinotherapy and author of a book entitled Vaccines, a planetary genocide. For the latter, the “Doctors are useless, ineffective and dangerous”. The rapper’s latest release on vaccines earned one of his opponents cyberharassment, and Booba received recognition from Didier Raoult. “Thanks for your support, little brother.” posted the former director of the IHU of Marseille on X.