Skip to content

Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2021

Does Australian legislation that classifies the COVID-19 vaccine as a ‘poison’ mean that the shot is toxic or harmful?

Dana Ford, Lead Stories
no

In Australia, medicines and vaccines are normally classified as poisons under the nation's "Poison Standard," but only in the sense that they can cause harm if taken incorrectly or in the wrong amounts. By the logic of a video posted on social media, substances such as aspirin and the measles vaccine could also be considered "poison." In Australia, the term has a very different legal meaning than the way most people use the word.

The video shows a document from the government of Western Australia. It's not, as the video claims, a leaked document. It's an official document, available on the government's website. The March 2021 document authorizes the COVID-19 vaccine.

The document refers to the COVID-19 vaccine as a "poison," but only in the Australian legal sense of that word, not that the shot is dangerous or toxic. 

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.