Baishideng Publishing Group journals have a reputation for high acceptance rates, rapid turnaround times, variable peer‑review quality, and publishing controversial or low‑quality COVID‑19 papers. It is a lower‑tier, pay‑to‑publish, high‑volume publishing ecosystem that has long raised concerns among scientists about quality control.
The abstract states “Unheralded cardiac arrest among previously healthy young people without antecedent illness, months or years after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination,” but they make no mechanistic justification for this claim.
The paper begins with “We continue to observe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccinated persons suffer cardiac arrests since the inception of the mass vaccination campaign in late 2020.” This claim is made without evidence in that it provides no data set, no incidence rate, no comparison to baseline cardiac arrest rate, and no statistical analysis. For example, data on baseline cardiac arrest rates among young people are readily available.
The studies that they cite (Krauson et al., Baumeier et al., and Yonker et al.) do not show widespread myocarditis, long‑term spike persistence in the general population, or increased cardiac arrest risk. They describe rare, acute, self‑limited myocarditis, mostly in young males, with good outcomes. McCullough inflates rare findings into universal risk.
Many of the references used are cherry-picked low quality or controversial sources such as preprints, case reports, Cureus articles, papers by the same authors, and papers from groups known for anti‑vaccine activism.
It misrepresents the findings of a high-quality study (Faksova et al.) of over 99 million individuals to try to imply high risk from vaccination. Faksova et al. state “our study confirms findings of previously identified rare cases of myocarditis”, and even more importantly, “the risk up to 42 days after vaccination was generally similar to the background risk for the majority of outcomes.”
The paper cites Schmeling et al., which is a discredited batch analysis claim. This “batch toxicity” has been widely criticized for using an ecological fallacy, misuse of VAERS data, lack of denominator data, and no biological plausibility. That doesn’t matter to McCullough et al. though and use it as established fact.
They also cite another paper by themselves and Rose which misuses VAERS data. VAERS reports cannot establish causation, are subject to massive reporting bias, include unverified reports, and are explicitly not designed for incidence estimation. Using VAERS to infer mortality rates is a well‑known methodological error.
They assert that spike protein “assaults the heart,” spike causes hemagglutination, spike persists for years, IgG4 antibodies “fail to neutralize spike”, PET scan metabolic shifts indicate global ischemia, and catecholamines trigger fatal arrhythmias in vaccinated people. None of these claims are established. Many are hypotheses, misinterpretations, or unsupported speculation. If spike persistence or IgG4 were causing widespread harm, risk would scale with dose. It does not.
They claim “We believe these cases likely represent previously silent subclinical myocarditis.” This is unfalsifiable logic, leading to making a claim that any death can be attributed to vaccines even without evidence. That is not science, it’s narrative and politics.
They also claim
They also step directly into unethical promotion of products.
The Wellness Company sells many of these products, and McCullough lists himself as the “Chief Scientific Officer” on his LinkedIn profile. They admit that “real-world implementation data are currently lacking.” In spite of that, they claim no conflict of interest, which is a blatant lie and highly unethical
