![]() The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, photographed here in Jackson, Miss., on Sept. "You can take the first step in the technology, but that doesn't mean that you invented the technology. "That problem had to be solved," Offit said. An early 2000s breakthrough from the University of Pennsylvania’s Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, for example, uncovered a way to keep the immune system from attacking injected mRNA. The two papers were the first reference in a 2019 history of the mRNA vaccine technology.īut development of today’s COVID-19 vaccines was built on the work of many scientists and would not have been possible without other discoveries that cleared major hurdles. A pair of papers he coauthored with two other researchers in 1989 and six other researchers in 1990 showed that mRNA could be delivered into cells using lipids, and that doing so with mice could trigger the production of new proteins. Malone contributed to important early research. There’s some merit to that claim, as several reporters and fact-checkers have documented. His Twitter account, before it was suspended, said the same thing. Malone markets himself as the "inventor" of mRNA and DNA vaccines on his website and LinkedIn profile. As then-chief medical officer for a Florida pharmaceutical company called Alchem Laboratories Corp., he was involved during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in research looking into Pepcid, the heartburn medicine, as a potential COVID-19 treatment. Malone, who did not respond to an emailed request for comment, received a medical degree from Northwestern University in 1991 and specializes in immunology, according to his license with the Maryland Board of Physicians. Who is Malone, and why has he become so controversial? Here's what you need to know. 3 to react to what he framed as an attempt to "suppress" him. Malone went on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s primetime TV show Jan. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, entered a full transcript of the interview into the congressional record.Ĭoncerned about being deplatformed, Rogan created an account on Gettr, a pro-Trump alternative social media platform, and told his followers to join him there. ![]() Simone Gold, the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that has fought restrictions to curb the virus’ spread. They’ve been shared by the likes of Seb Gorka, a radio host and former Trump adviser, and Dr. "Like all people, scientists can be flawed, can make mistakes, can be misguided, and can even spread misinformation on purpose," said Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Buffalo who has researched misinformation in health, science and politics.Įven as Twitter and YouTube sought to stem the spread of Malone’s claims, videos highlighting various segments from the doctor’s hours-long conversation with Rogan continued to circulate on both platforms and others such as Facebook and TikTok. They also show the limits of platforms’ whack-a-mole policing approach. ![]() Malone’s rise to right-wing stardom and subsequent fall into social media purgatory underscore how accomplished doctors can exploit their credentials to spread harmful misinformation. Paul Offit, chair of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. "He’s a legitimate scientist, or at least was until he started to make these false claims," said Dr. He bills himself as the "inventor" of mRNA vaccines and has leveraged that title to push one false claim after another. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on the same grounds.īut unlike Greene, Malone has a medical degree. Days earlier, Twitter suspended the personal account belonging to Rep. The platforms’ actions against Malone represent the latest efforts from Silicon Valley to crack down on harmful COVID-19 misinformation. ![]() and the environment in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Nazi party rose to power. Robert Malone, who gained hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers in recent months as he promoted anti-vaccine falsehoods, drew a comparison in the interview between COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the U.S. Video of Spotify host Joe Rogan’s controversial interview with a doctor known for making false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines was removed from YouTube, just days after Twitter banned the doctor’s account for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies.ĭr.
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