Pressure to approve Covid vaccine boosters with ‘grossly insufficient’ data
A watchdog organization has gained access to 112 pages from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showing top officials getting pressured by outside companies and the Biden administration to approve Covid vaccine boosters without scientific justification.
The records were produced to Judicial Watch in response to a February 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) after HHS failed to respond to a September 3, 2021, FOIA request for records of communication from the former director and deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR), Dr. Marion Gruber and Dr. Philip Krause, respectively.
Drs. Gruber and Krause reportedly resigned during the White House’s push to rush approval the Covid-19 vaccine “booster shots.”
On September 13, 2021, Gruber and Krause were among a group of resigning doctors who agreed that, “Available evidence doesn’t yet indicate a need for Covid-19 vaccine booster shots among the general population …”
The doctors, along with other experts worldwide, published their viewpoint in The Lancet on Oct 29, 2021, arguing that the Covid-19 vaccines were still effective in preventing severe disease, including against the highly transmissible and dominant delta variant.
“Careful and public scrutiny of the evolving data will be needed to assure that decisions about boosting are informed by reliable science more than by politics,” the authors wrote, adding in part: “Widespread boosting should be undertaken only if there is clear evidence that it is appropriate.”
The records also include copies of emails that indicate the OVRR was being “bombarded” with emails from the pharmaceutical companies trying to exert pressure on the FDA scientists to approve the Covid-19 booster shots quickly and with “grossly insufficient” data.