When Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, agreed to be interviewed by the BBC in December 2021, he probably saw it as an opportunity for a bit of free advertising and PR for his company and its Covid vaccine. And so it turned out, apparently. An undemanding set of questions from the docile Fergus Walsh gave Dr. Bourla the chance to opine unchallenged on all things Covid and Covid vaccination, and no doubt communicate a few of his company’s key marketing messages.
However, UsforThem, an organisation which campaigns for the needs and rights of children, saw things differently. Its researchers noticed that during his interview Dr. Bourla had made statements about Covid and the use of Covid vaccines in children that were misleading, unbalanced and not capable of substantiation. They took these concerns to the U.K. regulatory body, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (the PMCPA), and a recent article in the Telegraph reports that the PMCPA agreed with them.
It is scandalous that it took the PMCPA a year to deal with this case. Meanwhile, Bourla and his colleagues have continued to make vast profits on the back of their COVID-19 vaccines, aided no doubt by these misleading statements. The PMCPA is the U.K. pharmaceutical industry’s very own ‘self-regulatory’ body. Self-regulation is a valuable privilege delegated to this industry by the MHRA, whose statutory responsibility it is to ensure that everyone, not just the pharmaceutical industry, complies with the laws which regulate the promotion of medicines. Failure to comply can, but very rarely does, result in criminal charges.
Those of you shocked by the revelation that the MHRA is 86% funded by the pharmaceutical industry, prepare yourselves: because the PMCPA is 100% funded by the pharmaceutical industry. It also reports to the board of its industry body, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (the ABPI). This Board is mostly comprised of senior management of U.K. pharmaceutical companies. In fact, at the time this complaint about Pfizer was made, the President of the ABPI Board was also head of Pfizer in the U.K., and the current ABPI Vice-President is the Pfizer U.K. Country President. The PMCPA actually describes itself as “a division of the ABPI”. So, no potential conflicts of interest there then.
Thus, UsforThem will probably have achieved this significant judgment in the teeth of determined opposition. The PMCPA’s own records demonstrate that it is not uncommon for complainants, as in this case, to wait a year or even longer for a final decision. Prevarication, inefficiency and delay appear to have been weaponised by the pharmaceutical industry over the past few years to enable complaints about misbehaviour to be kicked down the road far enough for the impacts of any resulting adverse judgments to be diluted and to allow sales and profits from misleading advertising and unethical promotion to be maximised.
And now that Bourla and Pfizer have eventually been found guilty of misleading the U.K. public about their Covid vaccine, what penalties or sanctions are they facing? Well, fortunately for them, nothing too serious: it is not possible to know exactly the extent of their offences, as the report of this case has not yet been published. However, the breaches of which they have apparently been found guilty – misleading the public, making unsubstantiated claims and failing to present information in a balanced way – could conceivably be covered by just three clauses of their industry’s Code of Practice. The current level of fine (or as the PMCPA prefers to call it ‘administrative charge’) for a single breach of one clause currently stands at £3,500 (or £12,000 if the breach is upheld at appeal). So, for this particular case, three individual clause breaches could mean that Pfizer is now facing a bill for a sum as little as £36,000. Had it not decided to appeal, that bill might only have been as low as £10,500. When viewed alongside the eye-watering profits Pfizer stands to make from its Covid vaccines, and no doubt the resulting generous bonuses banked by Bourla (even when just considered over the 12 months it has taken for the PMCPA to arrive at a decision for this case), these ‘penalties’ are of course derisory, both as punishments and also disincentives to similar behaviour in the future.
The failure of penalties meted out by the PMCPA to incentivise better behaviour is clearly demonstrated by the fact that over the past three years the PMCPA has judged Pfizer to have misled the public about its COVID-19 vaccines on no fewer than four previous occasions – including three occasions on which it was judged to have “failed to maintain high standards” and two occasions on which it was additionally judged to have “brought discredit on the pharmaceutical industry”. And it’s not just Pfizer who has been caught out misbehaving in this way. AstraZeneca too has been found guilty by the PMCPA of misleading the public about the safety and efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine. It is clear that these penalties not only fail to encourage companies to learn from their own errors, but from the errors of others too.
These days it must surely appear to many people that the entire regulatory system for oversight of pharmaceutical industry activities in the U.K. is slipping out of democratic control and that as a result it is failing to act in their interests. This has become more evident over the past three years, during which concerns have been raised about the rushed approvals of the Covid vaccines without adequate scrutiny and transparency. Similar concerns have also been raised about the post-marketing safety surveillance of these vaccines. To this list must surely now be added worries about how the behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry is regulated when it comes to its communication and interactions with the general public, clinicians, politicians, the media and journalists.
In order to restore public confidence in our entire pharmaceutical regulatory system, I believe that there are now three things which need to done.
First, the era of self-regulation of the U.K. pharmaceutical industry by the PMCPA and the ABPI must come to an end. It is now time that pharmaceutical companies were no longer allowed to mark their own homework. Inefficiency and delay can no longer be allowed to be used as a shield for malpractice. A new, properly resourced and truly independent body is needed to carry out this role. Such a body could possibly be financed at arms length by the MHRA from a levy on U.K. pharma companies based on, for example, their annual U.K. turnover. There are those who say that the MHRA should actually take this role back for itself. However, there is now such a level of concern and suspicion amongst the public about the competence, transparency and independence of the MHRA that I believe that trust can only be rebuilt by the establishment of a completely new system of oversight.
In addition, the penalties and sanctions resulting from breaches of the regulations must be made more severe. The current derisory ‘administrative charges’ can in no way act as satisfactory punishments for serious breaches of the regulations, particularly those which represent egregious betrayals of public trust. Neither do they currently act as any kind of disincentive for any future similar misbehaviour.
Secondly, a public inquiry is needed to investigate the process which the MHRA has used, and continues to use, for approving COVID-19 vaccines. This should consider all aspects of the approval process, including how approval was expedited using Regulation 174 and Conditional Marketing Authorisations, the drivers for expedition, approval of line-extensions, age-stratification of approvals and any potential conflicts of interest. There is currently a petition asking the Government to launch such an inquiry which can be found and signed here. At the time of writing the number of signatories stands at just over 13,300.
Thirdly, the last time there was any parliamentary scrutiny of activities of the pharmaceutical industry in the U.K. was a select committee investigation which reported in 2005. That report made a number of important observations and recommendations, some of which were implemented, many of which were not. Almost two decades later the world has changed a great deal and it is now again time for a parliamentary select committee to take another look at this issue – particularly in the light of the recent national response to COVID-19.
I will leave the final word to those parliamentarians of 2005, whose concerns seem possibly even more relevant today than they did then:
Our overarching conclusion is that the U.K. pharmaceutical industry is in many ways outstanding: it conducts excellent research, produces products which make a vital contribution to the health of the nation and is of great economic importance; however for want of critical scrutiny by, and lack of deference and accountability to, the public and public bodies, the industry lacks the discipline and quality control that it needs but cannot itself provide.
Dr. Alan Black is a retired pharmaceutical physician, having worked in and for the pharmaceutical industry for around 30 years. Prior to that he spent a number of years in laboratory and clinical medicine.
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Can you imagine if they’d had a PCR test for flu and for years prior to 2020 it was just normal and encouraged by government health officials to use these LFTs and PCRs routinely, even if you didn’t have any symptoms? We’d be dab hands at this lockdown business by now wouldn’t we? The world would have ground to a halt years ago because it would be inevitable that they could manufacture a flu ”pandemic” every single year based solely on mass testing. The entire scamdemic rested entirely on the testing.
Even the PsyOp wouldn’t have had much effect without the testing because those ‘positive’ test results needed to be generated. Otherwise people would twig and think, ”what’s all the fuss about? I feel fine/no worse than previous viruses I’ve had. Why do I need to stay home and stop living? Only the old people are dying, like they do every winter” So, without turning this into an essay, the only way they can even attempt a future scamdemic is if they go back to mass testing, this time for another ”novel” and ”deadly” virus that we allegedly have zero immunity against. And if the same people fall for that humongous farce again then they really have got excrement for brains.
Hancock is a loathesome piece of trash but so is this fake inquiry, handled by the Rona true believers (the mafia investigating itself).
But as the article states there will be a ‘consensus’ around Wancocks’s views.
‘Dames, Ladys, Sirs’….what a joke. Our ‘betters’, ‘superiors’.
No they are not smart. They are as dumb as they look and more corrupt. All of them swilled in the Rona trough of billions.
$120 mn quid this will cost us. For what?
To tell us that we will be imprisoned and stabbed again circa 2025 to 2030, to meet Agenda 2030’s goals?
We need a real inquiry, by real people, with real questions, real data, real facts, about real things like LD and stab deaths and injury, vs the real 20K dead from Rona, not with fake tests.
We don’t need the usual pantomine which asks nothing of importance. I wouldn’t doubt if the ‘report’ is already written.
To be fair, in defence of his strategy, I reckon I could suppress Matt Hancock “out of the air.” I just require a Titan sub to do it.
I would love to suppress Wancock with a very large rock dropped from a cliff on top of the soyboy below, as he fondles his married lover.
Ferdill,
It Has been suggested by some heartless people, perhaps those naughty “far-right” folk we are constantly warned about; that we need a Real Inquiry, with Real Peasants, Real Flaming Torches and Real, well sharpened Pitchforks.
Whilst such an Inquiry might be more productive than your sensible and quite modest proposal, I fear we are extremely unlikely to get either.
There was no pandemic
Yep no painted cross on any door I saw, no carts going round collecting the dead, but some Welsh councils did dig some extra graves just in case. A lot of “measures” were a modern version of the King Charles 2nd version of 1666, so there was some planning.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lessons/2267-popup.htm
Sadly – needed repeating tof.
It seems to me like the strategy of the establishment for cementing lockdowns, testing, masks and jabs as the default response to future “pandemics” is to pretend that the effects of flu are radically different to coronavirus or other respiratory viruses, and so require a radically different approach.
I suppose the public aren’t scared enough of the flu so they need to be gaslighted into thinking flus and colds are so radically different as to requite radically.different approaches
One of the essential ingredients of the hoax, yes.
The reason why this committee met last in 2010 is obviously that there was never a reason to exist for it at all save as Government’s doing something!
headline generator at a time when the WHO was trying to inflict another Deadly pandemic!!1 onto mankind. 2009 – swine flu hoax. 2010 – end of political fallout from that.
Give me patience, Lord, and please administer a celestial size 11 boot up the backsides of these numpties.
There was no pandemic. There have been no real “public health” emergencies in decades, except for those that seem to have been caused by “authority” insisting on mandated poisoning of the environment and the animal and human populations.
I don’t recall growing up under the shadow of fear from disease, this is a new thing created in the last 20 years. Seems that those with vested interests like to perpetuate the myth that disease and pestilence would be stalking the population without them riding to rescue on white chargers brandishing syringes full of the latest patented prophylactic.
I don’t recall growing up under the shadow of fear from disease, this is a new thing created in the last 20 years.
2004, to be precise, the Bird Flu pandemic which never was and also the time when flu vaccines started to be marketed aggressively. By that time, I was very much surprised that someone even considered vaccinating people against the flu.
Yes and the line of questioning or reading between the lines of the KC seems to suggest his own bias and the inquiry conclusion already. Lock down sooner, more control in plans, harder lines of forced compliance, any suggestion of a novel virus treat as deadly to all, more control of the elderly …
And if they are still doing lateral flow tests to testify at this expensive spectacle ? Then it is a forgone conclusion. Authoritarian recommendations for the future.
When ignoring all the side issues, ie, hordes of Scottish and Welsn teetotalers charging into the hospitality industry on their wooden hobby horses, Corona was a giant money-making scam which probably only came to an end because taxpayers had been plunderen so thoroughly that there was nothing more left to take. The second season is to follow as soon as economic recoverly is complete enough that the merry looting can profitably recommence.
Have you noticed that people now often define themselves by their malady, “hello I’m diabetic/asthmatic/have ME/MS, an auto-immune disease/allergy? No longer are they the butcher, baker,candlestick maker. We need to stop talking about medical conditions and go back to talking about the weather…..
Ok, I think that you have not quite understood the tactics of the KC here. He is gradually asking questions to limit the answers that can be given later, Hancock has already said faster harder lockdowns, but there is no evidence that these did any good, and a great deal that they did so far, untold harm. The next question in module 2 will be something like “what made you think that lockdown was the correct policy”, followed by “what eveidence have you from the first, to decide on more?”. This puts the so called experts right on the line when they have to answer “none at all!”. Then “why did you call for the then”?
The next part will be expert evidence on the PCR tests (forget the lateral flows, they were just nonsense placebos, which were very non-specific). The answer to that will be they are very good and accurate. Except that they were not, because they were misused in method. 40 cycles would find a single incidence of a small bit of DNA in a sample. But it is widely known that this is far too sensitive, and does not show replicating anything! A test at 20 cycles (in other words about a million times less sensitive) would show a large population of the DNA, therefore likely real infection. The chance of a single incidence of something causing infection is very small.
As all of the above is well known science, why did they do 40 cycles? Because the Chinese told them to! There you have the whole scam in one sentance. Who profited? The Chinese. Who suffered severely, US. Job done!
As all of the above is well known science, why did they do 40 cycles?
As far as I know, that was because the two guys who developed and sold the original tests (Christian Drosten and a business partner of him who owns/ owned a company manufacturing such test kits) recommended doing so. Possibly unspecifically: Start with 20. Increase until you find something. That got us the pandemic where each and every conventional measure of disease was supplanted with positive test results plus something, eg, death because of skull trauma after getting hit by a cow suddenly falling from the sky with a positive test result a fortnight ago => COVID death, positive test result without anything else => asymptotically sick, chronic nosebleed because of constant swabbing => long COVID and so on.