Putting Big Pharma on Trial in the COVID-19 Era, Part 4
The Hypocrisy of “Misinformation”
By Rebecca Strong · February 16, 2022
I find it interesting that “misinformation” has become such a pervasive term lately, but more alarmingly, that it’s become an excuse for blatant censorship on social media and in journalism. It’s impossible not to wonder what’s driving this movement to control the narrative. In a world where we still very clearly don’t have all the answers, why shouldn’t we be open to exploring all the possibilities? And while we’re on the subject, what about all of the COVID-related untruths that have been spread by our leaders and officials? Why should they get a free pass?
Fauci, President Biden, and the CDC’s Rochelle Walensky all promised us with total confidence the vaccine would prevent us from getting or spreading COVID, something we now know is a myth. (In fact, the CDC recently had to change its very definition of “vaccine ” to promise “protection” from a disease rather than “immunity”— an important distinction). At one point, the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) and former Governor Andrew Cuomo prepared a social media campaign with misleading messaging that the vaccine was “approved by the FDA” and “went through the same rigorous approval process that all vaccines go through,” when in reality the FDA only authorized the vaccines under an EUA, and the vaccines were still undergoing clinical trials. While the NYS DOH eventually responded to pressures to remove these false claims, a few weeks later the Department posted on Facebook that “no serious side effects related to the vaccines have been reported,” when in actuality, roughly 16,000 reports of adverse events and over 3,000 reports of serious adverse events related to a COVID-19 vaccination had been reported in the first two months of use.
One would think we’d hold the people in power to the same level of accountability — if not more — than an average citizen. So, in the interest of avoiding hypocrisy, should we “cancel” all these experts and leaders for their “misinformation,” too?
Vaccine-hesitant people have been fired from their jobs, refused from restaurants, denied the right to travel and see their families, banned from social media channels, and blatantly shamed and villainized in the media. Some have even lost custody of their children. These people are frequently labeled “anti-vax,” which is misleading given that many (like the NBA’s Jonathan Isaac) have made it repeatedly clear they are not against all vaccines, but simply making a personal choice not to get this one. (As such, I’ll suggest switching to a more accurate label: “pro-choice.”) Fauci has repeatedly said federally mandating the vaccine would not be “appropriate” or “enforceable” and doing so would be “encroaching upon a person’s freedom to make their own choice.” So it’s remarkable that still, some individual employers and U.S. states, like my beloved Massachusetts, have taken it upon themselves to enforce some of these mandates, anyway. Meanwhile, a Feb. 7 bulletin posted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicates that if you spread information that undermines public trust in a government institution (like the CDC or FDA), you could be considered a terrorist. In case you were wondering about the current state of free speech.
The definition of institutional oppression is “the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s membership in the social identity group.” It is defined as occurring when established laws and practices “systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups.” Sound familiar?
As you continue to watch the persecution of the unvaccinated unfold, remember this. Historically, when society has oppressed a particular group of people whether due to their gender, race, social class, religious beliefs, or sexuality, it’s always been because they pose some kind of threat to the status quo. The same is true for today’s unvaccinated. Since we know the vaccine doesn’t prevent the spread of COVID, however, this much is clear: the unvaccinated don’t pose a threat to the health and safety of their fellow citizens — but rather, to the bottom line of powerful pharmaceutical giants and the many global organizations they finance. And with more than $100 billion on the line in 2021 alone, I can understand the motivation to silence them.
The unvaccinated have been called selfish. Stupid. Fauci has said it’s “almost inexplicable” that they are still resisting. But is it? What if these people aren’t crazy or uncaring, but rather have — unsurprisingly so — lost their faith in the agencies that are supposed to protect them? Can you blame them?
Citizens are being bullied into getting a vaccine that was created, evaluated, and authorized in under a year, with no access to the bulk of the safety data for said vaccine, and no rights whatsoever to pursue legal action if they experience adverse effects from it. What these people need right now is to know they can depend on their fellow citizens to respect their choices, not fuel the segregation by launching a full-fledged witch hunt. Instead, for some inexplicable reason I imagine stems from fear, many continue rallying around big pharma rather than each other. A 2022 Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports survey of Democratic voters found that 59% of respondents support a government policy requiring unvaccinated individuals to remain confined in their home at all times, 55% support handing a fine to anyone who won’t get the vaccine, and 48% think the government should flat out imprison people who publicly question the efficacy of the vaccines on social media, TV, or online in digital publications. Even Orwell couldn’t make this stuff up.
Photo credit: DJ Paine on Unsplash
Let me be very clear. While there are a lot of bad actors out there — there are also a lot of well-meaning people in the science and medical industries, too. I’m lucky enough to know some of them. There are doctors who fend off pharma reps’ influence and take an extremely cautious approach to prescribing. Medical journal authors who fiercely pursue transparency and truth — as is evident in “The Influence of Money on Medical Science,” a report by the first female editor of JAMA. Pharmacists, like Dan Schneider, who refuse to fill prescriptions they deem risky or irresponsible. Whistleblowers, like Graham and Jackson, who tenaciously call attention to safety issues for pharma products in the approval pipeline. And I’m certain there are many people in the pharmaceutical industry, like Panara and my grandfather, who pursued this field with the goal of helping others, not just earning a six- or seven-figure salary. We need more of these people. Sadly, it seems they are outliers who exist in a corrupt, deep-rooted system of quid-pro-quo relationships. They can only do so much.
I’m not here to tell you whether or not you should get the vaccine or booster doses. What you put in your body is not for me — or anyone else — to decide. It’s not a simple choice, but rather one that may depend on your physical condition, medical history, age, religious beliefs, and level of risk tolerance. My grandfather passed away in 2008, and lately, I find myself missing him more than ever, wishing I could talk to him about the pandemic and hear what he makes of all this madness. I don’t really know how he’d feel about the COVID vaccine, or whether he would have gotten it or encouraged me to. What I do know is that he’d listen to my concerns, and he’d carefully consider them. He would remind me my feelings are valid. His eyes would light up and he’d grin with amusement as I fervidly expressed my frustration. He’d tell me to keep pushing forward, digging deeper, asking questions. In his endearing Bronx accent, he used to always say: “go get ‘em, kid.” If I stop typing for a moment and listen hard enough, I can almost hear him saying it now.
People keep saying “trust the science.” But when trust is broken, it must be earned back. And as long as our legislative system, public health agencies, physicians, and research journals keep accepting pharmaceutical money (with strings attached) — and our justice system keeps letting these companies off the hook when their negligence causes harm, there’s no reason for big pharma to change. They’re holding the bag, and money is power.
I have a dream that one day, we’ll live in a world where we are armed with all the thorough, unbiased data necessary to make informed decisions about our health. Alas, we’re not even close. What that means is that it’s up to you to educate yourself as much as possible, and remain ever-vigilant in evaluating information before forming an opinion. You can start by reading clinical trials yourself, rather than relying on the media to translate them for you. Scroll to the bottom of every single study to the “conflicts of interest” section and find out who funded it. Look at how many subjects were involved. Confirm whether or not blinding was used to eliminate bias. You may also choose to follow Public Citizen’s Health Research Group’s rule whenever possible: that means avoiding a new drug until five years after an FDA approval (not an EUA, an actual approval) — when there’s enough data on the long-term safety and effectiveness to establish that the benefits outweigh the risks. When it comes to the news, you can seek out independent, nonprofit outlets, which are less likely to be biased due to pharma funding. And most importantly, when it appears an organization is making concerted efforts to conceal information from you — like the FDA recently did with the COVID vaccine — it’s time to ask yourself: why? What are they trying to hide?
In the 2019 film “Dark Waters” — which is based on the true story of one of the greatest corporate cover-ups in American history — Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Bilott says: “The system is rigged. They want us to think it’ll protect us, but that’s a lie. We protect us. We do. Nobody else. Not the companies. Not the scientists. Not the government. Us.”
Words to live by.
Facebook is accused of censoring criticism of Black Lives Matter spending
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 10, 2022
Facebook is being accused of censoring any information that paints the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in a negative light – and doing that regardless of the merit and accuracy of those reports.
BLM rose to prominence in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020, when many Americans chose to donate money to this organization as a way of supporting initiatives geared towards strengthening racial justice.
The movement was raising money with that promise. But reports have in the meantime suggested that not all of the $66.5 million in donations received by October 2020 was actually used for that purpose.
On Monday, the New York Post ran a story, based on an Intelligencer report, about BLM leaders using these donation funds to buy a $6 million house in California. Facebook’s reaction was to censor the article, preventing it from being shared, and slap the “abusive” label on it.
The real estate listing said it was a 6,500-square-foot home with more than six bedrooms and bathrooms, a pool and parking for more than 20 cars, and it was purchased in October 2020 by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors’ consulting firm’s financial manager Dyane Pascall.
The ownership of the property was transferred to an LLC in Delaware, ensuring that “the ultimate identity of the property’s new owner was not disclosed to the public,” the report said.
The house was seen in the background of a video Cullors and two other BLM leaders posted on the anniversary of Floyd’s death last June. The video shows Cullors complaining of being “in survival mode” because of a previous report into yet more BLM real estate purchases – the Post’s April article said Cullors had bought four high-end houses worth $3.2 million.
Reason writes that it’s unclear why Facebook is trying to hide this information – “unless it sees its role as merely running interference for political allies, hiding credible journalism when it’s damning to them.”
The New York Post has been no stranger to suppression of its reporting over the years – on Facebook, and other giant social networks like Twitter. Their stories about the possibility that the Covid pandemic was the result of a lab leak, and the Hunter Biden laptop reporting both faced various forms of censorship on these platforms – only to later be vindicated.
Putting Big Pharma on Trial in the COVID-19 Era, Part 3
Backing the Big Four: Big Pharma and the FDA, WHO, NIH, CDC
By Rebecca Strong | February 16, 2022
I know what you’re thinking. Big pharma is amoral and the FDA’s devastating slips are a dime a dozen — old news. But what about agencies and organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), World Health Organization (WHO), and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)? Don’t they have an obligation to provide unbiased guidance to protect citizens? Don’t worry, I’m getting there.
The WHO’s guidance is undeniably influential across the globe. For most of this organization’s history, dating back to 1948, it could not receive donations from pharmaceutical companies — only member states. But that changed in 2005 when the WHO updated its financial policy to permit private money into its system. Since then, the WHO has accepted many financial contributions from big pharma. In fact, it’s only 20% financed by member states today, with a whopping 80% of financing coming from private donors. For instance, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now one of its main contributors, providing up to 13% of its funds — about $250–300 million a year. Nowadays, the BMGF provides more donations to the WHO than the entire United States.
Dr. Arata Kochi, former head of WHO’s malaria program, expressed concerns to director-general Dr. Margaret Chan in 2007 that taking the BMGF’s money could have “far-reaching, largely unintended consequences” including “stifling a diversity of views among scientists.”
“The big concerns are that the Gates Foundation isn’t fully transparent and accountable,” Lawrence Gostin, director of WHO’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, told Devex in an interview. “By wielding such influence, it could steer WHO priorities … It would enable a single rich philanthropist to set the global health agenda.”
Bill Gates, Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci. Photo credit: National Institutes of Health
Take a peek at the WHO’s list of donors and you’ll find a few other familiar names like AstraZeneca, Bayer, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck.
The NIH has the same problem, it seems. Science journalist Paul Thacker, who previously examined financial links between physicians and pharma companies as a lead investigator of the United States Senate Committee, wrote in The Washington Post that this agency “often ignored” very “obvious” conflicts of interest. He also claimed that “its industry ties go back decades.” In 2018, it was discovered that a $100 million alcohol consumption study run by NIH scientists was funded mostly by beer and liquor companies. Emails proved that NIH researchers were in frequent contact with those companies while designing the study — which, here’s a shocker — were aimed at highlighting the benefits and not the risks of moderate drinking. So, the NIH ultimately had to squash the trial.
And then there’s the CDC. It used to be that this agency couldn’t take contributions from pharmaceutical companies, but in 1992 they found a loophole: new legislation passed by Congress allowed them to accept private funding through a nonprofit called the CDC Foundation. From 2014 through 2018 alone, the CDC Foundation received $79.6 million from corporations like Pfizer, Biogen, and Merck.
Of course, if a pharmaceutical company wants to get a drug, vaccine, or other product approved, they really need to cozy up to the FDA. That explains why in 2017, pharma companies paid for a whopping 75% of the FDA’s scientific review budgets, up from 27% in 1993. It wasn’t always like this. But in 1992, an act of Congress changed the FDA’s funding stream, enlisting pharma companies to pay “user fees,” which help the FDA speed up the approval process for their drugs.
A 2018 Science investigation found that 40 out of 107 physician advisors on the FDA’s committees received more than $10,000 from big pharma companies trying to get their drugs approved, with some banking up to $1 million or more. The FDA claims it has a well-functioning system to identify and prevent these possible conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, their system only works for spotting payments before advisory panels meet, and the Science investigation showed many FDA panel members get their payments after the fact. It’s a little like “you scratch my back now, and I’ll scratch your back once I get what I want” — drug companies promise FDA employees a future bonus contingent on whether things go their way.
Here’s why this dynamic proves problematic: a 2000 investigation revealed that when the FDA approved the rotavirus vaccine in 1998, it didn’t exactly do its due diligence. That probably had something to do with the fact that committee members had financial ties to the manufacturer, Merck — many owned tens of thousands of dollars of stock in the company, or even held patents on the vaccine itself. Later, the Adverse Event Reporting System revealed that the vaccine was causing serious bowel obstructions in some children, and it was finally pulled from the U.S. market in October 1999.
Then, in June of 2021, the FDA overruled concerns raised by its very own scientific advisory committee to approve Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm — a move widely criticized by physicians. The drug not only showed very little efficacy but also potentially serious side effects like brain bleeding and swelling, in clinical trials. Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a Harvard Medical School professor who was on the FDA’s scientific advisory committee, called it the “worst drug approval” in recent history, and noted that meetings between the FDA and Biogen had a “strange dynamic” suggesting an unusually close relationship. Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, told CNN that he believes the FDA started working in “inappropriately close collaboration with Biogen” back in 2019. “They were not objective, unbiased regulators,” he added in the CNN interview. “It seems as if the decision was preordained.”
That brings me to perhaps the biggest conflict of interest yet: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID is just one of many institutes that comprises the NIH — and the NIH owns half the patent for the Moderna vaccine — as well as thousands more pharma patents to boot. The NIAID is poised to earn millions of dollars from Moderna’s vaccine revenue, with individual officials also receiving up to $150,000 annually.
Operation Warp Speed
In December of 2020, Pfizer became the first company to receive an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA for a COVID-19 vaccine. EUAs — which allow the distribution of an unapproved drug or other product during a declared public health emergency — are actually a pretty new thing: the first one was issued in 2005 so military personnel could get an anthrax vaccine. To get a full FDA approval, there needs to be substantial evidence that the product is safe and effective. But for an EUA, the FDA just needs to determine that it may be effective. Since EUAs are granted so quickly, the FDA doesn’t have enough time to gather all the information they’d usually need to approve a drug or vaccine.
Pfizer CEO and chairman Albert Bourla has said his company was “operating at the speed of science” to bring a vaccine to market. However, a 2021 report in The BMJ revealed that this speed might have come at the expense of “data integrity and patient safety.” Brook Jackson, regional director for the Ventavia Research Group, which carried out these trials, told The BMJ that her former company “falsified data, unblinded patients, and employed inadequately trained vaccinators” in Pfizer’s pivotal phase 3 trial. Just some of the other concerning events witnessed included: adverse events not being reported correctly or at all, lack of reporting on protocol deviations, informed consent errors, and mislabeling of lab specimens. An audio recording of Ventavia employees from September 2020 revealed that they were so overwhelmed by issues arising during the study that they became unable to “quantify the types and number of errors” when assessing quality control. One Ventavia employee told The BMJ she’d never once seen a research environment as disorderly as Ventavia’s Pfizer vaccine trial, while another called it a “crazy mess.”
Over the course of her two-decades-long career, Jackson has worked on hundreds of clinical trials, and two of her areas of expertise happen to be immunology and infectious diseases. She told me that from her first day on the Pfizer trial in September of 2020, she discovered “such egregious misconduct” that she recommended they stop enrolling participants into the study to do an internal audit.
“To my complete shock and horror, Ventavia agreed to pause enrollment but then devised a plan to conceal what I found and to keep ICON and Pfizer in the dark,” Jackson said during our interview. “The site was in full clean-up mode. When missing data points were discovered the information was fabricated, including forged signatures on the informed consent forms.”
A screenshot Jackson shared with me shows she was invited to a meeting titled “COVID 1001 Clean up Call” on Sept. 21, 2020. She refused to participate in the call.
Jackson repeatedly warned her superiors about patient safety concerns and data integrity issues.
“I knew that the entire world was counting on clinical researchers to develop a safe and effective vaccine and I did not want to be a part of that failure by not reporting what I saw,” she told me.
When her employer failed to act, Jackson filed a complaint with the FDA on Sept. 25, and Ventavia fired her hours later that same day under the pretense that she was “not a good fit.” After reviewing her concerns over the phone, she claims the FDA never followed up or inspected the Ventavia site. Ten weeks later, the FDA authorized the EUA for the vaccine. Meanwhile, Pfizer hired Ventavia to handle the research for four more vaccine clinical trials, including one involving children and young adults, one for pregnant women, and another for the booster. Not only that, but Ventavia handled the clinical trials for Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax. Jackson is currently pursuing a False Claims Act lawsuitagainst Pfizer and Ventavia Research Group.
Last year, Pfizer banked nearly $37 billion from its COVID vaccine, making it one of the most lucrative products in global history. Its overall revenues doubled in 2021 to reach $81.3 billion, and it’s slated to reach a record-breaking $98-$102 billion this year.
“Corporations like Pfizer should never have been put in charge of a global vaccination rollout, because it was inevitable they would make life-and-death decisions based on what’s in the short-term interest of their shareholders,” writes Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now.
As previously mentioned, it’s super common for pharmaceutical companies to fund the research on their own products. Here’s why that’s scary. One 1999 meta-analysis showed that industry-funded research is eight times less likely to achieve unfavorable results compared to independent trials. In other words, if a pharmaceutical company wants to prove that a medication, supplement, vaccine, or device is safe and effective, they’ll find a way.
With that in mind, I recently examined the 2020 study on Pfizer’s COVID vaccine to see if there were any conflicts of interest. Lo and behold, the lengthy attached disclosure form shows that of the 29 authors, 18 are employees of Pfizer and hold stock in the company, one received a research grant from Pfizer during the study, and two reported being paid “personal fees” by Pfizer. In another 2021 study on the Pfizer vaccine, seven of the 15 authors are employees of and hold stock in Pfizer. The other eight authors received financial support from Pfizer during the study.
As of the day I’m writing this, about 64% of Americans are fully vaccinated, and 76% have gotten at least one dose. The FDA has repeatedly promised “full transparency” when it comes to these vaccines. Yet in December of 2021, the FDA asked for permission to wait 75 years before releasing information pertaining to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, including safety data, effectiveness data, and adverse reaction reports. That means no one would see this information until the year 2096 — conveniently, after many of us have departed this crazy world. To recap: the FDA only needed 10 weeks to review the 329,000 pages worth of data before approving the EUA for the vaccine — but apparently, they need three-quarters of a century to publicize it.
In response to the FDA’s ludicrous request, PHMPT — a group of over 200 medical and public health experts from Harvard, Yale, Brown, UCLA, and other institutions — filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act demanding that the FDA produce this data sooner. And their efforts paid off: U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman issued an order for the FDA to produce 12,000 pages by Jan. 31, and then at least 55,000 pages per month thereafter. In his statement to the FDA, Pittman quoted the late John F. Kennedy: “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
As for why the FDA wanted to keep this data hidden, the first batch of documentation revealed that there were more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths in just the first 90 days after the Pfizer vaccine was introduced. Of 32 pregnancies with a known outcome, 28 resulted in fetal death. The CDC also recently unveiled data showing a total of 1,088,560 reports of adverse events from COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 28, 2022. That data included 23,149 reports of deaths and 183,311 reports of serious injuries. There were 4,993 reported adverse events in pregnant women after getting vaccinated, including 1,597 reports of miscarriage or premature birth. A 2022 study published in JAMA, meanwhile, revealed that there have been more than 1,900 reported cases of myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle — mostly in people 30 and under, within 7 days of getting the vaccine. In those cases, 96% of people were hospitalized.
“It is understandable that the FDA does not want independent scientists to review the documents it relied upon to license Pfizer’s vaccine given that it is not as effective as the FDA originally claimed, does not prevent transmission, does not prevent against certain emerging variants, can cause serious heart inflammation in younger individuals, and has numerous other undisputed safety issues,” writes Aaron Siri, the attorney representing PHMPT in its lawsuit against the FDA.
Siri told me in an email that his office phone has been ringing off the hook in recent months.
“We are overwhelmed by inquiries from individuals calling about an injury from a COVID-19 vaccine,” he said.
By the way — it’s worth noting that adverse effects caused by COVID-19 vaccinations are still not covered by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are protected under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which grants them total immunity from liability with their vaccines. And no matter what happens to you, you can’t sue the FDA for authorizing the EUA, or your employer for requiring you to get it, either. Billions of taxpayer dollars went to fund the research and development of these vaccines, and in Moderna’s case, licensing its vaccine was made possible entirely by public funds. But apparently, that still warrants citizens no insurance. Should something go wrong, you’re basically on your own.
To be continued…
Imran Khan loses no-confidence vote
Samizdat | April 9, 2022
Pakistan’s National Assembly has passed a vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday, with 176 lawmakers out of 342 voting against him. The speaker of the parliament’s lower house Asad Qaisar, who is also a member of Khan’s party, announced his resignation after adjourning the house three times throughout Saturday.
Khan PTI’s party effectively lost its majority in the National Assembly in March when seven MPs from its coalition partner decided to join the opposition’s ranks. The rivals accused the cricket star-turned-politician of mismanaging Pakistan’s economy, battered by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as mishandling Islamabad’s foreign and internal policy.
Sunday’s motion means that Khan’s five-year term has ended early, much like that of all previous prime ministers of the country.
The opposition will now put forward their own candidate to replace Khan as PM. On March 21, Maryam Nawaz, the vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party – the country’s leading opposition force – told journalists that the party had nominated Shehbaz Sharif as its candidate for the office, which was confirmed by Sharif himself on Thursday.
Khan, in turn, had previously claimed that the opposition was doing a foreign power’s bidding, and that an “imported government” would be installed in Pakistan should he be ousted. In his Friday night address, the politician vowed that he would put up a struggle, calling on his supporters to take to the streets.
Khan previously pointed the finger at the US, which he said wanted him gone, for his attempts to carry out an independent foreign policy and his visit to Moscow in late February. The politician claimed to have a recording from the Pakistani ambassador in Washington proving the allegations.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that Washington was trying to “punish an unruly Imran Khan,” describing efforts to remove him from power as “yet another attempt to unashamedly interfere with a sovereign nation’s internal affairs.”
The US State Department has denied claims that it was behind the vote of no-confidence, with spokesperson Jalina Porter describing Khan’s allegations as “absolutely not true.”
Putting Big Pharma on Trial in the COVID-19 Era, Part 2
“Nurse prepares to vaccinate children” by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
By Rebecca Strong | February 16, 2022
Big Pharma Lawsuits, Scandals, and Cover-Ups
While the OxyContin craze is undoubtedly one of the highest-profile examples of big pharma’s deception, there are dozens of other stories like this. Here are a few standouts:
In the 1980s, Bayer continued selling blood clotting products to third-world countries even though they were fully aware those products had been contaminated with HIV. The reason? The “financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory.” Predictably, about 20,000 of the hemophiliacs who were infused with these tainted products then tested positive for HIV and eventually developed AIDS, and many later died of it.
In 2004, Johnson & Johnson was slapped with a series of lawsuits for illegally promoting off-label use of their heartburn drug Propulsid for children despite internal company emails confirming major safety concerns (as in, deaths during the drug trials). Documentation from the lawsuits showed that dozens of studies sponsored by Johnson & Johnson highlighting the risks of this drug were never published.
The FDA estimates that GSK’s Avandia caused 83,000 heart attacks between 1999 and 2007. Internal documents from GSK prove that when they began studying the effects of the drug as early as 1999, they discovered it caused a higher risk of heart attacks than a similar drug it was meant to replace. Rather than publish these findings, they spent a decade illegally concealing them (and meanwhile, banking $3.2 billion annually for this drug by 2006). Finally, a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study linked Avandia to a 43% increased risk of heart attacks, and a 64% increased risk of death from heart disease. Avandia is still FDA approved and available in the U.S.
In 2009, Pfizer was forced to pay $2.3 billion, the largest healthcare fraud settlement in history at that time, for paying illegal kickbacks to doctors and promoting off-label uses of its drugs. Specifically, a former employee revealed that Pfizer reps were encouraged and incentivized to sell Bextra and 12 other drugs for conditions they were never FDA approved for, and at doses up to eight times what’s recommended. “I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives,” the whistleblower said.
When it was discovered that AstraZeneca was promoting the antipsychotic medication Seroquel for uses that were not approved by the FDA as safe and effective, the company was hit with a $520 million fine in 2010. For years, AstraZeneca had been encouraging psychiatrists and other physicians to prescribe Seroquel for a vast range of seemingly unrelated off-label conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, anger management, ADHD, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sleeplessness. AstraZeneca also violated the federal Anti-Kickback Statute by paying doctors to spread the word about these unapproved uses of Seroquel via promotional lectures and while traveling to resort locations.
In 2012, GSK paid a $3 billion fine for bribing doctors by flying them and their spouses to five-star resorts, and for illegally promoting drugs for off-label uses. What’s worse — GSK withheld clinical trial results that showed its antidepressant Paxil not only doesn’t work for adolescents and children but more alarmingly, that it can increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts in this group. A 1998 GSK internal memo revealed that the company intentionally concealed this data to minimize any “potential negative commercial impact.”
In 2021, an ex-AstraZeneca sales rep sued her former employer, claiming they fired her for refusing to promote drugs for uses that weren’t FDA-approved. The employee alleges that on multiple occasions, she expressed concerns to her boss about “misleading” information that didn’t have enough support from medical research, and off-label promotions of certain drugs. Her supervisor reportedly not only ignored these concerns but pressured her to approve statements she didn’t agree with and threatened to remove her from regional and national positions if she didn’t comply. According to the plaintiff, she missed out on a raise and a bonus because she refused to break the law.
At the top of 2022, a panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit against Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, and GE Healthcare, which claims they helped finance terrorist attacks against U.S. service members and other Americans in Iraq. The suit alleges that from 2005–2011, these companies regularly offered bribes (including free drugs and medical devices) totaling millions of dollars annually to Iraq’s Ministry of Health in order to secure drug contracts. These corrupt payments then allegedly funded weapons and training for the Mahdi Army, which until 2008, was largely considered one of the most dangerous groups in Iraq.
Another especially worrisome factor is that pharmaceutical companies are conducting an ever-increasing number of clinical trials in third-world countries, where people may be less educated, and there are also far fewer safety regulations. Pfizer’s 1996 experimental trials with Trovan on Nigerian childrenwith meningitis — without informed consent — is just one nauseating example. When a former medical director in Pfizer’s central research division warned the company both before and after the study that their methods in this trial were “improper and unsafe,” he was promptly fired. Families of the Nigerian children who died or were left blind, brain damaged, or paralyzed after the study sued Pfizer, and the company ultimately settled out of court. In 1998, the FDA approved Trovan only for adults. The drug was later banned from European markets due to reports of fatal liver disease and restricted to strictly emergency care in the U.S. Pfizer still denies any wrongdoing.
But all that is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’d like to dive a little further down the rabbit hole — and I’ll warn you, it’s a deep one — a quick Google search for “big pharma lawsuits” will reveal the industry’s dark track record of bribery, dishonesty, and fraud.
In fact, big pharma happens to be the biggest defrauder of the federal government when it comes to the False Claims Act, otherwise known as the “Lincoln Law.” During our interview, Panara told me she has friends still working for big pharma who would be willing to speak out about crooked activity they’ve observed, but are too afraid of being blacklisted by the industry. A newly proposed update to the False Claims Act would help to protect and support whistleblowers in their efforts to hold pharmaceutical companies liable, by helping to prevent that kind of retaliation and making it harder for the companies charged to dismiss these cases. It should come as no surprise that Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and a flock of other big pharma firms are currently lobbying to block the update. Naturally, they wouldn’t want to make it any easier for ex-employees to expose their wrongdoings, potentially costing them billions more in fines.
Something to keep in mind: these are the same people who produced, marketed, and are profiting from the COVID-19 vaccines. The same people who manipulate research, pay off decision-makers to push their drugs, cover up negative research results to avoid financial losses, and knowingly put innocent citizens in harm’s way. The same people who told America: “Take as much OxyContin as you want around the clock! It’s very safe and not addictive!” (while laughing all the way to the bank).
So, ask yourself this: if a partner, friend, or family member repeatedly lied to you — and not just little white lies, but big ones that put your health and safety at risk — would you continue to trust them?
To be continued…
Putting Big Bad Pharma Back on Trial in the COVID-19 Era
They keep telling us to “trust the science.” But who paid for it?
Photo credit: Massimo Giachetti
By Rebecca Strong – February 16, 2022
After graduating from Columbia University with a chemical engineering degree, my grandfather went on to work for Pfizer for almost two decades, culminating his career as the company’s Global Director of New Products. I was rather proud of this fact growing up — it felt as if this father figure, who raised me for several years during my childhood, had somehow played a role in saving lives. But in recent years, my perspective on Pfizer — and other companies in its class — has shifted. Blame it on the insidious big pharma corruption laid bare by whistleblowers in recent years. Blame it on the endless string of big pharma lawsuits revealing fraud, deception, and cover-ups. Blame it on the fact that I witnessed some of their most profitable drugs ruin the lives of those I love most. All I know is, that pride I once felt has been overshadowed by a sticky skepticism I just can’t seem to shake.
In 1973, my grandpa and his colleagues celebrated as Pfizer crossed a milestone: the one-billion-dollar sales mark. These days, Pfizer rakes in $81 billion a year, making it the 28th most valuable company in the world. Johnson & Johnson ranks 15th, with $93.77 billion. To put things into perspective, that makes said companies wealthier than most countries in the world. And thanks to those astronomical profit margins, the Pharmaceuticals and Health Products industry is able to spend more on lobbying than any other industry in America.
While big pharma lobbying can take several different forms, these companies tend to target their contributions to senior legislators in Congress — you know, the ones they need to keep in their corner, because they have the power to draft healthcare laws. Pfizer has outspent its peers in six of the last eight election cycles, coughing up almost $9.7 million. During the 2016 election, pharmaceutical companies gave more than $7 million to 97 senators at an average of $75,000 per member. They also contributed $6.3 million to president Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. The question is: what did big pharma get in return?
ALEC’s Off-the-Record Sway
To truly grasp big pharma’s power, you need to understand how The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) works. ALEC, which was founded in 1973 by conservative activists working on Ronald Reagan’s campaign, is a super secretive pay-to-play operation where corporate lobbyists — including in the pharma sector — hold confidential meetings about “model” bills. A large portionof these bills is eventually approved and become law.
A rundown of ALEC’s greatest hits will tell you everything you need to know about the council’s motives and priorities. In 1995, ALEC promoted a bill that restricts consumers’ rights to sue for damages resulting from taking a particular medication. They also endorsed the Statute of Limitation Reduction Act, which put a time limit on when someone could sue after a medication-induced injury or death. Over the years, ALEC has promoted many other pharma-friendly bills that would: weaken FDA oversight of new drugs and therapies, limit FDA authority over drug advertising, and oppose regulations on financial incentives for doctors to prescribe specific drugs. But what makes these ALEC collaborations feel particularly problematic is that there’s little transparency — all of this happens behind closed doors. Congressional leaders and other committee members involved in ALEC aren’t required to publish any records of their meetings and other communications with pharma lobbyists, and the roster of ALEC members is completely confidential. All we know is that in 2020, more than two-thirds of Congress — 72 senators and 302 House of Representatives members — cashed a campaign check from a pharma company.
Big Pharma Funding Research
The public typically relies on an endorsement from government agencies to help them decide whether or not a new drug, vaccine, or medical device is safe and effective. And those agencies, like the FDA, count on clinical research. As already established, big pharma is notorious for getting its hooks into influential government officials. Here’s another sobering truth: The majority of scientific research is paid for by — wait for it — the pharmaceutical companies.
When the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published 73 studies of new drugs over the course of a single year, they found that a staggering 82% of them had been funded by the pharmaceutical company selling the product, 68% had authors who were employees of that company, and 50% had lead researchers who accepted money from a drug company. According to 2013 research conducted at the University of Arizona College of Law, even when pharma companies aren’t directly funding the research, company stockholders, consultants, directors, and officers are almost always involved in conducting them. A 2017 report by the peer-reviewed journal The BMJ also showed that about half of medical journal editors receive payments from drug companies, with the average payment per editor hovering around $28,000. But these statistics are only accurate if researchers and editors are transparent about payments from pharma. And a 2022 investigative analysis of two of the most influential medical journals found that 81% of study authors failed to disclose millions in payments from drug companies, as they’re required to do.
Unfortunately, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. The number of clinical trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry has been climbing every year since 2006, according to a John Hopkins University report, while independent studies have been harder to find. And there are some serious consequences to these conflicts of interest. Take Avandia, for instance, a diabetes drug produced by GlaxoSmithCline (GSK). Avandia was eventually linked to a dramatically increased risk of heart attacks and heart failure. And a BMJ report revealed that almost 90% of scientists who initially wrote glowing articles about Avandia had financial ties to GSK.
But here’s the unnerving part: if the pharmaceutical industry is successfully biasing the science, then that means the physicians who rely on the science are biased in their prescribing decisions.
Where the lines get really blurry is with “ghostwriting.” Big pharma execs know citizens are way more likely to trust a report written by a board-certified doctor than one of their representatives. That’s why they pay physicians to list their names as authors — even though the MDs had little to no involvement in the research, and the report was actually written by the drug company. This practice started in the ’50s and ’60s when tobacco execs were clamoring to prove that cigarettes didn’t cause cancer (spoiler alert: they do!), so they commissioned doctors to slap their name on papers undermining the risks of smoking.
It’s still a pretty common tactic today: more than one in 10 articles published in the NEJM was co-written by a ghostwriter. While a very small percentage of medical journals have clear policies against ghostwriting, it’s still technically legal —despite the fact that the consequences can be deadly.
Case in point: in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Merck paid for 73 ghostwritten articles to play up the benefits of its arthritis drug Vioxx. It was later revealed that Merck failed to report all of the heart attacks experienced by trial participants. In fact, a study published in the NEJM revealed that an estimated 160,000 Americans experienced heart attacks or strokes from taking Vioxx. That research was conducted by Dr. David Graham, Associate Director of the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety, who understandably concluded the drug was not safe. But the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, which not only was responsible for initially approving Vioxx but also regulating it, tried to sweep his findings under the rug.
“I was pressured to change my conclusions and recommendations, and basically threatened that if I did not change them, I would not be permitted to present the paper at the conference,” he wrote in his 2004 U.S. Senate testimony on Vioxx. “One Drug Safety manager recommended that I should be barred from presenting the poster at the meeting.”
Eventually, the FDA issued a public health advisory about Vioxx and Merck withdrew this product. But it was a little late for repercussions — 38,000 of those Vioxx-takers who suffered heart attacks had already died. Graham called this a “profound regulatory failure,” adding that scientific standards the FDA apply to drug safety “guarantee that unsafe and deadly drugs will remain on the U.S. market.”
This should come as no surprise, but research has also repeatedly shown that a paper written by a pharmaceutical company is more likely to emphasize the benefits of a drug, vaccine, or device while downplaying the dangers. (If you want to understand more about this practice, a former ghostwriter outlines all the ethical reasons why she quit this job in a PLOS Medicine report.) While adverse drug effects appear in 95% of clinical research, only 46% of published reports disclose them. Of course, all of this often ends up misleading doctors into thinking a drug is safer than it actually is.
Big Pharma Influence On Doctors
Pharmaceutical companies aren’t just paying medical journal editors and authors to make their products look good, either. There’s a long, sordid history of pharmaceutical companies incentivizing doctors to prescribe their products through financial rewards. For instance, Pfizer and AstraZeneca doled out a combined $100 million to doctors in 2018, with some earning anywhere from $6 million to $29 million in a year. And research has shown this strategy works: when doctors accept these gifts and payments, they’re significantly more likely to prescribe those companies’ drugs. Novartis comes to mind — the company famously spent over $100 million paying for doctors’ extravagant meals, golf outings, and more, all while also providing a generous kickback program that made them richer every time they prescribed certain blood pressure and diabetes meds.
Side note: the Open Payments portal contains a nifty little database where you can find out if any of your own doctors received money from drug companies. Knowing that my mother was put on a laundry list of meds after a near-fatal car accident, I was curious — so I did a quick search for her providers. While her PCP only banked a modest amount from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, her previous psychiatrist — who prescribed a cocktail of contraindicated medications without treating her in person — collected quadruple-digit payments from pharmaceutical companies. And her pain care specialist, who prescribed her jaw-dropping doses of opioid pain medication for more than 20 years (far longer than the 5-day safety guideline), was raking in thousands from Purdue Pharma, AKA the opioid crisis’ kingpin.
Purdue is now infamous for its wildly aggressive OxyContin campaign in the ’90s. At the time, the company billed it as a non-addictive wonder drug for pain sufferers. Internal emails show Pursue sales representatives were instructed to “sell, sell, sell” OxyContin, and the more they were able to push, the more they were rewarded with promotions and bonuses. With the stakes so high, these reps stopped at nothing to get doctors on board — even going so far as to send boxes of doughnuts spelling out “OxyContin” to unconvinced physicians. Purdue had stumbled upon the perfect system for generating tons of profit — off of other people’s pain.
Documentation later proved that not only was Purdue aware it was highly addictive and that many people were abusing it, but that they also encouraged doctors to continue prescribing increasingly higher doses of it (and sent them on lavish luxury vacations for some motivation). In testimony to Congress, Purdue exec Paul Goldenheim played dumb about OxyContin addiction and overdose rates, but emails that were later exposed showed that he requested his colleagues remove all mentions of addiction from their correspondence about the drug. Even after it was proven in court that Purdue fraudulently marketed OxyContin while concealing its addictive nature, no one from the company spent a single day behind bars. Instead, the company got a slap on the wrist and a $600 million fine for a misdemeanor, the equivalent of a speeding ticket compared to the $9 billion they made off OxyContin up until 2006. Meanwhile, thanks to Purdue’s recklessness, more than 247,000 people died from prescription opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2009. And that’s not even factoring in all the people who died of heroin overdoses once OxyContin was no longer attainable to them. The NIH reports that 80% of people who use heroin started by misusing prescription opioids.
Former sales rep Carol Panara told me in an interview that when she looks back on her time at Purdue, it all feels like a “bad dream.” Panara started working for Purdue in 2008, one year after the company pled guilty to “misbranding” charges for OxyContin. At this point, Purdue was “regrouping and expanding,” says Panara, and to that end, had developed a clever new approach for making money off OxyContin: sales reps were now targeting general practitioners and family doctors, rather than just pain management specialists. On top of that, Purdue soon introduced three new strengths for OxyContin: 15, 30, and 60 milligrams, creating smaller increments Panara believes were aimed at making doctors feel more comfortable increasing their patients’ dosages. According to Panara, there were internal company rankings for sales reps based on the number of prescriptions for each OxyContin dosing strength in their territory.
“They were sneaky about it,” she said. “Their plan was to go in and sell these doctors on the idea of starting with 10 milligrams, which is very low, knowing full well that once they get started down that path — that’s all they need. Because eventually, they’re going to build a tolerance and need a higher dose.”
Occasionally, doctors expressed concerns about a patient becoming addicted, but Purdue had already developed a way around that. Sales reps like Panara were taught to reassure those doctors that someone in pain might experience addiction-like symptoms called “pseudoaddiction,” but that didn’t mean they were truly addicted. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support that this concept is legit, of course. But the most disturbing part? Reps were trained to tell doctors that “pseudoaddiction” signaled the patient’s pain wasn’t being managed well enough, and the solution was simply to prescribe a higher dose of OxyContin.
Panara finally quit Purdue in 2013. One of the breaking points was when two pharmacies in her territory were robbed at gunpoint specifically for OxyContin. In 2020, Purdue pled guilty to three criminal charges in an $8.3 billion deal, but the company is now under court protection after filing for bankruptcy. Despite all the damage that’s been done, the FDA’s policies for approving opioids remain essentially unchanged.
Purdue probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this off if it weren’t for an FDA examiner named Curtis Wright, and his assistant Douglas Kramer. While Purdue was pursuing Wright’s stamp of approval on OxyContin, Wright took an outright sketchy approach to their application, instructing the company to mail documents to his home office rather than the FDA, and enlisting Purdue employees to help him review trials about the safety of the drug. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires that the FDA have access to at least two randomized controlled trials before deeming a drug as safe and effective, but in the case of OxyContin, it got approved with data from just one measly two-week study — in osteoarthritis patients, no less.
When both Wright and Kramer left the FDA, they went on to work for none other than (drumroll, please) Purdue, with Wright earning three times his FDA salary. By the way — this is just one example of the FDA’s notoriously incestuous relationship with big pharma, often referred to as “the revolving door”. In fact, a 2018 Science report revealed that 11 out of 16 FDA reviewers ended up at the same companies they had been regulating products for.
While doing an independent investigation, “Empire of Pain” author and New Yorker columnist Patrick Radden Keefe tried to gain access to documentation of Wright’s communications with Purdue during the OxyContin approval process.
“The FDA came back and said, ‘Oh, it’s the weirdest thing, but we don’t have anything. It’s all either been lost or destroyed,’” Keefe told Fortune in an interview. “But it’s not just the FDA. It’s Congress, it’s the Department of Justice, it’s big parts of the medical establishment … the sheer amount of money involved, I think, has meant that a lot of the checks that should be in place in society to not just achieve justice, but also to protect us as consumers, were not there because they had been co-opted.”
Big pharma may be to blame for creating the opioids that caused this public health catastrophe, but the FDA deserves just as much scrutiny — because its countless failures also played a part in enabling it. And many of those more recent fails happened under the supervision of Dr. Janet Woodcock. Woodcock was named FDA’s acting commissioner mere hours after Joe Biden was inaugurated as president. She would have been a logical choice, being an FDA vet of 35 years, but then again it’s impossible to forget that she played a starring role in the FDA’s perpetuating the opioid epidemic. She’s also known for overruling her own scientific advisors when they vote against approving a drug. Not only did Woodcock approve OxyContin for children as young as 11 years old, but she also gave the green light to several other highly controversial extended-release opioid pain drugs without sufficient evidence of safety or efficacy. One of those was Zohydro: in 2011, the FDA’s advisory committee voted 11:2 against approving it due to safety concerns about inappropriate use, but Woodcock went ahead and pushed it through, anyway. Under Woodcock’s supervision, the FDA also approved Opana, which is twice as powerful as OxyContin — only to then beg the drug maker to take it off the market 10 years later due to “abuse and manipulation.” And then there was Dsuvia, a potent painkiller 1,000 times stronger than morphine and 10 times more powerful than fentanyl. According to a head of one of the FDA’s advisory committees, the U.S. military had helped to develop this particular drug, and Woodcock said there was “pressure from the Pentagon” to push it through approvals. The FBI, members of congress, public health advocates, and patient safety experts alike called this decision into question, pointing out that with hundreds of opioids already on the market there’s no need for another — particularly one that comes with such high risks.
Most recently, Woodcock served as the therapeutics lead for Operation Warp Speed, overseeing COVID-19 vaccine development.
To be continued…
Rebecca Strong is a Boston-based freelance health and wellness writer currently contributing to Insider, Health magazine, Healthline, Eat This Not That, and more.
Pakistani PM calls early election
Samizdat | April 3, 2022
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has called for an early election after a vote of no confidence against him was unexpectedly canceled by the parliament’s deputy speaker on Sunday.
Khan PTI’s party effectively lost its majority in the National Assembly last week when seven MPs from its coalition partner decided to join the opposition’s ranks.
The PM’s rivals insisted that this had given them a real chance of ousting Khan, who has been in office since 2018.
But the parliament’s deputy speaker Qasim Khan Suri canceled the no-confidence motion brought by the opposition in a surprise move, citing “foreign interference.”
Khan, who claims there is a US-led “international conspiracy” to remove him from power, then delivered a televised address to the nation, saying it should “prepare for election.”
“You will decide the future of this nation, not the corrupt or the foreigners,” he said.
“Buying people through money” has been the reason for the current crisis, Khan said, advising those allegedly trying to depose him to “put that money in something better.”
Pakistani President Arif Alvi has dissolved the parliament after a motion by Khan. According to the country’s laws, a general election will take place within the next 90 days.
The leader of the opposition PPP party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has claimed that the government has “violated the constitution” by rejecting the no-confidence vote.
The “united opposition” is going to stage a sit-in at the National Assembly until the vote on Khan’s future takes place, he said, while also promising to challenge the decision in court.
Islamabad had summoned the American envoy to the country earlier this week after media reports claiming that Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu told the Pakistani ambassador to the US that “relations with Pakistan cannot improve” as long as Khan was in power, but the country would be “forgiven for its mistakes” if the PM were ousted through a no-confidence vote.
NYT Painted Matt Gaetz as a Child Sex Trafficker. One Year Later, He Has Not Been Charged.
By Glenn Greenwald | March 31, 2022
On March 30 of last year, The New York Times published an article that was treated as a bombshell by the political class. Citing exclusively anonymous sources — “three people briefed on the matter” — the Paper of Record announced that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) “is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him.”
The headline chosen by Times editors was as inflammatory and provocative as possible: “Matt Gaetz Is Said to Face Justice Dept. Inquiry Over Sex With an Underage Girl.” The paper, high up in the article, emphasized what grave crimes these were: “The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.” The article was extremely light on any actual evidence regarding Gaetz, instead devoting paragraph after paragraph to guilt-by-association tactics regarding “a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl.”
Only in the seventh paragraph — well below the headline casting him as a pedophile and sex trafficker — did the Times bother to note: “No charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz, and the extent of his criminal exposure is unclear.” Exactly one year after publication of that reputation-destroying article, this remains true: while the DOJ may one day formally accuse him, Gaetz has not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a single crime which The New York Times stapled onto his forehead.
From the start, the GOP Congressman vehemently denied these accusations. And he went further than mere denials: he claimed that these allegations arose as part of a blackmail and extortion scheme to extract $25 million from his family in exchange for not publicizing these accusations, which his father promptly reported to the FBI. While many scoffed at Gaetz’s story as fantastical and bizarre, that part of his story was vindicated last August when a Florida developer and convicted felon “was arrested on a charge that he tried to extort $25 million from the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz in exchange for a presidential pardon that would shut down a high-profile, criminal sex-trafficking investigation into the Republican congressman.” In November, that developer, Stephen Alford, pled guilty to trying to extort $25 million from Rep. Gaetz and his family.
In other words, the only component of this story that has thus far been confirmed — a full year after the NYT first trumpeted it — is the part of Gaetz’s denial where he insisted that all this arose from an extortion attempt. Yet none of that mattered, and it still does not matter. As I wrote in the aftermath of the Times story, designed to warn of the perils of assuming someone’s guilt without any due process: “That Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is a pedophile, a sex trafficker, and an abuser of women who forces them to prostitute themselves and use drugs with him is a widespread assumption in many media and political circles.” CNN celebrated the fact that one of Gaetz’s arch political enemies — the liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) — said that “as the mother of daughters, the charges certainly are sickening.”
In sum, Matt Gaetz has now spent a full year with millions of people believing he is guilty of pedophilia and sex trafficking even though he has never had the opportunity to confront witnesses, evaluate evidence or contest his guilt in a court of law because he has never been charged. Instead, he has been found guilty by media-led mob justice, all from unethical and possibly illegal leaks by “people briefed on the matter.” As a result, not only did Gaetz become radioactive due to crimes that have never been proven, but so too did anyone who argued that he is entitled to due process before being assumed guilty. For writing that April article and producing an accompanying video advocating the need for due process before assuming someone’s guilt, I spent two days trending on Twitter due to widespread accusations that, like Gaetz, I too must be a pedophile who was only defending him because I am guilty of the same crimes. That is the core evil of mob justice: it triggers the worst instincts in mob participants, who become drunk with righteous rage and bereft of reason.
In a separate article and video report in December of last year, I outlined the reasons prosecutors are ethically and often legally barred from leaking the pendency of criminal investigations as appears to have been done to Gaetz. It is precisely because it is common that a person who is the subject of a criminal investigation never ends up being charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes due to a lack of evidence to support an indictment or guilty verdict. Leaks thus have the effect, and often the intent, of destroying someone’s reputation, convicting them of repellent crimes in the court of public opinion that will never be brought in a court of law, thus relieving the state of the requirement to prove the crime and depriving the accused the opportunity to exonerate themselves.
These vital journalistic and ethical principles clearly apply to Gaetz but not only to him. In 2019 and 2020 in Brazil, I worked with colleagues for eighteen months on a multi-article exposé which revealed widespread corruption and wrongdoing on the part of the most powerful Brazilian prosecutors and judges. The misconduct was varied and severe, but one of the key unethical tactics they used was strategic and selective leaks about investigations against their adversaries. They would frequently use friendly media outlets to plant stories that a particular politician, activist or business person who opposed them was being “investigated” for some grave crime involving bribes or money laundering.
As these dirty prosecutors and judges in Brazil intended, these leaks would destroy the reputation of their targets overnight. Their allied media outlets would trumpet these accusations as if they were proven fact. The public assumed that their targets were guilty. Many lost their jobs, while others had their political careers ended. Yet so often, no charges were ever brought based on these leaks. That is because there was little to no evidence that the targets of these leaks had actually committed any crimes. As we revealed in August, 2019 as part of that investigative series:
Brazil’s Chief prosecutor overseeing its sweeping anti-corruption probe, Deltan Dallagnol, lied to the public when he vehemently denied in a 2017 interview with BBC Brasil that his prosecutorial task force leaked secret information about investigations to achieve its ends.
In fact, in the months preceding his false claim, Dallagnol was a participant in secret chats exclusively obtained by The Intercept, in which prosecutors plotted to leak information to the media with the goal of manipulating suspects by making them believe that their indictment was imminent even when it was not, in order to intimidate them into signing confessions that implicated other targets of the investigation.
The abuse inherent in such leaks is self-evident. When large corporate media outlets publish or broadcast innuendo from prosecutors by framing it as “X is being investigated for Grave Crimes Y and Z,” the public naturally believes that where there is smoke, there must be fire. In the midst of our exposés, Sérgio Dávila, the editor-in-chief of Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha of São Paulo, apologized for this practice in an article by its ombudsman:
In the evaluation of the [editor], the space given by the newspaper to the allegations leaked by the prosecutor is deserving of criticism. “If I had to revisit the case and do the coverage again, I know that’s not possible, maybe I’d rethink the space we’ve given, headlines after headlines… So, yes, I do that self-criticism.”
Dávila spoke … about a common procedure not only in Folha, but in all major newspapers: the headlines produced from [accusations made during investigations] along the lines of “so and so” said that [a politician] “did such a thing, according to an investigation by Operation Car Wash”.
Much of this content, however, ended up being reviewed or invalidated by the courts, without a new headline to make amends.
In other words, media outlets frequently blared in headlines any accusatory leaks made by prosecutors and investigators, ruining the reputations of countless people. But when no charges were brought, or courts dismissed the accusations for lack of evidence, the paper or news broadcast rarely returned to tell their readers and viewers that the accusation had not been proven. Therein lies the grave danger, the clear injustice, of accusing people of crimes through media leaks and forcing them to live with a cloud over their head with no fair process to defend themselves.
One could make a similar argument about the ongoing FBI criminal probe into Hunter Biden’s international business and tax activities. On Monday, we produced a new video report on what is clearly one of the most egregious disinformation campaigns in modern American political history: the union of the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to spread the outright lie in the weeks before the election that the incriminating materials from the Hunter Biden archive were not real but instead were “Russian disinformation” — meaning fake documents forged by the Kremlin.
As we have repeatedly reported, the evidence that this was a lie, and that the archive was real, was overwhelming from the start. But six months ago, a reporter from Politico, Ben Schreckinger, published a book, “The Bidens,” that contained ample proof that the key materials on the laptop were authentic. The media outlets that spread that lie in the weeks before the election simply ignored that book.
Two weeks ago, the outlet they unironically regard as the Paper of Record — The New York Times — published an article on the FBI probe into Hunter Biden which, in their words, relied on emails “obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” On Monday, The Washington Post published a lengthy article on the Bidens’ potentially corrupt business activities in China that also relied on materials from the laptop, which that paper also said it confirmed.
Yet not a single media outlet that spread the pre-election “Russian disinformation” lie has acknowledged any of this, let alone retracted their pre-election lies. That is because, as we document in our new video report, these outlets no longer see their function as journalistic but instead as partisan and propagandistic: they are absolutely willing and even eager to lie if it helps the Democratic Party stay in power. They know that their almost exclusively liberal readers and viewers want them to lie to help Democrats, and so they feel no compunction about lying and no need to acknowledge it when they get caught red-handed doing so. Our new video report can be viewed on our Rumble page, or on the video player at the end of this article.
But note what our numerous reports on the Hunter Biden matter do not allege or imply. We do not state or suggest that he is, in fact, guilty of the crimes for which he is being investigated, precisely because he has not yet been charged with those crimes, which means that the government has not yet been forced to show its evidence of guilt and Hunter Biden has not yet had the opportunity to defend himself in a fair process. One can suspect his guilt based on the disclosed evidence, but to assume he is guilty prior to charges being filed and a trial being held would be just as wrong as assuming that about Matt Gaetz. The corporate media, vehemently defending Hunter Biden, has no problem recognizing this core principle when it comes to the president’s son, yet refuses to recognize its validity at all when it comes to Congressman Gaetz — whom they have all but branded a pedophile and sex trafficker of children — and other enemies of American liberalism.
There are multiple forms of corruption and wrongdoing in the world of politics and journalism. Obviously, if Gaetz in fact had sex with a 17-year-old girl, that would be a crime in some states. If he paid her to travel across state lines to do so, that would be a crime under federal law.
But thus far, he has not been charged with any such crimes. Maybe one day he will be. But as a result of these unethical leaks and the treatment of them by The New York Times, he has lived for a full year with millions of people believing that he committed a serious crime with which he has never been charged. Even if the day comes when he finally is charged and convicted, this will still be a form of grave corruption and profound injustice, one committed by the sinister leakers and the journalists who deliberately turned him into a pedophile and sex trafficker for ideological reasons, even knowing that the state has not yet concluded that it has sufficient evidence to prosecute him for it.
A Peer-Reviewed Statistical Analysis of the 2020 Election
By Andy May | Watts Up With That? | March 31, 2022
Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reported on a new peer-reviewed paper that analyzes the results of the 2020 election and found Biden received 255,000 excess votes. It has been accepted for publication by the journal Public Choice and was written by Dr. John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. The linked pdf may not match the final printed version of the paper that will appear in the journal, but it is the copy that was peer-reviewed.
Both Dinan’s article and the paper are worth reading. Unfortunately, statistical analysis doesn’t prove anything, but I found Lott’s analysis impeccable and compelling. His discussion of the problems in several states with mail-in and absentee ballots is interesting and informative. He makes the following points very clearly.
- Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not match signatures on the outer mail-in envelopes to the official registration records. Some states, like Pennsylvania accepted ballots that were not enclosed in outer envelopes. These acts are in violations of the laws in many states and make it impossible to verify a vote’s legitimacy.
- Lott compares votes in adjacent voting precincts, where one of the precincts is accused of voter fraud, as with Georgia’s Fulton County, and finds statistically significant evidence of abnormal mail-in and absentee ballot results. In short, Trump’s absentee ballot share in the Fulton County precincts was depressed, compared to adjoining precincts. The largest estimate of depressed Trump votes was more than Biden’s margin in Georgia.
- In Pennsylvania and other states, numerous voters trying to vote in person were told they had already voted absentee, suggesting that someone else had voted using their name. The differences found to be statistically significant in Georgia were not significant in Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania was missing some essential data for the study, which was a problem.
- In Nevada, 42,000 people voted more than once, 1,500 dead people voted, and 19,000 did not have a Nevada residence.
- In Wisconsin 28,395 people voted without identification.
- In Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the rejection of improper absentee ballots in 2020 were a fraction of those rejected in 2016.
The most serious problems in the 2020 election were the procedural changes made, generally illegally, in absentee and mail-in voting. This type of voting is discouraged by the Jimmy Carter and James Baker, 2005 voting commission (Carter & Baker, 2005, pp. 46-47). The past problems with absentee voting in Europe have been much worse than in the U.S., at least prior to 2020, and as a result the practice is banned in 35 of 47 countries in Europe. In ten of the countries that allow it, the voter must show up in person and present a photo id, to pick up their absentee ballot. The remaining countries temporarily allowed voting in limited cases. Europe learned the hard way what happens when mail-in ballots are not secured, just as we did.
Lott concludes that his study underestimates the extent of voter fraud because it assumes that no voter fraud occurred with in-person voting. He also concludes that there were 142,000 to 368,000 total excess Biden votes, enough to swing the election. The statistical methods used for the study look valid to me, but as noted above, statistics are not proof. They do suggest that the election should be investigated, and the study shows that the permissive, and mostly illegal, absentee, and mail-in ballot procedures used in 2020 should never be repeated. I recommend everyone read Dinan’s article and the paper.
Works Cited
Carter, J., & Baker, J. (2005). Building Confidence in U.S. Elections. Retrieved from https://www.legislationline.org/download/id/1472/file/3b50795b2d0374cbef5c29766256.pdf
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From the Archives
The Great Recycling Scam
By Dr. Vernon Coleman – 21st Century Wire – September 2, 2022
Recycling was introduced, worldwide, as a tool to teach citizens to become compliant.
Forcing citizens to sort their rubbish into up to nine separate bags or boxes every week had absolutely nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’ and everything to do with teaching citizens (through a mixture of fines and shame) to behave ‘responsibly’ i.e. to do as they were told without looking too closely at the rationale of what they were being told to do.
The recycling never had anything to do with protecting the planet, of course. Most of the rubbish sorted, washed and collected in the UK was taken abroad, by lorry or ship or train, and burnt or dumped. It was, quite simply, impractical and not cost effective to recycle the material that had been collected. And, of course, collecting the sorted rubbish involved massive costs in terms of cash and pollution.
Today, the recycling business has reached an apogee of lunacy. Councils introduce ever more complex rules and fees. They refuse to take away much of the waste that is collected. And those wanting to take their rubbish to a ‘recycling’ centre will probably have to make an appointment and answer a host of questions.
It is no surprise that fly-tipping has become a major problem. The biggest causes of plastic in the sea are dumped fishing gear and plastic waste (much of it officially designated as recycled) which has been dumped by ships.
The good news, however, is that in Britain, recycling rates are falling. More and more people have become aware that the whole recycling movement was just another piece of manipulative trickery.
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