No Scientific Paper Proved That Moderna Created COVID-19
The Claim
The pharmaceutical giant, Moderna, created the COVID-19 virus.
News posted on
Emerging story
Social media users claim that Moderna, the pharmaceutical giant, created COVID-19. The users have referred to an article on The Exposé website claiming that there is a scientific paper that proved the allegation.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar has investigated the claim and found it to be misleading.
Using keywords, we found that The Exposé website has published the claim on March 3, 2022, referring to a February 23 article on the Daily Mail. The Exposé article mentioned that a scientific paper sparked "fresh suspicion" about COVID-19 being tinkered in a lab.
The claim surfaced online after “scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein.” According to the Daily Mail article, researchers identified a “tiny snippet of code, which is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.” But the Exposé website has concluded that Moderna created the COVID-19 to destroy the customers’ immune systems so they can sell their vaccines.
The study was conducted by seven scientists working at many institutions and universities, including the University of Oregon, University of Michigan, and the University of South Florida, for a company developing anti-cancer drugs.
The study’s paper has mentioned that the scientists discovered a 19-nucleotide sequence that they also found as an exact reverse match in the Moderna-patented gene sequence. The researchers wrote that their discovery “may occur randomly, but other possibilities must be considered.” The scientific paper did not mention that their study proves Moderna “created” the virus.
