AstraZeneca promised to pay medical expenses for anyone injured during its COVID vaccine trials. Now it wants immunity
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 22, 2024
AstraZeneca claims it is not obligated to pay medical expenses for a woman injured by its COVID-19 vaccine during a clinical trial because the company is immune from liability under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act).
The British-Swedish vaccine maker is asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Brianne Dressen, who alleges the company reneged on its contract which promised to compensate clinical trial participants for injuries they sustained.
Dressen, founder of React19, a nonprofit advocating for vaccine injury victims, filed a breach of contract lawsuit against AstraZeneca in federal court in May.
According to the lawsuit, AstraZeneca’s consent form for trial participants stated, “If you become ill or are injured while you are in this research study, you must tell your study doctor straight away. The study doctor will provide medical treatment or refer you for treatment.”
Dressen alleged she suffered injuries and disability as a direct result of her November 2020 vaccination, resulting in prohibitive medical costs — with one medication alone costing $432,000 a year. AstraZeneca offered her only $1,243.30 in compensation, prompting her to file the breach of contract claim.
In its motion to dismiss, AstraZeneca claimed it is fully immune from Dressen’s breach of contract claim under the PREP Act of 2005, which provides a liability shield to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.
“This action is barred by the PREP Act, which renders AstraZeneca ‘immune from suit and liability under Federal and State law with respect to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure,” the motion states.
According to AstraZeneca’s motion, the company did not waive its PREP Act immunity, but if it did, “any waiver would be strictly confined to ‘the costs of medical treatment for research injuries, provided that the costs are reasonable, and you did not cause the injury yourself.’”
AstraZeneca said Dressen’s claim that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine caused her neurological injuries falls outside the scope of such “research injuries.”
“This is a product liability case alleging personal injuries from the administration of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine,” AstraZeneca said, seemingly distinguishing between “research injuries” and “personal injuries.”
AstraZeneca also said Dressen’s lawsuit should not be considered a breach-of-contract claim, but a product liability claim — which would preclude Dressen’s claim “under the Utah Product Liability Act’s two-year statute of limitations.”
Dressen’s opposition to AstraZeneca’s motion to dismiss disputed the product liability claim, stating, “AstraZeneca asks this Court to do what no court has ever done: grant ‘complete immunity’ for contractual violations so long as the violations relate to the administration of covered countermeasures under the PREP Act.”
The document cites precedent exempting breach-of-contract claims from the PREP Act’s immunity provisions. “Each court that has addressed claims of immunity for state contract claims has rightfully held that the PREP Act does not apply.”
Dressen also argued that AstraZeneca waived its immunity “by clearly and unmistakably promising to pay the cost of research injuries.”
In a reply brief filed last week, AstraZeneca repeated its original claims. “Plaintiff’s claims fall squarely within the scope of AstraZeneca’s PREP Act immunity and should be dismissed.”
A hearing on AstraZeneca’s motion to dismiss is scheduled for Oct. 29.
‘PREP Act wasn’t intended to excuse such fraudulent and illicit behavior’
The U.S. never granted emergency use authorization for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, citing safety concerns.
In its motion to dismiss though, AstraZeneca claimed, “With the protections of the PREP Act in place, AstraZeneca and its partners successfully developed a lifesaving vaccine in a matter of months, an unprecedented scientific achievement.”
Ray Flores, a health freedom rights attorney unconnected to the lawsuit, told The Defender that the PREP Act’s liability shield for “covered countermeasures” extends to products being tested during clinical trials — but not in cases where there has been a breach of contract.
“A breach of contract such as this should obviously be excluded since the PREP Act is essentially a product liability protection statute,” Flores said.
He added:
“I’d like to think the PREP Act wasn’t intended to excuse such fraudulent and illicit behavior. But so far, under the guise of a pandemic emergency, the courts have determined that anything goes.
“This is the first PREP challenge that alleges a viable breach of contract. Since AstraZeneca’s guarantee was in writing, it has an excellent chance of winning.”
According to Dressen, two days after Dressen signed the consent form, AstraZeneca amended the form to state that its vaccine may cause “neurological disorders” such as “demyelinating disease,” which could “cause substantial disability” or death “if not treated promptly.”
Within hours of getting her first dose, Dressen experienced tingling in her right arm — a neurological condition known as paresthesia — and blurred vision and vomiting.
In the ensuing weeks, her condition worsened, with the paresthesia spreading to her legs, resulting in disability and multiple diagnoses indicating her symptoms were related to her vaccination.
This included a diagnosis in 2021 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of post-vaccine neuropathy, which NIH neurologists said caused Dressen’s “dysautonomia” and “chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy.”
Dressen, who was 39 when she was vaccinated, was previously a preschool teacher but is now unable to work.
In May, AstraZeneca announced the withdrawal of its COVID-19 vaccine globally — though the company said it based its decision on the “surplus of available updated vaccines,” resulting in reduced demand for its vaccine.
The vaccine generated over $5.8 billion in sales globally, with the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funded and promoted the vaccine in other countries. Several countries later stopped administering the AstraZeneca vaccine due to safety concerns.
In an ongoing class-action lawsuit in the United Kingdom (U.K.) against AstraZeneca, plaintiffs allege that they were injured — or their family members died — after getting the shot.
In documents AstraZeneca submitted to the U.K. High Court earlier this year, the company admitted that its COVID-19 vaccine “can, in very rare cases, cause TTS” — vaccine-induced thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, which causes the body to produce life-threatening blood clots.
According to The Telegraph, the U.K.’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme has approved 175 applications claiming harm caused by the COVID-19 vaccines, at a set amount of 120,000 pounds (approximately $156,000) per claim, adding that “Around 97 per cent of claims awarded relate to the AstraZeneca jab.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
CDC USES ‘COVID SURGE’ TO STOKE FEAR
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 22, 2024
The CDC is using new, questionable techniques to declare a ‘COVID surge’ and stoke fears. Coincidentally, a new booster hits the market as students head back to school. Jefferey Jaxen reports.
Dr. Peter McCullough: COVID Shots for Kids ‘the Last Straw’
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 19, 2024
“A child today faces well over a hundred shots,” cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told host Mat Staver on a recent episode of “Freedom Alive.” Many of those shots are for infectious diseases of the past or contemporary illnesses that don’t pose a risk to infants.
McCullough said the “inflection point” was the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which freed vaccine manufacturers from liability for vaccine injuries. “We saw essentially a vaccine bonanza develop,” he said, and “excessive, unnecessary” vaccination could be leading to serious side effects.
Those vaccines start just after a baby is born, he said, when they are given the hepatitis B vaccine.
As a cardiologist, dealing with blood and body fluids, McCullough said the vaccine is appropriate for him, but babies are not at risk for it unless their mother has the illness or is an active IV drug user. For most babies, he said, it is a “completely unnecessary shot on the first day of life.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in October 2023 recommended newborns receive Beyfortus, the monoclonal antibody shot meant to protect babies from RSV-related illness.
“This has no safety track record,” he said. “We’ve never given a synthetic antibody to a baby ever in the history of medicine, and now it’s being given uniformly with no idea of what is going to happen to the baby’s immune system over the next several weeks or months.”
The clinical trials were inconclusive as to whether Beyfortus is safe, and evidence from France shows increased mortality among infants after the shot was introduced, he said.
McCullough said the broader safety concerns stem largely from the fact that so many are given in combination. “For some babies, it’s too much,” he said.
Excessive vaccination, he explained, sends the immune system into overdrive, which can lead a baby to develop a fever and a febrile seizure (convulsion).
Research shows febrile seizures have about a 40% chance of causing permanent neurologic injury, ranging from epilepsy to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to autism spectrum disorder.
Staver said many parents who saw their children develop autism post-vaccination are told either that it isn’t true or it’s just a coincidence because there is no evidence of such a link.
“The direct observation by a mother and father of their child is the strongest evidence,” McCullough said, citing Dr. Andy Wakefield’s controversial 1998 study.
McCullough also cited a recent study by the Children’s Health Defense science team, which showed that combining multiple vaccines is dangerous. Spacing them out and giving them individually — rather than combining three vaccines into one shot, like the measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine — is safer, he said.
And, he said, all children do not need all vaccines. Which vaccines a child gets should be determined on a risk basis. For example, a child with cystic fibrosis might need the respiratory illness vaccines, but healthy kids probably don’t.
Yet these vaccines are given to all children in part, he said, because the people who advise the CDC on which vaccines should be recommended for children have serious conflicts of interest — most take money from Big Pharma. Then schools enact mandates based on those recommendations, leaving parents feeling as if they have no choice.
Vaccine makers lobby state legislators to continually increase the list of mandatory vaccines.
McCullough said:
“Can you imagine if you had a product that treats an illness? You would have to treat a small number of people in a population. But if you have a vaccine, that means the whole entire population has to receive the product.
“A product that must be purchased by the entire population with no liability is an absolute boon to any purveyor of that product.”
McCullough said the CDC has turned a blind eye to vaccine safety. For example, none of the childhood vaccines have been studied for safety when given in combination.
He added that Dr. Paul Thomas reported in The Defender that pediatricians receive substantial incentives from insurance companies to vaccinate certain high percentages of their patients.
For lower-income kids, there is also government financial support to ensure that the vast majority of the population is vaccinated against legacy diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, polio and other diseases that are either no longer commonly circulating or for which good treatments exist.
For many, McCullough said, the recommendation that children take the COVID-19 vaccine, given its alarming safety data, was “the last straw.”
“That act was irresponsible. It triggered the World Council for Health, which is an evidence-based, consensus-driven body to recommend waiting on all the childhood vaccines,” he said.
Vaccines are not safe or effective enough to mandate, McCullough said. “Every parent and child unit should be able to make their own decisions free of any pressure, coercion, or threat of reprisal.”
Watch the interview here.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
COVID-19 Vaccines Cause far More Myocarditis than Infection, Overall Risks Greatly Outweigh Theoretical Benefits
BREAKING PUBLICATION
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse™ | August 19, 2024
When the Springer Nature CUREUS Journal of Biomedical Sciences retracted one of the most comprehensive and valid risk-benefit analyses of the COVID-19 vaccines, they probably had no idea the message would be greatly amplified and now fully published in a pair of papers in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.
This manuscript evaluated all of the published data and has completely overturned a false narrative held by government agencies and the American College of Cardiology who erroneously assert that SARS-CoV-2 infection poses a greater risk of heart damage than vaccination. Mead et al importantly conclude the vaccines cause actual adjudicated and oftentimes fatal myocarditis while the infection remains a theoretical risk without adjudicated, autopsy proven cases.
COVID-19 Modified mRNA “Vaccines”: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials, Mass Vaccination, and the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Part 2. (2024). International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research , 3(2), 1246-1315. https://doi.org/10.56098/w66wjg87
The paper goes into great depth to enumerate harms from the shot along the lines of six domains where observed adverse events greatly outweigh claimed, theoretical benefits:
“We then categorize the principal adverse events associated with the modmRNA products with a brief systems-based synopsis of each of the six domains of potential harms: (1) cardiovascular, (2) neurological, (3) hematologic; (4) immunological, (5) oncological, and (6) reproductive. We conclude with a discussion of the primary public health and regulatory issues arising from this evidence-informed synthesis of the literature and reiterate the urgency of imposing a global moratorium on the modmRNA-LNP-based platform.”
The final call is clear, the COVID-19 mass, indiscriminate vaccination campaign should come to an end and with it, the four-year long false “safe and effective” narrative from the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.
UK rejects payment to Covid-19 jab victims for not being ‘disabled enough’ – Telegraph
RT | August 18, 2024
Almost 14,000 people in Britain have applied for payments from the government for disabilities they claim were caused by Covid-19 vaccines, The Telegraph has reported.
Only 175 people, or less than 2% of those seeking compensation, have so far received a one-off money transfer of £120,000 ($155,300), the paper said in an article on Saturday.
Data obtained by The Telegraph through Freedom of Information requests indicates that those who were eventually reimbursed suffered from conditions such as stroke, heart attack, dangerous blood clots, inflammation of the spinal cord, excessive swelling of the vaccinated limb, and facial paralysis.
Around 97% of the satisfied applications were related to the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and the rest to the US-made vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, it said.
The outlet noted that the UK government continued to recommend the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite its use being halted in Germany, Italy, France, and other European countries by March 2021, amid reports of a growing number of blood clotting cases.
Thousands of people have been refused payment due to the government’s medical assessors arguing that there is no concrete proof that their health problems are a result of the vaccines, the report read.
Hundreds of others were turned down due to being “not disabled enough,” it added. Under the rules of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS), an applicant has to be at least 60% disabled to qualify.
A spokesman for AstraZeneca told The Telegraph that its vaccine “has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects.”
As for the health complications caused by the vaccine, the spokesman said, “our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems.”
In May, AstraZeneca, which officially admitted that its vaccines could cause blood clots in certain cases, began the withdrawal of its product worldwide, saying that newer vaccines adapted to the latest coronavirus variants were more effective.
Around 16,000 people have sought payments since the introduction of the VDPS in 1979, with most of the claims related to Covid-19 vaccines. The growing workload resulted in an increase of the staff responsible for handling applications from four people to 80 last year. “We continually review our processes to further develop the way in which we manage claims, and to provide a better service for claimants,” a National Health Service spokesperson said.
The American Board of Internal Medicine Revoked All 3 Of My Board Certifications
Although I can still practice medicine, the ABIM’s actions against me and Paul Marik threaten the sanctity and autonomy of the physician-patient relationship.
Pierre Kory’s Medical Musings | August 17, 2024
I will just start by saying that I believe that the ABIM’s decision was 100% predetermined even before we first received their accusation in June 2022. There was no way they were going to declare us innocent of misinformation, even though a good portion of this country knows how effective and accurate our deeply evidence-based Covid treatment guidance was (and still is).
One of the reasons why they were never gonna let us off is that, if they declared us “innocent,” (i.e. accurate) that action would have immediately imperiled the decisions by medical boards across the country who persecuted hundreds of doctors for using ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or for recommending against Covid-19 mRNA gene therapy products. More importantly, it could potentially launch hundreds of thousands of lawsuits by the families of patients who died due to lack of early treatments offerred by clinics and hospitals or filled by pharmacies.
The above examples which led to the deaths of so many shows the sheer power of mega-corporations that put their financial interests ahead of our health and our lives. Through their overwhelming influence over nearly every institution of society and Science (media, journals, health agencies, politicians, medical schools, physicians etc), they literally succeeded in depriving a whole country (and world) of the most effective, inexpensive, safe, and widely available treatments for Covid. My biggest worry is that this crime against humanity may never enter the history books and thus will be eventually erased from memory. Which is looking probable.
The massive financial opportunities that Covid immediately presented to Big Pharma were threatened by the “inconvenient truths” Paul and I put out there. This ABIM action is one way in which Big Pharma punishes those who are foolish enough to do so. Foolish is not quite the right word in our case as I would argue we were simply naive to the consequences of advocating publicly for the use of off-patent medicines for an immensely profitable disease. It wasn’t heroism as some think, but rather extreme naivete.
I really never thought I would have to lose/leave three jobs and now three Board certifications for speaking truths. Recall that I was very well known in my specialty prior to Covid and was about to become Full Professor when I resigned as Chief of the Critical Care Service at the University of Wisconsin (where I was also the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center). Reading the Washington Post article “Doctors Accused of Spreading Misinformation Lose Certification” was a pretty sobering reminder of how far I have supposedly “fallen” (Not so fun fact: they completely overstated my salary as the money I received in 2022 included retroactive pay for 2021).
But I am still standing folks. I am happily practicing medicine at my Leading Edge Clinic with my amazing partner Scott Marsland. As many know, we specialize in treating vaccine injury syndromes and Long Covid, and I believe we are soon closing in on having treated our 1,400th patient.
Thank God I managed to build a private, fee-based practice two and half years ago. At the time I suspected this was coming while also already aware that I was “unemployable” by the system. I got fired by my last hospital for a 100% made up complaint, despite the fact they desperately needed me. I was an independent contractor at the time and my ICU partners and all the nurses really liked me. But my partners were telling me that they were under increasing pressure by the Chief Medical Officer to “get rid of Kory.” Although they initially resisted, my stance on vaccines started to cause even more problems for them. When the ICU Director, who was both a friend and a colleague, called to fire me, his last words were, “Pierre, I know there is a war going on and unfortunately you are a casualty.” Truer words were never spoken.
Just know that Board certification is not a license to practice medicine (that comes from state medical licensing Boards of which I have more than a few still). But this ABIM action now puts a definitive end to any hope of me returning to an academic or “system” position (not that I have that hope anymore). Why is that? Well, because Board Certification was originally just a badge of distinction that doctors could use to impress each other and their patients. But they have since weaponized and monetized Board Certification in that currently you cannot obtain a faculty appointment at an academic medical center without one. Nor can you work for most hospitals without one. Even worse, insurance plans will not put you on their provider panels without it. So, although I have been fully excommunicated from “the system,” I cannot be happier about it.
Understand that what happened to me this week was a devastating censorship action, plain and simple. It was done for two reasons; the first was to destroy my reputation and credibility so that my voice will no longer carry (essentially silencing me) and the other was to send a message to doctors that if they stray from consensus, no matter how scientifically absurd (e.g. mRNA vaccines for a coronavirus), dangerous (e.g. remdesivir, mRNA jabs), or ineffective (Paxlovid), they will be punished.
The damage that will result to patients again, is incalculable. No longer will “system” doctors be able to practice medicine with the autonomy they require to arrive at the best decision for each individual patient. Nearly everything they do will be protocolized with society guideline recommended treatments (i.e. consensus manufactured by Pharma). No longer will they be able to “think out of the box” or use treatments which although known effective, do not have the blessing of those in control of that system. I am as terrified as ever of needing a hospital.
Not to overstate the importance of their actions, but Medicine as I knew it, or thought I knew it, is even more dead if that is possible. If you can’t have a differing scientific opinion without losing your career over it, then how is that Medicine or Science? In fact, in our repeated written defenses, we challenged the ABIM, asking them where “the line” is between legitimate scientific debate driven by a differing emphasis on or interpretation of data and outright misinformation.
Misnformation, as I understand it, is defined as “incorrect or misleading” information. For us to be misinformationists, in my mind, would mean that all the data from trials and studies that exist for therapeutics in Covid;
- the overwhelming preponderance of data for the efficacy and safety of ivermectin in Covid shows it to be ineffective and dangerous
- the overwhelming preponderance of data for the vaccines show they are safe and effective
Basically, it comes down to how you interpret the body of evidence which currently exists. Paul and I adhered rigidly to a “totality of the evidence” approach, drawing from in-vitro, in-vivo, clinical and epidemiologic data. All of it lined up in a truly magnificent, inspiring, and unprecedented way. Well, except for the “Big 7 RCT’s” which manipulated the design, conduct and analyses to conclude ivermectin was ineffective. I spent literally hundreds of hours (along with others like Alexandros Marinos), publishing critiques which exposed the most absurd scientific misconduct I had ever witnessed. If interested, here are just some of those critiques, e.g. Oxfords’ PRINCIPLE trial, the TOGETHER trial (three parts, here, here, and here, and the NIH ACTIV-6 trial )
We also evolved with the data, unlike the agencies who had quickly determined in December of 2020 that the vaccines were safe and effective and never, ever veered from that stance up until this day. In contrast, the founding members of the FLCCC, for quite a long time, differed in respect to the efficacy, safety, and need for the mRNA vaccines. I was the first and most vocal against the mRNA vaccines (starting in April 2021) which actually almost led to the breakup of the FLCCC or at least the membership of the original 5.
Prior to April 2021 I was simply neutral/skeptical. That skepticisim was due to what I thought might be folly in trying to vaccinate against a coronavirus (I knew that historically coronavirus vaccines had failed because the vaccinated animals developed antibody dependent enhancement and also that coronaviruses mutate rapidly). Then I did my first deep dive on VAERS and the epidemiologic data showing massive spikes in mortality and hospitalizations timed with the rollout of the jabs across dozens of countries. Voila, I was now “anti-vaxx.”
I continued to track and analyze the ever-emerging data and the horrors they revealed. This work ultimately led the FLCCC to reach an internal “consensus” that the vaccines should be avoided at all costs (literally at all costs as none of the costs incurred by taking the jab were worth someones life). Anyway, I just wanted to show that we evolved with the data, always questioning and reviewing as new data emerged.
I will end by reminding all of how dangerous the ABIM’s actions will be to all of our lives because it will further erode and/or literally destroy the patient-physician relationship. As I wrote in a previous Op-ED in the Daily Caller on January 31, 2023, “A War Is Still Being Waged Against Doctors Who Question Covid Orthodoxy:”
By virtue of their professional training, doctors must advise patients on available treatments and known risks of any treatment or procedure. By threatening doctors who might provide information different than their preferred worldview, ABIM is disrupting the doctor-patient relationship.
When allowed to practice their craft freely, physicians can prevent societal disaster by focusing on individual patients, informed by clinical experience.
Groups like the ABIM, and public medical officials like Fauci, should support and encourage evidence-based debate and patient-centered care.
Instead, they have suppressed both that debate and treatment approach by persecuting its proponents. This campaign must be stopped, its origins and evolution must be thoroughly documented, and it must never be allowed to recur. Physician autonomy must be restored lest all patients suffer.
‘Medical Warfare’: Doctors Who Questioned COVID Shots, Promoted Ivermectin Lose Certification
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 14, 2024
Two doctors who spoke out about vaccines and alternative treatments for COVID-19 received notice that their medical certifications were revoked, while another doctor said her certification was revoked without her knowledge.
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) last week revoked the certifications of Drs. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik, following a two-year investigation into their promotion of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19 and their statements questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
According to The Washington Post, the two physicians continued “to promote ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication, as a treatment for COVID long after the medical community found it to be ineffective.”
Kory and Marik are co-founders of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which promotes alternative treatments for COVID-19.
Citing unnamed experts, the Post claimed the FLCCC “spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.”
MedPageToday quoted an ABIM spokesperson, who said the organization “does not comment publicly on the reasons for the revocation of certification.”
However, in a summary of the ABIM’s decision reviewed by The Defender, the organization stated that the doctors’ “conduct poses serious concerns for patient safety and undermines the trust that the public and the medical profession place in the meaning of ABIM board certification.”
In a press release, the FLCCC Alliance said it “categorically disagrees” with ABIM’s decision.
“We believe this decision represents a dangerous shift away from the foundational principles of medical discourse and scientific debate that have historically been the bedrock of medical education associations,” the press release states.
Marik told The Defender :
“The bottom line is we’re disappointed because we stand up for the truth. To censor science is to censor progress. Science is based on dialogue and people can have different points of view. That is the principle of science: it’s people having different points of view.
“We’ve never been in a situation before where physicians who have opposing points of view are silenced … It sets a really bad precedent that you can’t really challenge the status quo, and as we know, in medicine, there have been very dramatic changes based on changing understandings of science.”
In the FLCCC Alliance press release, Kory said, “This fight is about more than just our right to speak — it’s about protecting the future of healthcare. When doctors are silenced for questioning the prevailing narrative, we all lose.”
Kory and Marik participated in an ABIM hearing in May, but internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender that ABIM revoked her certification without her knowledge.
Nass said she was blindsided by ABIM’s decision to revoke her license, which she said she found out about only when she searched for herself in the organization’s database of certified physicians.
Nass told The Defender :
“After the Maine Medical Board suspended my license illegally — even though none of my alleged transgressions met the statutory requirement for an immediate suspension — the board later found me guilty of things I had not done and continued the suspension … All of this with never a single patient complaint.
“Now I learn, by chance, that the ABIM has suspended me without ever informing me I was even under an investigation, which is illegal according to the ABIM’s process.”
Dr. Peter McCullough also faced similar difficulties with the ABIM over his positions on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. According to MedPageToday, ABIM revoked his certifications in 2022 — although, as of today, ABIM lists him as certified.
McCullough told The Defender, “The ABIM is violating principles of equal protection, due process, rules of evidence and has gone ex post facto to find reasons to attack qualified ABIM-certified doctors who innovated and saved lives early in the pandemic.”
Science based on ‘different points of view’
Kory and Marik held ABIM certifications in internal and critical care medicine, while Kory was also certified in pulmonary disease, according to MedPageToday.
They were initially notified about the risk of losing their certification in May 2022. Last year, ABIM’s Credentials and Certification Committee recommended the revocation of their certification for disseminating “false or inaccurate medical information.” A hearing followed in May.
According to the FLCCC Alliance’s press release, Kory and Marik “tirelessly defended their positions.” However, despite “presenting over 170 references in a detailed 60-page response submitted in January 2023, the ABIM has chosen to dismiss these robust scientific contributions in favor of a narrow, ‘consensus-driven’ narrative.”
According to the summary of ABIM’s decision, Kory and Marik’s “statements about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine” as treatments for COVID-19 “are false and inaccurate because they are unsupported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information.”
The ABIM also addressed the doctors’ positions on the COVID-19 vaccines:
“[The doctors’] statements about the purported ineffectiveness and dangers of COVID-19 vaccines are false and inaccurate because they are unsupported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information. …
“There is extensive factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information demonstrating that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and lead to better health outcomes.”
Marik questioned the board’s assertions regarding ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and the vaccines.
“What they do is, they cherry-pick articles which support their point of view and then they go on to say the vaccine is safe and effective. We know that’s completely not true. There’s overwhelming data to question both the safety and efficacy of the vaccine,” Marik added.
McCullough said:
“ABIM never updated its members on important risks such as fatal vaccine adverse events, including myocarditis, nor failing theoretical efficacy necessitating boosters that skipped human testing altogether.
“Setting a new dark milestone, ABIM is decertifying highly qualified physicians for nonclinical reasons and ignoring the evidence for early therapeutics and COVID-19 vaccine safety.”
ABIM engaging in ‘medical lawfare’
According to the Post, Kory maintains a license to practice medicine in California, New York and Wisconsin, where “there are no disciplinary actions listed against him.” Marik has retired and his medical license expired in 2022.
Revocation of their ABIM certification “effectively prevents them from practicing at large hospitals and academic institutions,” the Post reported.
Marik and Nass outlined the difficulties of practicing medicine without certification.
“It doesn’t affect us directly, but it affects us indirectly because we’re being accused of committing offenses that are just not true,” Marik said. “The indirect impact to our reputation … it’s a slap in the face, basically, for all the hard work we’ve done.”
Accusing the ABIM of being part of the “medical-industrial complex,” Marik said, “They seem more interested in making money than in protecting physicians. There have been a number of lawsuits against ABIM, so they don’t have the best of reputations. But unfortunately, they are the main certifying organization in the U.S., so they have enormous power and leverage.”
“If I get my license back — a big if, without board certification, I would have great difficulty getting hospital privileges and collecting insurance reimbursements. In other words, I would be unemployable, though I could potentially work on my own if patients paid me directly,” Nass said.
In 2021, ABIM and the Federation of State Medical Boards collaborated to draft the statement used to discipline Nass.
Nass said organizations like ABIM are engaging in “medical lawfare.” She said they are:
“Creating crimes that do not exist, using procedures that do not exist, to try and silence people like me. What did I do wrong? I read the literature and told the truth about what it said, publicly. The COVID vaccines are very dangerous. They don’t prevent COVID. Drugs can effectively treat COVID. And I prescribed those drugs and helped hundreds of Maine citizens. That was my crime.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Whistleblower Will Appeal After Federal Court Dismisses Lawsuit Alleging Fraud in Pfizer COVID Vaccine Trials
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 13, 2024
For the second time, a federal court in Texas has dismissed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging Pfizer and two of its contractors manipulated data and committed other acts of fraud during clinical trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in 2020.
In his Aug. 9 ruling, District Judge Michael J. Truncale sided with the U.S. government, ruling the government had demonstrated “good cause” to intervene and dismiss the case. He wrote:
“The Government’s desire to dismiss the case — because of its doubt as to the case’s merits, differing assessment of the Pfizer vaccine data, desire to avoid discovery and litigation obligations, and belief that it should not have to expend resources in a case that is contrary to its public health policy — constitutes good cause to intervene.”
Whistleblower Brook Jackson filed the lawsuit against Pfizer, Ventavia Research Group — which conducted some of the clinical trials for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine — and Pfizer contractor ICON PLC in January 2021. Jackson’s complaint was most recently amended in October 2023.
Jackson, a former Ventavia employee, alleged the companies committed numerous violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) during the clinical trials.
According to the lawsuit, the three companies “deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question,” thus defrauding the federal government, which purchased the vaccines.
The FCA allows the government or a party suing on its behalf to attempt to recover money for false claims made by parties to secure payment from the government.
The FCA also allows whistleblowers to be rewarded for confidentially disclosing fraud that results in a financial loss to the government.
While whistleblowers have the right to sue under the FCA, the federal government can choose to intervene in the case at a later date. In Jackson’s lawsuit, the U.S. government initially declined to intervene in February 2022. However, in March, the government filed a motion to intervene and to dismiss the case.
Attorney Warner Mendenhall, one of the lawyers representing Jackson, questioned whether the U.S. government’s “public health policy” is tolerant toward allegations of fraud during clinical trials for vaccines.
In an interview Monday with Sasha Latypova, a former pharmaceutical industry executive with 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development, Mendenhall said:
“What’s the public health policy of the United States? To kill people and damage people and injure people and make them sick? If that’s the public health policy, well then yes, we’re inconsistent with that.”
Latypova told The Defender she was “not really surprised” by the ruling, noting that drugmakers enjoy legal immunity afforded by emergency use authorization granted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Latypova described this immunity as a “legal cage.”
She said “The court took as evidence an unsubstantiated opinion of two government bureaucrats … published in an editorial article of a medical journal,” but did not consider the extensive evidence of wrongdoing Jackson provided.
The government’s motion to dismiss cited a Jan. 5 JAMA editorial authored by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks, claiming that “data from various studies” show that “tens of millions of lives were saved by vaccination.”
During his interview with Latypova, Mendenhall argued the government failed to demonstrate good cause and that last week’s ruling did not name any specific examples of this. He said:
“If you read the actual document, there’s no cause listed at all. In fact, the judge has a footnote saying, ‘There is no cause here, but I’m going to look at this other motion I think I can find’ … that’s not how courts are supposed to proceed. You look at the motion first to intervene for good cause. If it’s not there, you’re done. You don’t get to go on and look at the motion to dismiss for hints that maybe there is good cause.”
The ruling also stated that Jackson “failed to allege that she complained to Ventavia or the FDA about fraud against the government.” Accordingly, her claims don’t “rise to the level of protected activity” as a whistleblower.
Mendenhall told Latypova this poses “constitutional concerns” and may have “a chilling effect on other whistleblowers.”
Jackson has 30 days to appeal the ruling, and plans to, Mendenhall said.
“I am very confident we’re going to win that case and get, at least, the retaliation [claim] vindicated, and vindicate what she did as a conscientious citizen of the United States,” Mendenhall said.
Jackson fired within six hours of submitting claims to the FDA
Ventavia, which operated several sites where it conducted clinical trials on behalf of Pfizer, hired Jackson in September 2020.
That same month, Jackson reported problems she observed with the Pfizer vaccine trial to the company’s management. When management didn’t respond, she took her claims to the FDA on Sept. 25, 2020. Ventavia fired her later that day.
Jackson, who had over 15 years of experience working with clinical trials, claimed she “repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns and data integrity issues.”
She also gave The BMJ a cache of internal company documents, photos and recordings highlighting alleged wrongdoing by Ventavia.
“Her job was to fix things. They wouldn’t fix them. She reported it to the FDA, and six hours later was fired from her job,” Mendenhall said.
He added:
“There was not informed consent. They were making up records. I mean, it was just endless. They were violating patient privacy, which is critical in a clinical trial because you have to not know who’s getting the shot in order to determine any effectiveness.
“Basically, the allegations that she brought forward show that the clinical trial that she saw, what she saw of it, was essentially worthless. It wasn’t valuable or useful data.”
Jackson filed her qui tam lawsuit under the FCA in January 2021. A qui tam action refers to any legal case where a private citizen initiates legal action on behalf of a state.
Documents released in November 2021 supported Jackson’s claims that she was directly involved in the Phase 3 trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
‘Level of ignorance’ of scientific facts by government officials ‘astounding’
In February 2022, the federal government declined to intervene in the lawsuit on Jackson’s behalf but reserved the right to intervene at a later date.
Later that month, Jackson filed her first amended complaint, while the court unsealed 400 pages of exhibits.
In July 2022, Pfizer asked the court to dismiss Jackson’s lawsuit on the basis that the U.S. government was aware of wrongdoings in the clinical trials but continued to do business with the vaccine maker. In March 2023, Truncale granted the motion to dismiss, ruling that Jackson had not proved the companies violated the FCA.
Jackson appealed the dismissal in April 2023, and in August 2023 submitted a motion to file a second amended complaint, which was granted in September. Jackson filed her second amended complaint in October 2023.
Pfizer and Ventavia filed motions to dismiss the second amended complaint later in October 2023, while the U.S. government filed its motion to intervene and dismiss in March 2024. Oral arguments discussing the motions to dismiss took place on May 1.
“What happened in the interim here while we’re fighting the case and moving forward, apparently the government itself decided that what we were doing in exposing Pfizer and Ventavia and ICON, the three companies involved here, was contrary to the public health policy in the United States,” Mendenhall said.
In ruling in favor of the government, the court cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave the government significant leeway concerning when it could intervene in an FCA case and on what basis.
According to Mendenhall, this occurred despite meetings Jackson and her legal team had last year with representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), during which he said they “were completely unaware” of evidence questioning the safety of the COVID shots, including SV40 DNA contamination and vaccine injuries.
Mendenhall said:
“The level of ignorance about the scientific facts that we have uncovered was astounding to me, for someone who is supposed to be in charge of a major decision on behalf of the United States’ people, whether these shots need to be pulled from the market, whether Pfizer needs to be prosecuted or at least held civilly liable along with the other companies.
“I think that, certainly for some in the government, they just don’t want to face what they’ve actually done … they have hurt, damaged the health of millions of Americans and tens of millions, at least, around the world.”
According to Mendenhall, government attorneys were “actually sitting on the side of the courtroom with Pfizer” attorneys during the May 1 hearing.
“How strange that was to have the defendants sitting with the government who’s supposed to be going after them,” Mendenhall said.
In April, Pfizer submitted a statement to the court in support of the U.S. government’s motion to intervene and dismiss.
Pfizer previously was fined in connection with the FCA. As part of a 2009 settlement, the company paid $2.3 billion in fines — the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the DOJ — stemming from allegations of illegal marketing of off-label products not approved by the FDA.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.





