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After Quickly Approving Pfizer Vaccine, FDA Now Wants Until 2076 to Release Data Supporting Its Licensing

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  November 18, 2021 10:45 AM

One of the biggest problems during the Covid-19 pandemic has been transparency, with Big Tech cracking down on viewpoints that went against the official narrative and medical professionals punished for speaking out. But the government has also not been transparent in providing the data it relied on to authorize the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine—and one group has filed a lawsuit demanding it. 

The nonprofit Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, which "exists solely to obtain and disseminate the data relied upon by the FDA to license COVID-19 vaccines," says it takes no position one way or the other about the data, it only believes it should be publicly available. 

In September, the group sued the FDA, arguing "the medical and scientific community and the public have a substantial interest in reviewing the data and information underlying the FDA's approval of the Pfizer Vaccine."

Being transparent on the data relied upon for the approval process would also "increase confidence" in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which the FDA has deemed safe and effective, the lawsuit says. 

But the FDA produced nothing, as attorney Aaron Siri, whose firm filed the suit on behalf of PHMPT, explains (emphasis mine): 

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[T]he FDA repeatedly promised “full transparency” with regard to Covid-19 vaccines, including reaffirming “the FDA’s commitment to transparency” when licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. 

With that promise in mind, in August and immediately following approval of the vaccine, more than 30 academics, professors, and scientists from this country’s most prestigious universities requested the data and information submitted to the FDA by Pfizer to license its COVID-19 vaccine. 

The FDA’s response? It produced nothing. So, in September, my firm filed a lawsuit against the FDA on behalf of this group to demand this information. To date, almost three months after it licensed Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA still has not released a single page. Not one.

Instead, two days ago, the FDA asked a federal judge to give it until 2076 to fully produce this information. The FDA asked the judge to let it produce the 329,000+ pages of documents Pfizer provided to the FDA to license its vaccine at the rate of 500 pages per month, which means its production would not be completed earlier than 2076. The FDA’s promise of transparency is, to put it mildly, a pile of illusions. 

It took the FDA precisely 108 days from when Pfizer started producing the records for licensure (on May 7, 2021) to when the FDA licensed the Pfizer vaccine (on August 23, 2021). Taking the FDA at its word, it conducted an intense, robust, thorough, and complete review and analysis of those documents in order to assure that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for licensure. While it can conduct that intense review of Pfizer’s documents in 108 days, it now asks for over 20,000 days to make these documents available to the public. (Aaron Siri)

Siri said the government's actions make one wonder whose side it's on.

"The federal government shields Pfizer from liability. Gives it billions of dollars. Makes Americans take its product. But won't let you see the data supporting its product's safety and efficacy," he said. "Who does the government work for?"