Children's Health Defense
An article published Thursday in The Guardian — under the headline “Most pregnant women and unborn babies who contract bird flu will die, study finds” — misrepresented the study’s findings, according to scientists who reviewed the study for The Defender.
As public health officials ramp up panic around a possible bird flu pandemic, The Guardian also reported that a “severe strain of bird flu known as highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) is spreading globally.”
However, the news outlet added the caveat that human infections are rare, limited to people who work in close contact with animals and there is no evidence of transmission between humans.
That information aligns with the latest update on H5N1 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which states the “current public health risk is low.”
How did The Guardian come up with its headline?
Let’s take a closer look at the study — “Systematic Review of Avian Influenza Virus Infection and Outcomes during Pregnancy” — published in the January 2025 edition of the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
Lead author Rachael Purcell said that while many people who became infected with bird flu were “completely fine, we wanted to look at what is known about what happens to pregnant women,” The Guardian reported.
To accomplish this, the authors assessed over 1,600 studies on bird flu. Purcell and her team identified only eight studies involving a total of 30 pregnant women who contracted various strains of bird flu. None of those were the same H5N1 strains circulating currently.
The researchers’ analysis of the eight studies and 30 pregnant women found high mortality rates — again, from older bird flu strains, not those in circulation now.
They concluded that the mortality rates indicated that “awareness of the vulnerability of pregnant women to a new pandemic is needed.” They didn’t claim, as The Guardian did, that most pregnant women and unborn babies who get bird flu will die.
The authors said their findings support the case that a “paradigm shift” is needed, where pregnant women are included early in clinical trials for vaccines produced as part of “pandemic preparedness.” Typically, pregnant women are excluded from such studies due to safety concerns, until a drug has proven safe in a healthy population.
Critics of the study told The Defender there were problems with the study’s methodology. They also said the authors’ recommendation that pregnant women be included early in trials for experimental vaccines is dangerous.
“This is a terrible idea, because most drugs and vaccines subjected to clinical trials fail, putting fetus and pregnant women at high risk for no benefit,” internist and bioweapons expert Dr. Meryl Nass said…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
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