Kansas AG Kris Kobach told NR that he’s most disturbed by Pfizer’s claims that the vaccine was safe for pregnant women.
The state of Kansas filed an explosive consumer-protection lawsuit against Pfizer last week full of accusations that the pharmaceutical giant misled the public on the safety and efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine.
Kansas is accusing Pfizer of knowingly misleading the public about the adverse effects of its coronavirus vaccine and manipulating its vaccine-safety trials in violation of state consumer-protection law and previous consent judgements. The lawsuit cites interviews, press releases, internal documents, scientific research, government research, news reporting, and other sources of information to back up its incendiary claims.
“Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths. Pfizer concealed this critical safety information from the public,” the lawsuit asserts.
Pfizer’s government contract appears to have given the company influence over Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosures and contained confidentiality agreements with the U.S. government. Kansas alleges the confidentiality agreements allowed the company to hide material facts and mislead consumers.
Kansas’s lawsuit alleges Pfizer intentionally destroyed the control group in its coronavirus vaccine trial by giving participants access to the coronavirus vaccine, citing a New England Journal of Medicine paper and an FDA memo. By destroying the control group, Kansas’s lawsuit asserts that the safety of Pfizer’s vaccine cannot be fairly evaluated by comparing the vaccinated group to an unvaccinated group.
Likewise, Kansas is claiming Pfizer intentionally delayed the release of data from its vaccine trials, citing two articles in the British Medical Journal about scientists waiting for Pfizer and Moderna to turn over patient-level data. In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Pfizer only tested healthy patients during its vaccine trials, a departure from standard protocol Pfizer allegedly failed to disclose.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s media interviews and the company’s press releases touting the vaccine and its safety are featured prominently throughout the lawsuit as evidence Pfizer supposedly misled Kansans.
The Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency in America, a watchdog organization, filed a FOIA request with the Food and Drug Administration and eventually obtained information related to Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, according to the lawsuit.
As part of its FOIA lawsuit, the group obtained an internal Pfizer database of “adverse events” not disclosed to the public, with more incidents than the publicly available VAERS reporting system. Pfizer’s internal database reported 158,893 adverse events and 1,223 fatalities from the millions of individuals who took the Pfizer vaccine as of February 2021.
The lawsuit further accuses Pfizer of publicly insisting that the vaccine posed little to no risk to pregnant women while in possession of data proving otherwise. A study Pfizer commissioned on rats concluded there were no adverse effects on weight, food consumption, the injection site, or mating. But, the study found that the rat fetuses suffered malformations, rats had issues getting pregnant, and failed to implant embryos, the lawsuit asserts. The rat study was only made publicly available thanks to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency in America.
“The information that I find especially troubling that Pfizer didn’t share was the information about the effect of Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine on pregnant women,” Kansas attorney general Kris Kobach told National Review in an interview, citing the rat study and other information contained in the lawsuit.
“I think that information needed to be presented to any pregnant woman who was even thinking of taking the Pfizer vaccine.”
Moreover, the lawsuit cites Pfizer data showing tens of thousands of women had menstrual issues linked to its coronavirus vaccine, as of spring 2022.
Myocarditis is another adverse effect the lawsuit explores in detail, citing U.S. military cases and an FDA advisory issued in 2021 that call into question Bourla’s statement in January 2023 denying any “safety signals” concerning potential adverse effects caused by Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine.
Myocarditis occurs when the middle layer of the heart’s wall becomes inflamed, weakening the heart and potentially leading to heart failure.
While some studies suggest elevated levels of myocarditis among the vaccinated, an analysis of nearly 43 million people published in 2022 found the risk of contracting myocarditis is notably higher from coronavirus than from the vaccines. Symptoms of myocarditis overlap with Covid-19, making it difficult to diagnose, according to a paper published last year.
The lawsuit cites additional evidence of increased myocarditis cases in adolescent males, including an internal document from February 2022 allegedly showing Pfizer was aware of the correlation between vaccination and myocarditis. The company began disclosing the myocarditis risks in press releases about the vaccine as early as November 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse fact-check.
Kansas similarly accuses Pfizer of misleading its consumers about the vaccine’s effectiveness by comparing public statements in early 2021 touting its strength six months after its administered, despite allegedly possessing data showing efficacy waned over time. A Pfizer preprint study found the coronavirus vaccine was 96.2 percent effective at preventing coronavirus two months after the second dosage and 83.7 percent six months later.
The lawsuit goes on to accuse Pfizer of misrepresenting the vaccine’s ability to halt coronavirus transmission by presenting contrasting statements from Bourla and other company executives.
“They had extraordinary success marketing their vaccine in the state of Kansas and more generally across the globe, and I think that had consumers had this information, many of them might have made a different choice,” Kobach added.
“The [Kansas] Consumer Protection Act is all about preventing companies from misleading or deceiving consumers.”
Pfizer told NR it will be responding shortly and scoffed at the claims in Kansas’s lawsuit.
“We are proud to have developed the COVID-19 vaccine in record time in the midst of a global pandemic and saved countless lives. The representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based. The Company believes that the state’s case has no merit and will respond to the suit in due course,” Pifzer said in a statement.
“Pfizer 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. Since its initial authorization by FDA in December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to more than 1.5 billion people, demonstrated a favorable safety profile in all age groups, and helped protect against severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death.”
Scientific research has shown the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be an effective deterrent against serious coronavirus symptoms, helping save potentially millions of lives because of its rapid development.
Kansas’s lawsuit seems to portray Pfizer’s government contract and exorbitant vaccine profits as unjustified because of their alleged misrepresentations, although the federal government, under both Trump and Biden, actively sought and incentivized the cooperation of pharmaceutical companies to develop and distribute the coronavirus vaccines.
The side effects described throughout Kansas’s lawsuit appear to be rare and not representative of a vast majority of vaccine cases. However, the actions from public-health officials have weakened public trust in the scientific community, leading to increased interest in the apparent issues some people have had with the coronavirus vaccines.
Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted school closures throughout the coronavirus pandemic lasted too long, and when pressed on child-masking guidelines during his congressional testimony earlier this year, could not cite any evidence justifying the policy. His old boss, former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, similarly admitted earlier this year that no evidence existed to support the six-feet social distancing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, as NR first reported.
Congressional investigators continue to probe the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.