Sherri Tenpenny makes false COVID-19 vaccine magnetism claim to Ohio lawmakers

An anti-vaccine activist falsely claimed during a hearing with Ohio state legislators that the COVID-19 vaccines are magnetizing people who get them.

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, an Ohio-based osteopathic physician who wrote a book called "Saying No to Vaccines," has been identified by the news site rating service Newsguard as a "super-spreader" of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. A watchdog group found that she is one of 12 influencers responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation spread on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 

Tenpenny has previously pushed false claims that the COVID-19 vaccines can cause death and autoimmune disease, disrupt pregnancies and "shed" to affect unvaccinated people. 

Her latest comments came as she testified at the invitation of Ohio’s Republican lawmakers in favor of a bill that would prevent businesses or the government from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

"I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who’ve had these shots, and now they’re magnetized," Tenpenny said during the June 8 hearing. "They can put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick. Because now we think that there’s a metal piece to that."

Those claims are baseless. There are no metallic ingredients in any of the COVID-19 vaccines approved in the U.S. for emergency use, from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. The Food and Drug Administration has published the ingredients for each online.

"There’s nothing there that a magnet can interact with," Thomas Hope, a vaccine researcher at Northwestern University, previously told AFP Fact Check. "It’s protein and lipids, salts, water and chemicals that maintain the pH. That’s basically it, so this is not possible."

PolitiFact and several other fact-checkers previously debunked the videos and "pictures all over the internet" that Tenpenny cited as proof, which purported to show magnets sticking to vaccinated people. The social media posts about vaccine magnetism were so widespread that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention addressed them on its website:

"Can receiving a COVID-19 vaccine cause you to be magnetic? No. Receiving a COVID-19 vaccine will not make you magnetic, including at the site of vaccination which is usually your arm. COVID-19 vaccines do not contain ingredients that can produce an electromagnetic field at the site of your injection. All COVID-19 vaccines are free from metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth alloys, as well as any manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors. In addition, the typical dose for a COVID-19 vaccine is less than a milliliter, which is not enough to allow magnets to be attracted to your vaccination site even if the vaccine was filled with a magnetic metal."

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on April 2, 2024 in a video

World Health Organization pandemic accord “would take away American sovereignty and give the WHO power to put in legally binding policies in America in the case of another pandemic."

Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at New York's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, previously told PolitiFact the claims about vaccine magnetism were "utter nonsense." 

Other experts told AFP Fact Check that the metal objects highlighted in various online videos and images are likely sticking for other reasons. They could have tape or another adhesive on them, for example. Or they could appear to stick because of the oil on a person’s skin.

Later on in the Ohio House hearing, a nurse tried unsuccessfully to prove Tenpenny’s theory by positioning a key and a bobby pin against her neck. "Explain to me why the key sticks to me. It sticks to my neck too," she said, even as the key she pressed to her neck did not stick.

Wow. An anti-vaccine nurse in Ohio tried to prove the Vaccines Cause Magnetism theory in an state legislative committee. The demonstration did not go to plan pic.twitter.com/0ubELst4E8

— Tyler Buchanan (@Tylerjoelb) June 9, 2021

Tenpenny also claimed that there is "some sort of an interface, ‘yet to be defined’ interface, between what’s being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers," and that the vaccines have caused thousands of deaths in the U.S. Both of those claims are inaccurate.

Tenpenny did not immediately respond to a request for comment from PolitiFact. She told the Washington Post that she stood by her testimony. 

We rate her claim that the vaccines make people "magnetized" False.

CORRECTION, July 21, 2021: A previous version of this story erroneously reported that the watchdog group that identified 12 influencers responsible for most anti-vaccine misinformation on social media was a part of McGill University in Montreal. It is not.