© REUTERSRepresenting the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, attorney Aaron Siri said the FDA was “hiding from the court and the plaintiff one million pages of clinical trial documents from the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials.”
In a ruling, on Friday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth, Texas, ordered the agency to produce its "emergency use authorization" file to a group of scientists who wanted to see licensing information that the FDA relied on to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is long passed and so has any legitimate reason for concealing from the American people the information relied upon by the government in approving the Pfizer vaccine," wrote Pittman, appointed in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit, filed in late 2021, attracted attention after the FDA said it could take decades to process and disclose records to Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, the group that brought the case.
The FDA declined to comment.
Attorney Aaron Siri, representing the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, welcomed Pittman's order.
"The FDA clearly lacks confidence in the review that it conducted to license Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine because it is doing everything possible to prevent independent scientists from conducting an independent review," Siri said.
He said the agency was "hiding from the court and the plaintiff one million pages of clinical trial documents from the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials."
The FDA has power to grant "emergency use authorization" for vaccines and some other medical products.
The lawsuit said, "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."
The agency has countered that its "emergency use authorization" file did not fall within the scientist group's records request.
The FDA said in a filing that it has produced more than 1 million pages of records in the lawsuit.
The filing also said that it had set up "unprecedented and extraordinary operations" — spending more than $3.5 million — to comply with Pittman's directives to speed up the search and delivery of responsive records.
Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, whose members include professors and scientists from Yale, Harvard, UCLA and Brown, has posted thousands of records on its website.
The case is Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, No. 4:21-cv-01058-P.
Reader Comments
You know, for national security and to curb lynching's.
I filed numerous ATIP/FOIA requests here in Canada, and often they come back so redacted with page after page blanked out, so as to be useless. The US seems somewhat different in this respect...time will tell if there is anything useable.
Must be scared you sue them? Makes you wonder if a lawyer requested them, would they be redacted.
Since it was actions taken by the state against you, there should be no redaction...ya think.
FOIA was Canada Post, and ATIP for the RCMP.
Must be scared you sue them? Makes you wonder if a lawyer requested them, would they be redacted.
Exactly...Likely they would still be redacted if a lawyer requested them. In cases where I have been charged by the RCMP and I defended myself, you get a copy of everything the Crown has, called Disclosure, on the case, and none of it is redacted. Not witness names, addresses, informants etc its all there. But technically you cannot use that Disclosure info to sue with...
I find starting a case and getting access to Disclosure for yourself is a great idea, even if you decide to use a lawyer later. Lawyers are barred from giving copies of Disclosure to their clients. However no one knows a case as well as the person charged, so thats why I self represent, gain Disclosure, and then hand it off to a lawyer if need be ! Been charged many times, and not 1 conviction, on firearm, pot and criminal harassment charges. As an experienced self rep litigant, I can do things against Crown counsel that would get any bar certified lawyer disbarred. Like, dig up crap/dirt on the prosecutors and badger them to death...and they go, fuck this, I am dropping this case, and they do.
Since it was actions taken by the state against you, there should be no redaction...ya think.
In many redacted FOIA/ATIP situations they remove persons names, addresses, etc. Also there is a person assigned within Police, Canada Post etc, that is assigned to redact stuff, so they have guidelines, but sometimes they take liberties.
Also this is important. The RCMP will lay charges knowing full well Crown cannot get a conviction, because of shoddy police work, or often to punish you, as 'the process is the punishment' i.e. lawyers fees, stress etc !
Cheers...
That'll be the info that hasn't already been shredded. They tried to lock this info away for 70 years. It must have come as a shock when they realised that not evey judge in america is bought.
Will we see a pardon for fauci, now a mass murderer?