An anti-vaccination couple has refused transfusions for a life-saving operation for fear of infection, and an organization has begun matching unvaccinated donors: misinformation about COVID-19 has spawned the so-called “pure blood” movement, the AFP agency writes. on Wednesday, quoted by Agerpres.

The movement promotes conspiracy theories that transfusions from people vaccinated against COVID-19 will “contaminate” the blood. However, these theories are not based “on any scientific evidence,” said Catherine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“If the blood of a vaccinated person is donated to an unvaccinated person, then the person being transfused is not vaccinated,” she explained.

However, this fact did not stop some Internet users from speaking out in favor of the creation of blood banks for people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, a request also received by several doctors in North America.

A New Zealand couple recently objected to an operation intended to save their child’s life, fearing that he would receive blood from a vaccinated donor. The court temporarily removed custody of the child to allow medical intervention, but the case has become a landmark case for anti-vaccinationists.

Such cases are “falsely circulated” on the Internet, “drawing attention to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories,” explained Catherine Wallace.

Conspiracy theories related to Covid-19 continue to flourish on the Internet

In private social media groups, defenders of the concept of “pure blood” call for violence against medical personnel participating in vaccination campaigns and falsely claim that vaccinated people die en masse.

Images posted in one of these online groups show, for example, a nurse holding a syringe in the middle of a field strewn with skulls, an AFP journalist who infiltrated one such group discovered.

Safe Blood Donation, based in the Swiss city of Zurich, tries to connect unvaccinated donors with unvaccinated blood transfusion recipients. The association, founded by a Swiss naturopathic specialist, George Della Pietra, promises on its official website services for obtaining blood counts from unvaccinated people.

The association states that it is present in Western Europe, North America, Africa and Asia.

“Many researchers and doctors are very concerned about the vaccines against COVID-19, and are also convinced that they enter the body through the blood through the wrong way, so to speak, and stay there,” said a representative of the association for safe blood donation. Clinton Ohlers.

His statement is diametrically opposed to modern scientific knowledge.

“Donor blood obtained from people vaccinated against COVID-19 is safe for transfusion,” reminded Jessa Merrill of the American Red Cross.

She added that vaccine compounds “are not in the blood system.”

The “pure blood” movement, a profitable business for some

According to the official website, members of the safe blood donation association must pay an entry fee of €50, followed by an annual subscription of €20.

“The ‘safe blood’ movement is 100% based on misinformation about vaccines,” said epidemiologist Kathryn Wallace, adding that “exploiting people’s fears is unfortunately a profitable business.”

However, the search for so-called “purity” is not limited to blood. In social networks, some publications are trying to find the breast milk of unvaccinated mothers or even the sperm of unvaccinated men – “the next Bitcoin”, predict conspiracists.

It is difficult to estimate the number of people seeking “unvaccinated” blood, but according to experts in the field, finding it will be a problem in any case in countries with high vaccination rates.

In the United States, where more than 80% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, health authorities have clarified that they do not require donors to present their vaccination status.

Hospitals cannot communicate this information to patients, as this is a blood donation (and not organs – ed.).