June 14, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Politicians and corporate CEOs offering clever incentives to encourage people to roll up their sleeves for COVID-19 vaccines tend not to talk about the vaccine companies’ troubling history of illegal business practices including fraudulent marketing, patent infringement, and failing to notify consumers about toxic ingredients.
Between 1991 and 2017, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca — three vaccine makers whose COVID vaccines are widely used across the world — have together paid out a total of $8.62 billion to resolve civil and criminal allegations in 67 state and federal settlements. Moderna, a relative newcomer, has come under scrutiny for secrecy about its funding and the results of its clinical trials. The fraught legal history of the corporations tends to grant legitimacy to the skepticism many feel about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines they have produced.
In a December 2020 report published by U.K.-based social justice organization Global Justice Now, Director Nick Dearden and Dr. James Angel wrote that “the current pharmaceutical model is actually deeply flawed, delivering outcomes which are poor value for money for the public sector, which exacerbate global inequality and which are driven by the objective to make sky-high returns to shareholders, not a healthier population.”
The report by Global Justice Now, which has criticized the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for “unaccountably skewing the direction of international development,” went on to describe the pharmaceutical model as one which grants incentives for “the most appalling behaviour including aggressive marketing of inappropriate drugs, kickbacks to doctors, claims of testing drugs on children without proper consent, massive price hikes on essential medicines, profiteering, blocking competition, and secrecy … Some of this behaviour has given rise to serious legal challenges and even some of the largest fines in history.”
In a recent example of just such behavior, Johnson & Johnson is likely to pay a multi-billion dollar settlement after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal earlier this month to reverse a 2018 decision by a Missouri Circuit Court which awarded a $4.7 billion payout to 22 women who developed ovarian cancer which they claimed was caused by asbestos present in the company’s talc baby powder.
In June 2020, a Missouri Appeals Court reduced the verdict to $2.12 billion, but maintained the finding of “significant reprehensibility” in J&J’s actions, saying the pharmaceutical company failed to warn consumers of the danger.
This year, Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout was temporarily paused in April after six cases of potentially life-threatening blood clots associated with the vaccine were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Civil and criminal litigation for dangerous and illegal practices aren’t new for the vaccine companies.
In 2013, Johnson and Johnson was ordered to pay over $2 billion to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from allegations relating to the prescription drugs Risperdal, Invega, and Natrecor, including promotion for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and payment of kickbacks to physicians and to the nation’s largest long-term care pharmacy provider,” according to the Department of Justice.
Back in 2009, in the largest pharmaceutical settlement in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice at the time, Big Pharma titan Pfizer, which manufactured an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine last year in association with German biotechnology company BioNTech, was forced to pay a $2.3 billion settlement “to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products.”
According to the DOJ, Pfizer misbranded an anti-inflammatory drug which had been pulled from the market, promoting its sale “for several uses and dosages that the FDA specifically declined to approve due to safety concerns.”
Pfizer’s subsidiaries pleaded guilty to a felony for misbranding the drug “with intent to defraud or mislead,” and the company was ordered to pay a criminal fine totaling $1.3 billion, “the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any matter.” Pfizer paid out another $1 billion “to resolve allegations” related to the illegal promotion of three other drugs.
Similar to the Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson cases, fellow vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca agreed to pay $520 million in 2010 to resolve allegations that it “illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration.”
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Michael L. Levy said of the AstraZeneca settlement, “People have a legal right to know that pharmaceutical companies are marketing their drugs only for uses approved by the FDA and that their doctors’ judgment has not been affected by misinformation from a pharmaceutical company trying to boost revenues.”
PETITION UPDATE (5/12/2021) -
It seems that Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in the NIH's funding of so-called "gain-of-function" research may be catching up with him.
In the last couple of days, both U.S. Senator Rand Paul and Fox's Tucker Carlson have laid into Fauci for his alleged promotion of this dangerous research which develops bat-based coronaviruses into more potent variants, capable of infecting humans.
Dr. Fauci denied funding this research.
But, Senator Paul noted that a resident virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Dr. Shi Zheng-li and Dr. Ralph Baric, an American virologist funded by Fauci's department in the NIH, "collaborated on gain-of-function research where they enhanced the SARS virus to infect human airway cells and they did it by merging a new spy protein on it. That is gain-of-function. That was joint research between the Wuhan Institute and Dr. Baric. You [Dr. Fauci] can’t deny it."
And, later, Fox News host Tucker Carlson picked up on the discrepancy, noting Fauci’s involvement in the creation and promotion of public health directives on account of COVID-19 while also being allegedly tied to the origin of the virus and its spread throughout the world.
So, the evidence - both in testimony and in the court of public opinion - continues to mount.
Could we ask you to consider SIGNING and SHARING this important petition, which calls for Dr. Fauci to be fired and investigated for any role he played in promoting and funding the dangerous research which may have cost the world dearly in lives and jobs lost.
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When concerned scientists warned the US government of the great danger of creating superviruses in the lab, one man publicly defended the risky experiments: that man was the influential head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), none other than "Mr. Science" himself: Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In 2014, the same year the US government called for a moratorium on this insanely dangerous research, Dr. Fauci's NIAID began funding a program to study the transmission of bat coronaviruses to humans.
Not only did his funding go to develop the technology for making bat coronaviruses spread more easily to humans, but much of it went to the lab located in the exact location where the Covid pandemic eventually emerged: Wuhan, China.
Like every person, Dr. Fauci deserves to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
But the evidence is so overwhelming that Fauci gambled with a supervirus and lost (the whole world lost), that, at a minimum, he needs to be fired from his position of public trust and must be investigated for possible violations of US law which mandated a moratorium on this extremely dangerous practice of creating superviruses in the lab.
However Dr. Fauci, far from being held responsible for his dangerous gamble, has been promoted to the point where, currently, he is the highest paid employee in the US Government.
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition if you agree that Dr. Anthony Fauci should instead be immediately fired and investigated for his role in causing the Covid-19 pandemic.
Just like the Wall Street moguls, whose financial negligence precipitated the financial crisis of 2008, received massive bailout bonuses, Dr. Anthony Fauci recklessly pushed for the research that probably caused the deadly pandemic. And now, he, too, has been rewarded with money and power.
As has been carefully and meticulously documented by Steve Hilton of Fox News, the probable origins of the coronavirus point to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Dr. Fauci was one of the greatest proponents of developing superviruses in labs.
Dr. Fauci was responsible for the funding of much of the research through the NIAID.
And, it appears that Dr. Fauci funneled taxpayer funds through an intermediary to allow the research to continue in the unsafe Wuhan Institute of Virology, even after the US government banned the funding of this dangerous research.
Until a thorough investigation into his role of the origins of the current pandemic has taken place, Dr. Fauci should not be in a position of public trust.
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition to demand that Dr. Fauci be fired immediately and investigated fully for his role in the creation of Covid-19 and the ensuing pandemic.
P.S. It should be noted that Dr. Fauci not only has proven to be catastrophic for public health with his advocacy of dangerous research, but he has also been a disastrous public health advisor, advocating measures that have negatively impacted every aspect of our lives, from the economy to our most fundamental liberties.
P.P.S. Dr. Anthony Fauci, recently stated that he is delighted to be pushing Joe Biden's return to US taxpayer funding of abortions abroad. So, evidently, not only does Dr. Fauci have problems with public health, public safety, and economics, but also with basic human rights and embryology.
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**Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
Covering a wide range of criminal and civil violations, Big Pharma’s legal troubles also include patent infringement and failure to disclose information regarding government funding and clinical trials.
In October 2020, San Diego-based Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals Inc. filed a lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech, claiming the companies used Allele’s patented “fluorescent protein to help analyze blood drawn from clinical trial patients without Allele’s permission.”
Last month a U.S. District Judge rejected Pfizer and BioNTech’s efforts to dismiss the action, giving the lawsuit the green light to go forward.
Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation-funded pharmaceutical corporation Moderna, which last year underwent an investigation by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for allegedly running afoul of federal law by failing to disclose government support for its patents and applications, “has been criticised for the way it releases its research,” according to the Global Justice Now report.
According to the report, “After the company announced it had seen positive results from its Phase I trial in May 2020,” scientists “raised questions about the company’s claims, suggesting that no significant data had been released to evidence them. Moderna disclosed early results from just 8 of its 45 trial participants.”
The report cited a concern expressed by Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who said, “It’s a bit of a concern that they haven’t published the results of any of their ongoing trials that they mention in their press release. They have not published any of that.”
Moderna’s secrecy has been called “highly problematic” by former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials, and “worthy of investigation for potential market manipulation.”
In an article published by Transparency International, Professor Jillian Kohler, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Transparency and Accountability in the Pharmaceutical Sector, wrote, “Now more than ever, pharmaceutical companies need to uphold standards of social responsibility.” Kohler added that “shareholders are not the only ones to whom pharmaceutical companies are accountable; the general public are also key investors.”