Medical examiners investigating deaths following COVID-19 vaccination sought advice from colleagues about heart abnormalities, including those identified in a previously healthy 16-year-old boy who died four days after receiving his second Pfizer shot, according to emails obtained from the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME).
The records — among 1,970 pages of emails obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) — span from October 2020 to July 2024. They reveal how the nation’s largest medical examiner’s office and its peers discussed deaths that followed COVID-19 vaccination, amid emerging evidence linking mRNA vaccines to heart damage.
The messages, first obtained by attorney Jimmy Wagner and reviewed by The Defender, also reveal disagreements among medical examiners over how to evaluate vaccine safety concerns.
Wagner accused city officials of putting “their personal feelings ahead of sound scientific policies.” He said their private discussions contradicted public assurances that the COVID-19 vaccines were safe. . .
“Has anyone done an autopsy on a suspected myocarditis in an adolescent following the second Pfizer dose?” Gill wrote. “We are currently investigating the death of a 16 year old boy who was found dead in bed four days after receiving his second dose.”
“His heart has striking ischemic changes (more of a stress cardiomyopathy picture than a myocarditis),” he added. “Otherwise healthy. Covid-19 negative. Looking to compare findings.”
Ischemic changes suggest reduced blood flow or oxygen delivery to heart tissue. Stress cardiomyopathy, also called broken heart syndrome, is a condition affecting the heart’s ability to pump blood. It differs from myocarditis, although both can produce serious cardiac complications.
Gill did not respond to questions about the autopsy results being directly linked to the COVID-19 vaccine. In a 2022 study published in Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Gill and colleagues described autopsy findings in two adolescents who died shortly after receiving their second COVID-19 vaccine doses.
The researchers reported cardiac abnormalities that differed from typical myocarditis and resembled stress-related heart injury.
New York City medical examiner consults Harvard specialists
Weeks earlier, on June 4, 2021, Barbara Sampson, M.D., Ph.D., then New York City’s chief medical examiner, consulted Harvard-affiliated pathologists about a death involving heart inflammation two months after COVID-19 vaccination.
Sampson contacted Richard Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., and Robert Padera Jr., M.D., Ph.D., pathologists affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
She wanted to know if published research had identified characteristic tissue abnormalities in people who developed myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination.
Question- have you seen anything published about the actual pathology in any of the cases of myocarditis following Covid vaccination?” Sampson wrote from her iPhone. “We have a case with focal lymphocytic myocarditis 2 months after vaccination. Doubt there is an association but wondering if any actual pathology has been described.”
Focal lymphocytic myocarditis involves localized inflammation of the heart muscle associated with immune cells called lymphocytes.
Mitchell responded that he had not encountered pathological findings convincingly linked to COVID-19 vaccination.
“No…I have not seen ANY of the myocardial (or any other tissue) pathology purportedly linked to COVID vaccination,” Mitchell wrote. “I agree, what you are seeing is probably true/true and completely unrelated.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Autopsies Show: Vaccinating Teens for COVID Is Literally ‘Heartbreaking’
- CDC Death Certificate Codes Show ‘Robust Safety Signal’ for COVID Vaccines
- Israel, Pfizer Knew COVID Vaccine Caused Fatal Heart Condition — But Waited Months Before Alerting Public
- Mortality Data Reveal ‘Screaming Safety Signals’ Following COVID Vaccine Rollout
- FDA Official Urged Fatal Myocarditis Warning on COVID