FORT WORTH, Texas (Lifesitenews) — A U.S. District Judge has ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to publish more than 320,000 documents related to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine at a rate of 55,000 pages per month. Initially, the FDA had asked for a rate of 500 pages per month, amounting to 75 years, to release the documents, citing “unduly burdensome” logistical and personnel hurdles.
“This is a great win for transparency and removes one of the strangleholds federal ‘health’ authorities have had on the data needed for independent scientists to offer solutions and address serious issues with the current vaccine program,” said Aaron Siri, managing partner of Siri & Glimstad, the law firm representing the plaintiffs who sued for the timely release of the documents.
“No person should ever be coerced to engage in an unwanted medical procedure,” he continued. “And while it is bad enough the government violated this basic liberty right by mandating the COVID-19 vaccine, the government also wanted to hide the data by waiting to fully produce what it relied upon to license this product until almost every American alive today is dead. That form of governance is destructive to liberty and antithetical to the openness required in a democratic society.”
The district court’s order recognized that Americans have an immediate right to transparency of the particulars regarding the vaccine and its development. “[T]here may not be a ‘more important issue at the Food and Drug Administration … than the pandemic, the Pfizer vaccine, getting every American vaccinated, [and] making sure that the American public is assured that this was not rush[ed] on behalf of the United States,’” wrote Judge Mark T. Pittman, who was nominated by President Donald Trump, in his order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. “Accordingly, the Court concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance.”
The plaintiffs in the case, Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), prompted the release of the documents by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FDA. PHMPT states that it was created “solely to obtain and disseminate the data relied upon by the FDA to license COVID-19 vaccines” and takes no pre-conceived position on the data.
The court supported its decision by recognizing how honoring the FOIA process protects the citizenry and life of a republic. “FOIA was [therefore] enacted to ‘pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny,’” wrote the court. “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.”
The court order comes at a time when there is a growing amount of evidence that the abortion-tainted COVID-19 inoculations are harmful and their long-term side effects are unknown. The order is the second in recent days to emerge from the court supporting citizens who have serious concerns about the vaccines’ development. On January 3, Judge Reed O’Connor, a nominee to the court by President George W. Bush, granted a stay of the Navy’s vaccine mandate to U.S. Navy SEALs who claimed a First Amendment exemption to the dictate.