Top officials with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) expressed misgivings about researchers with the agency studying people with neurological issues after they received COVID-19 vaccines, according to newly released emails.
Dr. Avindra Nath, a senior investigator with the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was studying people with post-vaccination neurological problems in 2020 and 2021.
In an email on April 10, 2021, he sent a draft of a paper to the institute’s director, Dr. Walter Koroshetz, that outlined what he had found.
“Early recognition and treatment with corticosteroids can reverse the symptoms,” Nath wrote.
The following day, the institute’s director sent the manuscript to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who at the time was director of another NIH institute.
“There have been steady slow stream of reports to me of post vaccination neurologic conditions, seem to be mostly peripheral nerve disorders … maybe an occasional spinal cord issue,” Koroshetz told Fauci. “Avi has been collecting a bunch. He has a report sent out to publish. Hard to know not due to chance but are timed to the vaccination.”
Another NIH employee sent the manuscript to then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Lawrence Tabak, a second top NIH official, and shared that the New England Journal of Medicine rejected the paper.
“What do you make of this?” Collins wrote in response. “The draft letter doesn’t explain how these 32 patients were referred—leaving one to wonder whether this is common or rare.”
Koroshetz told Collins that many reports had been lodged with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and that Nath had been attracting referrals because he had appeared on a podcast to discuss neurological problems following COVID-19 vaccination.
Koroshetz also said that Nath, and another employee at his institute, had suffered tinnitus after receiving COVID-19 vaccines, and that Nath had hearing loss.
Collins said the approach taken by Nath’s team was “very troubling,” adding, “collecting anecdotes and then trying to build a case isn’t scientifically compelling—and will have the main consequence of feeding vaccine hesitancy and social media overreaction.”
Hellbound and Down 