26/08/2026
What were pregnant women actually told in 2021 β and what were officials saying to each other?
On 16 August, Senator Ron Johnson released two text messages, both dated 25 January 2021.
Dr John Mascola, then director of the Vaccine Research Center at NIAID, wrote to Dr Anthony Fauci: "I am corrected on pregnancy studies. Initial Studies avoid vaccination in first trimester due to possible fever and higher rates of miscarriage in first trimester."
Fauci wrote to CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky: "Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester."
Read those carefully, because precision matters here. What they show is officials discussing why the trials had excluded first-trimester participants β fever, from any cause, is associated with higher first-trimester miscarriage rates β and Fauci raising a theoretical mechanism. That is a hypothesis, and a sound reason for caution in trial design.
The hypothesis was subsequently tested, at scale, and was not borne out. Large cohort and registry studies, including a nationwide cohort of more than 527,000 infants, found no increased risk of miscarriage or of major congenital anomalies after first-trimester mRNA vaccination. We say that plainly, because a professional association that only reports the half of the evidence it likes is no more trustworthy than an institution that does the same.
But the consent question does not disappear just because the outcome was reassuring. Informed consent is not retrospective. It is the right to be told, at the time, what is known, what is unknown, and why.
Pregnant women in 2021 were given confident public messaging. They were largely not told that first-trimester participants had been excluded from the trials, or why. Clinicians who raised that gap were not thanked for it β some were reported, investigated, or told to stay in their lane.
Uncertainty communicated honestly builds trust. Uncertainty managed quietly destroys it β and the damage outlasts the pandemic that caused it.
π¬ Colleagues: in 2021, did you feel you had what you needed to properly consent a pregnant patient? What would you want done differently next time?