Does the COVID vaccine contain Graphene Hydroxide nano razor blades?

Question

Psiram has a page about conspiracy theories around covid vaccines and them supposedly containing graphene oxide and graphene hydroxide. They link to credible sources debunking the claim that vaccines contain graphene oxide, but their section on graphene hydroxide is unsourced:

Im November 2021 verbreitete der deutsche Chemiker Andreas Noack die Verschwörungstheorie, dass Hersteller von Corona-Impfstoffen heimlich ihren Impfstoffen Graphenhydroxid beimischten. Das angeblich verimpfte Graphenhydroxid verhalte sich im menschlichen Körper wie ein "molekulares Rasiermesser" und schade dem Organismus. Der Erzählung nach handele es sich um eine nur ein Atom starke "Klinge aus Kohlenstoff", die der menschliche Körper nicht abbauen können, und die daher im Körper verbleibe.

_{My translation: In November 2021, the German chemist Andreas Noack spread the conspiracy theory that producers of Corona vaccines secretly add graphene hydroxide to their vaccines. The supposedly used graphene hydroxide behaves like 'molecular razors' in the human body that the body can't break down, and which thus stays in the body.}

What is the evidence and how valid is this claim?

Answer 1

The evidence is very questionable and does not support the claim.

The linked source, and the claim, both attribute the discovery of the proof to Dr Pablo Campra Madrid, affiliated with the Universidad de Almería (UAL). This is a real person, and the report he published with his findings is available online. However, the linked source is dated Dec 1st, and the report was published on June 28th - and has be thoroughly debunked since then.

The above debunkers are from Maldita.es, which describes itself as

independent journalistic platform focused on the control of disinformation and public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism techniques

The debunking was first published on Jul 2nd, updated with additional expert feedback on July 5th, and the current version is dated Nov 8th. Given the thorough debunking of Campra's already widely-circulated report, the claim that Dr Noack made ground-shaking revelations by revealing Dr. Campra's June 28th study on November 18th does not stand muster.

For those who do not read Spanish, the main points of Maldita's analysis are:

• Dr Campra's report has not been peer-reviewed
• Its conclussions have been officially disavowed by the UAL
• Critically, the provenance and custody chain of the single sample analyzed by Dr. Campa are unknown. He claims to have received a refrigerated vial via courier on June 10th, but absolutely anything could be in that vial.
• Dr Campra claims, in his report, to have received the sample, and a request to analyze it, from Ricardo Delgado Martín, who has participated in previous vaccine-disinformation efforts.
• Dr Campra uses spectrophotometry to assess the contents of the vial. This technique uses the fact that different compounds absorbs different wavelengths of light in different amounts. RGO presents an absorption peak at 270nm, while peak absorption in the sample was observed between 260-270nm. This is compatible with there being RGO in the sample -- but it is also compatible with a host of alternative explanations, including the fact that nucleic acids (such as the mRNA that the vaccine is known for) have their peak absorption rates between 260-280nm. Therefore, spectrophotometry results are far from conclusive.
• Dr Campra also uses fluorimetric spectrophotography to quantify the quantity of RNA found in the sample. However, he appears to not have followed lab protocols requiring calibration of the Qubit 2.0 fluorometer prior to use; so the low amounts of RNA reported could be explained by improper measurement or measurement error.
• Finally, Dr Campra also uses optical and electromicroscopy to attempt to visually identify RGO in the sample. However, as noted by several quoted experts images included in the report and identified as RGO by Dr. Campra could correspond to many alternative nanometric polimeric structures.

Therefore, if the proof of the claim submitted by OP is to be found in Campra's report, there is no solid evidence to support the presence of RGO in Pfizer's vaccine.

Answer 2

The essence of the issue with graphene claim is that RNA looks very similar when analyzed that way:

Campra indicates that the absorption maximum that has been measured with the sample is 260 - 270 nanometers (nm). And he points out that precisely reduced graphene oxide (RGO) has absorption maxima at 270 nm, so it is compatible with the result of the sample analysis .

However, Gabriel Alfranca Ramón, doctor in Nanobiomedicine and researcher at the CSIC, explains that this maximum is also compatible with the peak observed in nucleic acids, such as RNA, so the spectrophotometry carried out "is not at all conclusive".

In his 76-page report (on researchgate) Campra doesn't seem to address this issue. (RNA appears once in the title of a paper from the references section, but that paper appears cited nowhere in the main text.)

In the most recent version of the report (dated Nov. 2) Campra basically looked at all Covid vaccines, including Astra Zeneca, and he basically found very similar patterns in all of them, because he's only looking at two or three peaks in the Raman spectroscopy data. For example he lists these different "bits" of a Pfizer and an AZ vaccine as strong candidates for graphene. (There's a similar one for Moderna.)

Basically, he goes by the peaks at 1350 cm^-1 and 1590 cm^-1 and the ratio between them... and he compares those with the similar data for graphene, but there's no data given in Campra's paper for what that would look like for RNA (only for graphene and graphite).

However, if you look at (numerous) peer-reviewed publication that try to apply Raman spectroscopy to biological matter, it's indeed (as the "counter-experts" cited by the newspaper say) no easy task to tell apart different kinds of such matter using Raman spectroscopy, especially using just those two peaks.

As examples:

• One paper merely notes that 1342 cm^-1 and 1571 cm^-1 are tell-tale of DNA or RNA.

• Another explains in somewhat more detail that 1343 cm^-1 corresponds to "adenine residue", whereas 1573 cm^-1 to "nearly equal contribution from A[denine] and G[uanine]".

To me, as a non-expert, it's not inconceivable thus that a mixture of A and G could produce near equal peaks at those two frequencies.

Basically, Campra is relying on an established method known to easily distinguish graphene from graphite (the latter just has huge peak the higher of these two frequencies--see e.g. fig 5 in this review)... but not from RNA. And nobody expects graphite in the vaccine, so that's the wrong metric to judge false positives by, IMHO.

If one were to take Campra's claim at face value, one also has to ponder how "graphene" could have possible made it into vaccines manufactured by vastly different technologies (mRNA-LNP Pfizer vs DNA-adenovirus based AZ) and made in different plants.

Answer 3

The article is in a provisional stage as you can see in the first page:

Also. It states that further analysis needs to be done:

AVISO IMPORTANTE

Seguidamente se presenta un estudio microscópico, observacional y meramente descriptivo de la muestra problema.

La identificación definitiva del material dominante en la muestra precisa de ulteriores fraccionamientos y análisis espectroscópicos específicos que permitan caracterizar la estructura del material.

Let me freely translate to:

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

An observational and merely microscopic study of the sample is presented below,

The definitive identification of the dominant material in the sample requires
further fractionation and specific spectroscopic analysises to allow characterizing the material structure

But the main red flag is that this sample was received from a person already creating disinformation efforts as @Tucuxi helpfully explained in his answer.