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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.
Medical examiner investigates death of 16-year-old boy
On June 26, 2021, Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Gill sent an email to a National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) discussion group asking if other forensic pathologists had performed autopsies on adolescents who developed heart problems after their second COVID-19 vaccination.
“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.”
Padera cautioned against assuming that an illness or death occurring after vaccination was necessarily caused by the vaccine. He noted that millions of people were receiving COVID-19 vaccines and that some would inevitably experience unrelated medical emergencies shortly afterward.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Neither did Sampson.
‘Another death one day after vaccine’
The records also show OCME leaders sought outside guidance on post-vaccine deaths within weeks of the vaccine rollout, though details were withheld.
On Feb. 8, 2021, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Melissa Pasquale-Styles emailed Dr. Martha Iwamoto of the city health department’s Bureau of Immunization with the subject line “another death one day after vaccine.” The text of Pasquale-Styles’ message is redacted.
Iwamoto replied with a summary of clinical trials and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data. “Important to note that VAERS does NOT establish causality,” she said. “Short term mortality rates appear unrelated to vaccination.”
Two days later, Pasquale-Styles sent Iwamoto a “question about vaccine anaphylaxis.” That message was also withheld.
When CDC officials began investigating myocarditis in young vaccine recipients in May 2021, forensic pathologist Dr. Ronald Wright dismissed the reports. “I fear it is noise,” he wrote. “Thus no cause and effect.”
Medical examiners clash over vaccine misinformation
By December 2021, disagreements about COVID-19 vaccine safety had spilled into a professional email discussion involving forensic pathologists from different jurisdictions.
The dispute began after a participant circulated claims by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson about possible cardiac incidents among professional athletes.
On Dec. 13, 2021, Dr. Jay Stahl-Herz, a New York City medical examiner, objected to the reporting.
“Please stop sharing misinformation from a non-medical source on NAME-L,” Stahl-Herz wrote, referring to the NAME discussion group.
Dr. Venus Azar, another participant, challenged the objection.
“You cannot know what is misinformation until you have looked at the original reports,” Azar wrote. “As scientists we focus on the data and not the messenger. I did not reflexively assume this to be misinformation just because Berenson is a non-medical professional.”
Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, chief medical examiner of Fort Bend County, Texas, criticized Berenson’s claims, referring to the journalist as a “COVID crank” spreading “misinformation.”
Pustilnik argued that repeated efforts to rebut misleading claims consumed valuable time and distracted from productive scientific discussions.
Other participants questioned whether dismissing information because of its source was an appropriate response.
Dr. William Oliver argued that physicians should examine evidence rather than attack people presenting disputed claims.
“The point, I think, is that in a forum such as this, it is more productive to make arguments with data about the subject rather than focusing on ad hominem attacks and the personal destruction and denigration of people you disagree with,” Oliver wrote.
“It will be a couple of years before it’s appropriate to be dogmatic about any of these numbers,” he added.
Oliver also pointed to differences in the periods researchers used to monitor myocarditis after vaccination, suggesting that shorter observation windows could miss some cases.
Investigating possible vaccine injuries
The medical examiners’ correspondence unfolded as public health officials were identifying myocarditis and pericarditis as adverse events associated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, particularly among adolescent and young adult males.
On June 25, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced revisions to vaccine fact sheets to include warnings about myocarditis and pericarditis following Pfizer and Moderna vaccination. The warnings recognized an increased risk of heart inflammation, particularly after second doses.
Subsequent CDC research documented cases of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination, including rare fatal cases.
The debate continued into 2024. In June of that year, Macomb County Chief Medical Examiner Mary Pietrangelo in Michigan shared with a forensic pathology email list a review by Nicolas Hulscher, Dr. Peter McCullough and two co-authors that concluded 28 autopsied myocarditis deaths were “most likely causally linked to COVID-19 vaccination.”
It only led to more internal disputes.
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On July 2, 2024, members continued clashing over what some characterized as “misinformation.”
Dr. Pauline Alakija urged colleagues to counter claims about vaccine deaths among Canadian doctors. Dr. Eli Goodman cautioned that “so many who have been so sure they have been anointed with the wisdom to determine what is and isn’t misinformation have frequently ended up being wrong.”
Attorney Sujata Gibson said the emails amount to a storyline medical professionals tried to hide. She told The Defender:
“The city had the warnings. Deaths within a day of vaccination. A teenager found dead days after his second dose. State alerts about myocarditis in young men. Their response was to reassure each other, define injuries so narrowly that almost no one qualified, and call anyone who raised questions a source of ‘misinformation.’ Evidence that didn’t fit the narrative was swept under the rug.”
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 Vaccine Labels 10 Months Ago. It Was Never Added
