Maryanne Demasi, reports
Kansas is the latest US state to file a lawsuit against Pfizer, accusing the pharmaceutical giant of misleading the public about the safety and effectiveness of its covid-19 vaccine.Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach claims that Pfizer knew about the risks associated with its vaccine, “including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths” but failed to disclose this information to the public.
The 179-page lawsuit also alleges that Pfizer made ‘false and misleading’ statements regarding the vaccine's ability to prevent viral transmission, its waning effectiveness and its ability to protect against new variants of the virus.
“To keep the public from learning the truth, Pfizer worked to censor speech on social media that questioned Pfizer’s claims about its covid-19 vaccine,” alleges the lawsuit.
Kansas asserts that Pfizer’s “misrepresentations” violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act, as well as the ability of its citizens to give informed consent when deciding to “receive or forgo” Pfizer’s shot, and therefore is seeking USD20,000 in damages for each violation.Kobach wants Pfizer to be held accountable for “falsely representing the benefits” of its vaccine and “concealing and suppressing the truth” about its harms. Regular readers of this publication might recall that a similar case was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last year, which also alleges that Pfizer misled the public about the effectiveness of its covid-19 vaccine – a lawsuit which is still pending.
The bottom line is that none of the allegations in either lawsuit should come as a surprise. Many subscribers who’ve been with me since the beginning of the pandemic, understood that rushing an experimental vaccine through clinical trials would spell danger for trust in other vaccines and compromise the collection of harms data. When Pfizer finally published its clinical trial data, it became evident the company was grossly exaggerating the benefits, and underplaying the harms. Pfizer and health authorities worked hard to keep myocarditis cases under wraps just as early data showed myocarditis was occurring more commonly in younger men (16-19 years), particular after the second dose, at a rate of 1 in 6600.
Regulatory filings showed that Pfizer knew its vaccine effectiveness waned quickly, but waited months before alerting the public. Pregnant women were excluded from the original trials and when the public raised hell about the lack of data, Pfizer commenced a trial in 2021. It was later abandoned because enrolment into the study “declined significantly.” Many months later, when Pfizer published what little data it had in pregnant women, it was clear the trial was underpowered, poorly designed and insufficient to vouch for the vaccine’s safety in pregnancy.
Now, Pfizer will be forced to confront the evidence against it. In response to the latest lawsuit, Pfizer maintains it is “deeply committed to the well-being of the patients it serves and has no higher priority than ensuring the safety and effectiveness of its treatments and vaccines.”
Hopefully, the actions of Kansas and Texas will encourage lawmakers in other US states to file their own lawsuits if there is any chance of restoring public trust in Pfizer.
Maryanne Demasi