A US district judge in Texas on Thursday ruled that the FDA must significantly accelerate the release of documents submitted to it by Pfizer to license its COVID shot.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request for access to the documents, the FDA had asked permission to produce the documents at a rate of 500 pages per month, at which pace it would have taken over 75 years to produce all the documents.
The court, however, rejected the FDA’s request, ruling that the FDA must produce 55,000 pages per month - such that all the data could be public by the end of the summer.
In his ruling, Judge Mark T. Pittman addressed the FDA’s assertion that it lacked the manpower necessary to produce the documents at a faster rate. “The Court recognizes the ‘unduly burdensome’ challenges that this FOIA request may present to the FDA.” Nevertheless, “the Court concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance.”
Aaron Siri, whose firm represented the medical professionals comprising the “Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency” group which filed the FOIA request, responded on his blog to the ruling.
“This is a great win for transparency and removes one of the strangleholds federal ‘health’ authorities have had on the data needed for independent scientists to offer solutions and address serious issues with the current vaccine program – issues which include waning immunity, variants evading vaccine immunity, and, as the CDC has confirmed, that the vaccines do not prevent transmission,” he wrote.
“No person should ever be coerced to engage in an unwanted medical procedure. And while it is bad enough the government violated this basic liberty right by mandating the Covid-19 vaccine, the government also wanted to hide the data by waiting to fully produce what it relied upon to license this product until almost every American alive today is dead. That form of governance is destructive to liberty and antithetical to the openness required in a democratic society,” Siri added.