FEBRUARY 11, 2022
The BBC did not acknowledge that “HIV is used to make the Covid vaccine”, unlike what is claimed in a tweet published on February 8 and relayed more than 1,800 times. A screenshot of the tweet is also circulating on Facebook.
This tweet is accompanied by a short video, about thirty seconds long, in English. The excerpt begins with an interview with a man, who explains “it keeps it together and allows it to stay 100% in this structure present on the surface of the virus”. A female voiceover then explains a scientific process: “The form of the coronavirus Spike protein before the virus encounters our cells is what triggers the most protective antibody response. That’s why Keith has to make the Spike protein in the lab, locking it in the exact same shape, adding another protein that acts a bit like a clamp. And this protein is a tiny fragment of HIV.
It should be remembered that “all Covid-19 vaccines approved and available worldwide use different manufacturing methods, none of which includes sequences or materials derived from HIV”, reminds 20 minutes Keith Chappell, the Australian scientist visible in this video.
So what do we see in this extract? It comes from a BBC documentary, titled Horizon: The Vaccine, which aired in June 2021...
With his team, he sought in 2020 to develop a vaccine against Covid-19. These scientists sought to stabilize a highly purified version of the Spike protein of the coronavirus by adding two short sequences from an HIV protein, glycoprotein 41. Why this choice? “This more stable presentation is more likely to lead to a protective immune response,” explains Adam Taylor, a research fellow at Australia’s Griffith University...
After animal trials, phase one trials began on a group of volunteers in July 2020. All participants “were informed of the details of the vaccine, including that it contained peptide sequences corresponding to regions of the gp41 protein of HIV,” recalls Keith Chappell. The essay has been peer reviewed and published in the prestigious scientific journal Lancet Infectious Diseases (Infectious diseases in French).
In December, the university announced that the team of researchers would not pursue research for this vaccine candidate, due to false positives for HIV detected in participants.