LONDON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Scientists writing for one of the world's most prestigious medical journals are excoriating vaccine oligarchs for repeating the errors of the swine flu pandemic and blocking access to clinical trials data.
In an editorial for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published Wednesday, Drs. Peter Doshi, Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi blast the obdurate secrecy as "morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions."
The researchers note "the anonymized participant-level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers and the public — and are likely to remain that way for years to come."
The scientists lament:
We are left with publications but no access to the underlying data on reasonable request. This is worrying for trial participants, researchers, clinicians, journal editors, policymakers and the public.
Data should be fully and immediately available for public scrutiny. Pharmaceutical companies are reaping vast profits without adequate independent scrutiny of their scientific claims.
Putting their finger on the egregious conflicts of interest and lack of objective and external standards to evaluate clinical trials, the scientists note the COVID-19 "vaccine trial was funded by the company and designed, run, analyzed and authored by Pfizer employees."
All the data are held in secret by Pfizer and the contractors it pays to carry out research. The drug giant will not consider requests for trial data until May 2025, 24 months after the primary study completion date, the editorial observes.
The BMJ scientists accuse the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of receiving the rawest data but refusing to proactively release them.
In their editorial, Doshi and his coauthors pointed to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic where governments "spent billions stockpiling antivirals for influenza that had not been shown to reduce the risk of complications, hospital admissions or death."
Most of the clinical trials for Tamiflu — the drug touted as the miracle cure — were sponsored by the manufacturer. Most were unpublished, and those that were published were ghostwritten by writers paid by the manufacturer, the scientists noted, with academics denied access to the data for independent analysis.
In August 2021, over 200 scientists, doctors and journalists belonging to Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FDA asking the health regulator to release "all data and information for the Pfizer vaccine enumerated in 21 C.F.R. § 601.51(e)1."
The law requires all data on safety, efficacy, protocols, adverse reactions, consumer complaints, active or inactive ingredients, as well as all correspondence and written summaries of oral discussions relating to the product to be "made available for immediate disclosure absent extraordinary circumstances."
"A lack of transparency erodes the confidence the medical and scientific community and the public have in the conclusions reached by the FDA. There is an urgent public need for such transparency with regard to the Pfizer vaccine," the plaintiffs urged.
The PHMPT members also noted the urgency "for the public to have immediate access to the data … because over the objections of many, this product is being mandated to individuals across the country by the federal government" and other authorities.
In September, the FDA denied the request for release of data, arguing the PHMPT had not "demonstrated a compelling need that involves an imminent threat to the life or physical safety of an individual."
The agency claimed it would need roughly 55 years to release the estimated 450,000 pages of material on the vaccine and would do so at the rate of 500 pages a month.
This would, however, result in full data being available only by 2076 owing to the need to first redact sensitive information, the FDA maintained.
On Jan. 6, Trump-appointed district judge Mark Pittman ordered the regulator to hand over 55,000 pages a month.
"It remains to be seen how the FDA responds to the court order," Drs. Doshi, Godlee and Abbasi note. Moreover, since the FDA is producing data only for Pfizer's vaccine, concerned parties cannot request data for unapproved vaccines like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
"Industry, which holds the raw data, is not legally required to honor requests for access from independent researchers," the scientists add, warning that "the lack of access to data is consistent across vaccine manufacturers" including Moderna and AstraZeneca.
Pharmaceutical behemoths pushing the so-called COVID-19 vaccine have disclosed only seven percent of contracts with governments and published clinical trial protocols for just 12% of trials, Church Militant earlier reported.
A report by Transparency International and the University of Toronto titled "For Whose Benefit?" warns of dangerous levels of secrecy and lack of transparency revealing "a disturbing trend of governments censoring key details of their orders from drug companies."
In 2021, Pope Francis held two secret meetings with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Neither the Vatican nor Pfizer are willing to disclose details of the talks.
The Holy See subsequently made the Pfizer jabs and boosters mandatory and refuses to grant religious exemptions on grounds of conscientious objection to the abortion-tainted shot.
Church Militant also reported on Pfizer pumping millions of dollars into the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Congress, potentially influencing the authorization and controversial quasi-approval of its COVID-19 jab.
In a blatant conflict of interest, the FDA gets 45% ($2.7 billion) of its funding from drug companies. Moreover, "human drugs regulatory activities" — lobbying efforts — account for one-third (33%) of the FDA's budget, with 65% of this paid for by the regulated companies.
All told, more than three-quarters (78%) of the drug industry regulator's budget is bankrolled by the drug-makers it claims to regulate, rendering it what many observers call a "captured" (financially compromised) agency.
Academics writing for The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics note that "an extensive range of studies and lawsuits already documents strategies by which pharmaceutical companies hide, ignore or misrepresent evidence about new drugs; distort the medical literature; and misrepresent products to prescribing physicians."
In an article titled "Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs," the authors argue pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to test their products because their conclusions are so "poor, biased and conflicted."
"There is now abundant evidence that the involvement of pharmaceutical companies corrupts medical science," writes Dr. Sergio Sismondo, Queen's University, Ontario, calling out the "epistemic corruption" that results from the conflicts of interest.
"In the pharmaceutical companies' ghost-management of research, much of the corruption of medical science happens through a process of grafting," Sismondo observes. "Grafting involves a carefully constructed parasitic relationship."
Meanwhile, so-called "Catholic fact-checkers" headed by establishment media agency Aleteia are keeping mum on the corrupt practices of Big Pharma while accepting funding from sponsors with conflicted interests, including Google, Bill Gates and George Soros, a Church Militant investigation found.
Medical ethicist Dr. Niall McCrae congratulated BMJ editor Peter Doshi for showing "courage where his peers have shown cowardice and complicity."
"Data in Britain shows a significant rise in mortality in adolescents, for which the obvious cause is the vaccine rollout in this age group," McCrae told Church Militant. "This is certainly not following science. But we could say the same of much of the medical profession, who have favored the dominant narrative of Big Pharma over reason and ethics."
Pfizer has obfuscated on whether its so-called vaccine products are FDA-approved. Only Pfizer's Comirnaty, which is not available anywhere in the United States, is licensed for manufacturing and marketing but is not licensed to be given to anyone. Its BioNTech jab, which is being distributed worldwide, is only being given under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which gives Pfizer a 100% legal liability shield against any damages it causes.
Critics say Pfizer took this unprecedented approach of licensing Comirnaty — a chemically interchangeable version of its jab that is still considered "legally distinct" — to dodge legal liability while being able to tout its quasi "approval" to gain consumer confidence. Moderna's and Johnson & Johnson's jabs also only have EUAs that leave vax-injured consumer without legal recourse.
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