View of the Charité Photo: jka fux
From BZ/dpa
The Charité in Berlin has distanced itself from statements by one of its endowed professors about side effects after a corona vaccination.
“The faculty of the Charité checked the methodology of the online survey. It was found that this work has methodological weaknesses,” said a Charité spokesman on Friday evening.
The theses of Harald Matthes, endowed professor for integrative and anthroposophic medicine at the Charité, received a lot of attention a few weeks ago. After surveys as part of his so-called ImpfSurv study, he claimed that there was an underreporting of side effects at the responsible Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI).
After its examination, the Charité came to the conclusion, among other things, that “a safety profile of Covid-19 vaccines cannot be developed in a medically and scientifically valid manner without a medical assessment of a causal connection to the vaccine administered”. The term “severe side effects” was not defined in either the ethics application for the study or in the study protocol. In addition, people could have participated in the survey several times and without being checked.
“The statements made in public by Professor Matthes therefore exceed the scope for interpretation in view of the very preliminary data and do not allow the conclusions expressed in relation to the existing data basis to be substantiated,” said the Charité spokesman. “The Charité therefore distances itself from the statements made.”
Matthes is free to continue the survey. “Due to the methodological limitations of the study, however, the statements he has made publicly so far are not comprehensible, the board of the Charité recommends Professor Matthes not to continue the study.”
