On The Contentious Vaccine Sperm Count Study

My careful analysis of the Pfizer sperm count study. Bad news, yes. Catastrophic news, we don't know.

I originally wrote an article on the recent peer-reviewed vaccine sperm count study in June, but didn’t publish it on my Substack because I wasn’t unequivocally sure if I had interpreted it correctly. Vaccine safety has become a highly contentious topic (after Biden got in office and the Left made a 180) and I want to make sure I get it right.

There’s one group of people who will merely see a headline about vaccine harms and assume it must be true. The other group will reflexively interpret the same information as clear “conspiracy theory.”

I’m attempting to pave a middle way where I only judge claims based on rigorous scientific evidence. There’s a time and place for faithful belief. This isn’t one of them. This is the standard I promise to all my readers.

For this recent study — which shows at least temporary lowered sperm counts post-vaccination but long-term outcomes are unknown — I have consulted with a few experts and spent time carefully understanding the topic.

My updated article (including an interview with Dr. Andrew Bostom) is available below:

Pfizer Vaccine Impairs Sperm Count—Long-Term Effects Unknown

(koya979/Shutterstock)

By: Rav Arora

A new peer-reviewed study published in the journal Andrology appears to vindicate another dark suspicion about COVID-19 vaccines: They harm male fertility. Specifically, researchers find declining sperm counts for up to five months after the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 jab.

Previously, any legitimate questions about COVID-19 vaccination affecting fertility were dismissed using the perverse rhetoric of “there’s no evidence” (it’s dependent upon the advocates of a universally distributed medical product to prove it’s safe, not the other way around). Then, there was a published study in June of 2021 that seemingly disproved any male fertility concerns.

“We now have evidence that should reassure you that the risk of immunization compromising your sperm count is extremely low,” Dr. David Cohen, a reproduction expert, told CNN.

“Because the vaccines contain mRNA and not the live virus, it is unlikely that the vaccine would affect sperm parameters,” stated study author Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, director of the Reproductive Urology Fellowship program at the University of Miami.

After the publication of the study and positive support from the scientific community, all male fertility concerns were brushed aside. Anyone who dared to question the parameters of the study or the longer-term effects was relegated to a conspiracy theorist. As someone who generally doesn’t like to engage in speculation, I wasn’t one of these people—but I vividly recall it happening.

There was one severe limitation of the study: It only looked at sperm counts before the first dose and 70 days after the second. What happens after two months remained a mystery, but a mystery not worth worrying about, we were told.

The new study published in Andrology went beyond 70 days using collected sperm counts from men who donated sperm to three fertility clinics in Israel. The study had four phases: a pre-vaccination baseline control, and a short-term (15–45 days), intermediate (75–120 days), and long-term (>150 days) test.

In the first phase (15–45 days), “no significant change” was find among all the metrics.

However, the intermediate evaluation (75–120 days) showed a 15.4 percent sperm concentration decrease, which led to a total motile count (TMC) reduction of 22.1 percent compared to the pre-vaccination baseline control. The study authors concluded that the immune response induced by the Pfizer vaccine “is a reasonable cause for transient semen concentration and TMC decline.”

While semen volume bounced back in the third phase (over 5 months), sperm concentration and total motile count didn’t. Concerningly, the total motile count — the amount of sperm in the ejaculated semen — was 19.4% lower than pre-vaccination levels.

This finding certainly raises serious concerns about long-term effects on sperm counts, but there are a few caveats. First, it’s important to note that a number of things can reduce sperm counts, such as stress, excessive coffee consumption, obesity, and viral infection. This isn’t to undermine the negative impact from vaccines, but just to mention there are other crucial factors.

Secondly, this study was underpowered — their weren’t enough subjects. I spoke to Dr. Andrew Bostom, clinical trialist and associate professor of family medicine at Brown University, who was banned (and later re-instated thanks to Alex Berenson’s star lawyer) for merely quoting this study in a tweet:

As Dr. Bostom explained to me,

There is evidence of a possible longer term, ~ 5-month follow-up decline, when sperm concentration and total motile count were reduced at Time 3 [though] these values did not reach statistical significance. In other words, the trend was toward a persistent decline, although it did not “reach statistical significance,” but may well have been evident, and “statistically significant,” merely by studying more subjects.

There are other issues with the study as well.

Primarily, there was no control group of unvaccinated sperm donors to compare to. Doing otherwise would’ve made the findings far more compelling. Moreover, only relative reduction rates were given rather than absolute sperm counts. If the broader data paints an even darker picture, it’s possible it was obscured given the tremendous amount of public and institutional pressure to support mRNa vaccines (see the backlash Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg and colleagues faced for publishing a study on vaccine myocarditis).

The biggest question that arises from this study is the reproductive side effects associated with a booster shot. Study participants were given a third dose, but data collection ended after the second shot. Moreover, this data is only for the Pfizer vaccine. As we’ve seen with myocarditis, the Moderna vaccine has severalfold (approximately 3 to 5 times) higher rates of myocarditis compared to Pfizer. If the differential vaccine damage for myocarditis in any way aligns with sperm count impairment, this would be a medical disaster.

The most honest takeaway from the study is that vaccines do likely lower sperm counts in men, but the duration of reduction is completely unknown. It could have long-term effects or it could return to normal levels after a few months.

This is devastating news since millions of men have been not only been enabled or encouraged to get vaccinated, but state-coerced with their jobs and livelihoods on the line.

As has been well-demonstrated, vaccine proponents have been far too quick to dismiss concerns as “conspiracy theory.” That vaccines are wildly ineffective at preventing transmission was once a conspiracy theory. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson was kicked off Twitter for making this claim, alongside other facts constituting “misinformation.”

Robust evidence showing vaccines cause an unacceptably high rate of myocarditis in men has also been bizarrely challenged, ignored, and distorted (see Dr. Sanjay Gupta on The Joe Rogan Experience).

Being concerned with “long-term side effects” was treated like speculating whether the Earth is flat.

Vaccine advocates made the grave mistake of overconfidently assuming the unknowns were completely benign, and any consideration otherwise was blasphemous.

Science isn’t religious scripture—it’s an ever-evolving process. With the new data in, responsible scientists must acknowledge this risk and compare it with the potential benefits of vaccination (against severe disease and death). And accordingly, the one-size-fits-all “everyone 5 and up should get boosted” propaganda campaign must be scrapped in favor of age-specific, individualized decision-making.

A 30-year-old male looking to start a family may be reasonably discouraged from getting vaccinated (or now getting a booster) given the new data; meanwhile, a frail 75-year-old man with multiple comorbidities would much rather be protected from the potentially lethal consequences of COVID-19.

The question is, will the public health authorities and top epidemiologists re-evaluate their universal vaccine advisory and honestly discuss the risks?

If not, I may contend “science is dead” with Nietzschean zeal.