Dr. Anthony Fauci privately acknowledged a potential risk of miscarriage if pregnant women took a COVID-19 vaccine in the first trimester, even as he and the rest of the federal government were urging them to get the shots, according to messages from his phone.
The messages were released by two Republican senators leading the GOP’s probe of Dr. Fauci and his handling of the coronavirus. The senators obtained a copy of Dr. Fauci’s phone from the Health and Human Services Department, where he spent decades as head of the infectious diseases division at the National Institutes of Health.
“Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester,” Dr. Fauci wrote to colleagues on Jan. 25, 2021, just days after President Biden took office and tapped him to be the White House’s chief COVID advisor.
The messages concerning pregnancy are the first to be released from the trove of more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails recovered from Dr. Fauci’s phone.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who released the messages along with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Dr. Fauci’s private acknowledgement of a risk to pregnant women “could have an immediate impact” on the “principle of informed consent.”
It seems to build on a narrative that Dr. Fauci shaped public information to achieve his goals, even if it meant hiding or downplaying medical facts.
A key example was in the early days of the pandemic, when Dr. Fauci emphatically told Americans that “people should not be walking around with masks.” That has since been labeled a “noble lie,” told to try to prevent hoarding the limited supply of masks and gloves officials wanted instead to go to medical personnel.
In the five years since the mRNA vaccines were deployed, government officials say fears about pregnant women haven’t been borne out.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer automatically recommends the vaccine, it does say it’s safe for pregnant women, based on studies of more than a million cases across the globe.
“Studies have shown no increased risk for complications like miscarriage, preterm delivery, stillbirth, or birth defects,” the CDC concludes.
But in the early days of the pandemic, with the pioneering vaccines drawing intense scrutiny, that wasn’t established.
In the messages released this week, Dr. Fauci was communicating with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the newly installed head of the CDC at the time, and Dr. Vivek Murthy. They were part of Mr. Biden’s coronavirus advisory board.
Dr. Murthy said he’d been telling pregnant women there was no need to worry, but he wanted to get his colleagues’ thoughts. He asked for data or a “theoretical reason” about whether vaccination was better earlier or later in a pregnancy.
Dr. Walensky said there was no data at that point, in late January 2021. Dr. Fauci agreed, then about two hours later sent his follow-up saying he’d “asked around a bit more” and discovered the theoretical issue of miscarriage in the first trimester.
A day later, after the World Health Organization advised against pregnant women taking the Moderna vaccine because of a lack of data, the discussion developed.
Dr. Fauci said he would acknowledge that data on the vaccine in pregnant women was lacking, but that it was important to weigh the risks and benefits, such as avoiding the outcomes of a “serious disease” in COVID.
He pointed out that studies on animals didn’t show any “red flags,” and in an early sample of more than 10,000 pregnant women, “no issues have arisen.”
About a week later, speaking publicly, Dr. Fauci didn’t raise his theoretical concerns about miscarriage, instead saying “we have to be careful but thus far no red flag about that, about pregnant women.”
The release of the messages comes less than a week after Mr. Paul led the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in voting to hold Dr. Fauci in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions.
Dr. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, saying Mr. Paul, chairman of the committee, was trying to trap him into saying something that would get him prosecuted.
Under the law, the contempt resolution still must survive a vote in the full Senate, where it is likely to meet with a filibuster.
Mr. Paul last month also posted two years of entries from Dr. Fauci’s personal journal. The diary showed the COVID chief to be obsessed with his treatment in the press and his reception by Hollywood stars such as Julia Roberts, even as the death toll piled up.
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