Martha, the Gorilla Mom: Did She Really Die Because of COVID-19 Vaccine?

Earlier this month, the so-called "pandemic truthers" identified a new and unexpected "alleged victim of COVID-19 vaccine" in a gorilla.

A Daily Beast report said until in May, a 32-year-old western lowland gorilla named Martha from the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas.

A slew of COVID truther newsletters, social media posts, and articles, the ape was a "happy, healthy mother," until staff from the zoo "senselessly injected her" with a COVID-19 vaccine.

Suddenly, COVID truther information specified, Martha suddenly and unexpectedly of multiple organ failure caused by undetected fibrosing heart disease, To anti-vax eyes, this resulted from the jab.

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(Photo: JAVIER TORRES/AFP via Getty Images)
A Borneo orangutan named Sandai watches a worker holding a syringe with a dose of an experimental vaccine against COVID-19 made by the Zoetis veterinary laboratory during a vaccination drill at the Buin Zoo in Buin, Chile, on December 28, 2021.

Cause of Martha's Death

The real reason for Martha's death has become a hot topic, especially in online debates and arguments. Many now ask, "Did she really die because of the vaccine?"

The gorilla's mom died on April 19. In the days before she died, Martha received treatment for a urinary tract infection; although she appeared fine otherwise, the zookeepers monitoring the animals at the zoo several times each day said.

The zoo released an official statement on April 27. Here, Thomas Maar, the senior veterinarian, explained that upon examination of the gorilla's body, he and his colleagues had discovered "multiple organ irregularities which, in turn, developed a life-ending cascade which started with fibrosing heart disease and led to renal failure.

However, because her death, which was also reported on The Counter Signal site, was sudden and unexpected does not mean it was completely inexplicable or even extraordinary.

Age, Illness, and Death in Gorillas

Some truthers have notably concentrated on the age of Martha, possibly since they are obsessed with the idea that vaccines against COVID-19 are causing an unusual epidemic of heart disease among young, healthy humans, and the age 32 sounds relatively young.

Nonetheless, a leading gorilla researcher and conservationist, Martha Robins, said that for a gorilla, Martha was not young at all.

In the wild, most gorillas die between 30 and 40 years old. Some of these apes make it more than 50 in zoos, although only with the level of medical intervention and monitoring they would not receive in nature.

Vaccinating Gorillas

The last big work-up of Martha happened around three years ago. There was no sign of a heart condition at that time. However, a few years is a lot of time for an aging gorilla to develop a common condition.

News of the gorilla mother's death did not seem to attract much attention outside of the local community, and a few conservation groups, until early this month, when a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic tweeted a mainstream article about it to her thousands of followers.

The Twitter post highlighted mention of a heart ailment resulting in organ failure, although it offered none of this important context about heart disease in great apes in general. No reputable coverage of the gorilla's death mentioned anything about vaccines or COVID-19.

However, following the tweet, this individual posted a link to an article in the same outlet published in 2021 about the intention of the zoo to begin vaccinating its animals.

The zoo, for its part, indeed acted on that intention, although it only started to vaccinate its gorillas against COVID-19 weeks after the death of Martha. The said tweet did not provide that context.

Martha, the gorilla, is shown on Gladys Porter Zoo's YouTube video below:

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