On December 2nd 2021, the BBC published on its website, its popular news app and in the BBC News at One programme a video interview and an accompanying article under the headline ‘Pfizer boss: Annual Covid jabs for years to come’.
The interview by the BBC’s Medical Editor, Fergus Walsh, conducted as a friendly fireside chat, gave Dr. Albert Bourla, the Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, a free pass promotional opportunity that money cannot buy — as the U.K.’s national public service broadcaster, the BBC is usually prohibited from carrying commercial advertising or product placement.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pfizer made the most of that astonishing opportunity to promote the uptake of its vaccine product. As the BBC’s strapline suggests, the key message relayed by Dr. Bourla, responding to an obediently leading question from Mr. Walsh, was that many more vaccine shots would need to be bought and jabbed to maintain high levels of protection in the U.K. He was speaking shortly before the U.K. Government bought another 54 million doses of the Pfizer vaccines.
Among his explicit and implicit encouragements for the U.K. to order more of his company’s shots, Dr. Bourla commented emphatically about the merits of vaccinating children under 12 years of age, saying, “[So] there is no doubt in my mind that the benefits, completely are in favour of doing it [vaccinating five to 11 year-olds in the U.K. and Europe].” No mention of risks or potential adverse events, nor indeed the weighing of any factors other than apparent benefits: Dr. Bourla was straightforwardly convinced that we should immunise millions more children in the U.K. In fact, it later emerged that the BBC’s article had misquoted Dr. Bourla, who in the full video interview recording had ventured the benefits to be “completely completely” in favour of vaccinating young children.
Despite the strength of Dr. Bourla’s unconditional and superlative pitch for vaccinating under-12s, the U.K. regulatory authorities would not authorise the vaccine for use with those children until the very end of 2021; and indeed this came just a few months after the JCVI — the body which advises the Government on whether and when to deploy vaccines in the U.K. — had already declined to advise the Government to roll out a mass vaccination programme for healthy 12 to 15 year-olds on the basis that “the margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year-old children”.
In response, soon after the interview aired, UsForThem submitted a complaint to the U.K.’s Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) — the regulator responsible for policing promotions of prescription medicines in the U.K. The complaint cited the overtly promotional nature of the BBC’s reports and challenged the compliance of Dr. Bourla’s comments about children with the apparently strict rules governing the promotion of medicines in the U.K.
More than a year later, following a lengthy assessment process and an equally lengthy appeal by Pfizer of the PMCPA’s initial damning findings, the complaint and all of the PMCPA’s findings have been made public in a case report published on the regulator’s website. Though some aspects of that complaint ultimately were not upheld on appeal, importantly an industry-appointed appeal board affirmed the PMCPA’s original findings that Dr. Bourla’s comments on vaccinating five to 11 year-olds were promotional, and were both misleading and incapable of substantiation in relation to the safety of vaccinating that age group.
As part of its defence of UsForThem’s complaint, Pfizer relied on the content of an internal briefing document that had been prepared for the CEO by Pfizer’s U.K. compliance team before the BBC interview took place. Pfizer initially asked for that document to be withheld from UsForThem on the grounds that it was confidential. When UsForThem later demanded sight of the document (on the basis that it was not possible to respond fully to Pfizer’s appeal without it), UsForThem was offered a partially redacted version, and only then under terms of a perpetual and blanket confidentiality undertaking.
Without knowing the content of that document, or the scope of the redactions, UsForThem was unwilling to give an unconditional perpetual blanket confidentiality undertaking, but reluctantly agreed that it would accept the redacted document and keep it confidential subject to one limited exception: if UsForThem reasonably believed the redacted document revealed evidence of serious negligence or wrongdoing by Pfizer or any other person, including evidence of reckless or wilful damage to the public health of children, UsForThem would be permitted to share the document, on a confidential basis, with members of the U.K. Parliament.
This limited exception to confidentiality was not accepted. Consequently, UsForThem never saw the briefing document and instead drew the inference that it contained content that Pfizer regarded as compromising and which it therefore did not wish to risk becoming public.
Even after UsForThem involved a number of prominent parliamentarians, including Sir Graham Brady MP, to help accelerate the complaint, the process was dragged on — or perhaps ‘out’ — while the rollout of Pfizer’s vaccine to U.K. under-12s proceeded, and the BBC’s interview and article stayed online. Even now the interview remains available on the BBC’s website, despite the PMCPA in effect having characterised it as ‘misinformation’ as far as vaccinating children is concerned.
When news of the appeal outcome was first revealed in November 2022 by a reporter at the Daily Telegraph, Pfizer issued a comment to the effect that it takes compliance seriously and was pleased that the “most serious” of the PMCPA’s initial findings — that Pfizer had failed to maintain high standards and had brought discredit upon and lowered confidence in the pharmaceutical industry — had been overturned on appeal.
It must be an insular and self-regarding world that Pfizer inhabits if it believes that discrediting the pharmaceutical industry is considered a more serious matter than making misleading and unsubstantiated statements about the safety of their products for use with children.
And if misleading parents about the safety of a vaccine product for use with children does not discredit or reduce confidence in the pharmaceutical industry, it is hard to imagine what standard can have been applied by the appeal board which overturned that initial finding. Perhaps this reflects the industry’s assessment of its own current reputation: that misinformation promulgated by one of its most senior executives is not discrediting. According to the case report, the appeal board had regard to the “unique circumstances” of the pandemic: so perhaps the view was that Pfizer can’t always be expected to observe the rules when it’s very busy.
Indeed, a brief look at the PMCPA’s complaints log confirms that Pfizer has been found to have broken the U.K. medicines advertising rules in relation to its Covid vaccine a further four times since 2020. Astonishingly, though, for its breaches in this most recent case, and in each of the other cases decided against it, neither Pfizer nor Dr. Bourla will suffer any meaningful penalty (the PMCPA will have levied a small administrative charge to cover the cost of administering each complaint). So in practice, neither has any incentive to regret the breach, or to avoid repeating it if it remains commercially expedient to do so.
And this is perhaps the crux of the issue: the PMCPA, the key U.K. regulator in this area, operates as a division of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the U.K. industry’s trade body. It is therefore a regulator funded by, and which exists only by the will of, the companies whose behaviour it is charged with overseeing. Despite Pharma being one of the most lucrative and well-funded sectors of the business world, the largely self-regulatory system on which the industry has now for decades had the privilege to rely has been under-resourced and has become slow, meek and powerless.
The U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in principle has jurisdiction to hold the BBC accountable for what seems likely to have been mirroring breaches of the medicines advertising rules when it broadcast and promoted Dr. Bourla’s comments, but no action has yet been taken.
This case, and the apparent impunity that companies such as Pfizer appear to enjoy, are evidence that the system of oversight for U.K. Pharma is hopelessly outdated and the regulatory authorities are ill-equipped to keep powerful, hugely well-resourced corporate groups in check. It is time for a rethink. Children deserve better, and we should all demand it.
Molly Kingsley is a founder and Ben Kingsley the Head of Legal Affairs at children’s rights campaign group UsForThem, on whose Substack page this article first appeared. Subscribe here.
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I hope they get the traction they deserve for sticking their necks out. They’re doing it for all of us.
Well said Stewart.
Heroes.
Amen!
The dam will break, folks, we just have to have patience.
In the meantime, we all of us, however insignificant we feel in the grand scheme of things, must use every interaction to be the still, small voice of calm. It’s what I have found the hardest, in the face of such crimes, but it’s the only way to turn the tide against the crooks and their functionaries.
There are the wolves who have eyes only for the sheep. There are the sheep who have eyes only for themselves. Then there are the sheep dogs who must have eyes for both. Pick your role.
There may come a time when it will be necessary to heed Gandhi’s words, but I don’t think it’s just yet…
It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts, than to wear the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.
Or,
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Thank you, you Indian doctors (and President of the Bar?) for having the chutzpah to call for a halt to this evil exercise. (Didn’t one state go down the ivermectin route and do quite well for peanuts? Uttar Pradesh?). Another small group of professionals micturating into the wind? Is it the sound of one hand clotting? Or crawling towards the tipping point?
Why aren’t the heart surgeons and circulatory specialists (in the UK especially), the consultants and leaders of cardio-vascular professional organisations being doorstepped by journalists and quizzed about what’s happening on the ground? Why aren’t these professionals themselves blowing the whistle on these alarming excess deaths? Because a) there are no journalists anymore, (with very few honourable exceptions) but simply advertorial hacks for big pharma. And b) the heart specialists now have full trolleys even unto the crack of doom. Can it really be that simple?
They have all been bought. There’s money for everyone. Every level has benefitted. Isn’t the Heart Foundation normalising the young dropping down dead on sports fields: it’s always happened, they opine, don’t you remember?
Meanwhile, we merely shuffle about the shambles awaiting our turn. ‘It could be you!’
Buddy, can you spare a D-dimer? But answer came there none.
Would a freedom of information request ever give us the data on how many Cardio consultants and indeed top medics generally had themselves jabbed? When were they given the heads up that the job mandate was only an empty threat to get the weak minded to roll up their sleeves?
I’m assuming a minority of alert GPs (20%?) didn’t take it and nor did their families, but dished it out with gay abandon. Ker-ching, hypocrisy and wilful blindness – there’s a Germanic hybrid word lurking in their somewhere waiting to be coined.
O Mores! Tempura Mores! (Our battered way of life!)
It will take a while for those who have been conned into taking a risk to admit it, as well. If, or when that happens, there could be a severe of loss of reputation for some, which could cause it’s own problems for us all.
Yes, I believe that quite a few higher-ups in health authority/regulatory bodies realise that something isn’t right. The Dutch parliament passed a motion some time back for the excess deaths to be investigated (this was following the excess deaths last autumn, I suspect the elevated/excess and sustained mortality since March 2022 is worse). The public health authority, the RIVM, and the regional health services that were primarily in charge of stabbing people, the GGD, are refusing to provide the data necessary for the investigation, citing privacy reasons. Utter nonsense of course, a 2-second glance at the GDPR shows that public authorities can have access to such data. Plus they had no such qualms announcing x number of people died of corona every day, but now we can’t have a mortality cause?
As far as I’m concerned their refusal to cooperate in something that obviously needs investigating is prima facie evidence they know full well that the vaxx is implicated in some way. If the excess is due to corona, as some are trying to claim, it means the vaxx failed big time, so why continue pushing it? If it is not due to corona nor lockdown health care issues, it must be the vaxx. The only good thing is, discussion is finally starting in the MSM regarding the elevated/excess mortality. People are not stupid, the refusal to find out what is causing it will have more people questioning what is going on.
And so the pendulum swings. Gathering momentum along the way.
I’ve long thought that 3 and 4 in the list above are necessary, and the least that can be done for the stabbed.
Heaven knows how much it might cost, but on what we know right now this is a genuine medical emergency.
A windfall tax on Prizer maybe? Say some $270 billion? (Current market capitalisation.) That should go a long way.
Trouble is, enacting measure 3 and 4 would require an implicit admission on the part of governments, health authorities, and health professionals, that something may be wrong with the stabs.
So expect delay as long as possible, in cynical disregard for the unfortunates they’ve duped.
Yet, as Alex Berenson says, I don’t think that delay can go on much longer.
Makes sense from a health & safety perspective. I wonder if the established medical groups in the DVLA and the CAA will take an interest. The DVLA have a long list of potential medical risks, to which another item could be added. Perhaps they are not allowed to yet, a cynic might say.
This is like a life dingy Vs a nuclear powered aircraft carrier unfortunately. Truth is irrelevant sadly.
I understand your pessimism, I genuinely do but as a rule the truth will out – it’s just a matter of time. A cliché I know but it’s generally accurate. Of course concerning vaccines we’ve this rather bizarre and arrogant impression that they’re the best thing since sliced bread – with little definitive evidence to back that up (even conventional vaccines we’ve had for decades, not these latest gene shot doppelgangers masquerading as such, which to anyone with eyes can see something is profoundly wrong).
I hate to bring politics into this but it’s clearly been a factor this time around. What’s at odds is this inversion of perception and scepticism where those who would’ve normally have sounded the alarm over big pharma and their insidious behaviour are the ones predominantly cheerleading this along – the typical left-leaning liberal who’s naturally suspicious of big business, perhaps rightly so, who’s traditionally and openly admit are out for profit (sometimes profit alone – but you have to sell a good product to succeed so at least we know where we stand). In this case though the left have this massive blindspot and it’s been those on the right who have ironically been the ones raising the flag. Why this is I’m yet to fully understand but I think it comes down to the left’s main ideological achilleas in that they’re proponents of everything government, so once they’re on board you can pretty much “sell” them anything if it’s sanctioned by authority – even if it comes from big business, those who they claim to distrust and require extensive regulation (that’s turned out well, the irony).
On a side note and not that I’m of any specific opinion, I’m not qualified, but even the existence of viruses and germ theory is contested, that’s why it’s called “theory”. Pharma is perhaps one of the largest if not the biggest lobbying business, becoming such a behemoth it’s almost beyond reproach, especially once it’s intertwined within government with no sign of abating so even basic questions like these are never even explored.
All being said, and I’m sure this has been proposed many times before, especially in regards to the pharmaceutical industry’s corruption but let’s hope their blatant overreach on this occasion will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back… at least eventually.
The narrative has collapsed faster than formerly healthy young athletes on the field after being jabbed.
The link below is to a Facebook page by Global News in Canada. The main report is by a 24 year old reporter, called Matthew Rodrigopulle, that seems to encourage parents of young children to receive a booster injection. Although, to be fair, the reporter does include an interview with a sceptical parent.
Just below the main report is a memorial for the reporter who has just died suddenly and unexpectedly of an unknown cause.
A word of warning: the top report contains distressing images of masked young children being injected.
https://ne-np.facebook.com/GlobalSaskatoon/videos/children-aged-5-to-11-eligible-for-covid-19-booster/5037172826387223/
I just looked again and the memorial for the reporter has disappeared.
Pretty well sums up everything I have been thinking and saying in my little corner of the medical world for the last year. Just added my signature.
I am extremely glad to see the term ‘so called vaccines’ being used.
Dr Shoemaker Double jabbed children in UK 5200-8200% more likely to die
https://rumble.com/v1hl9y3-dr-shoemaker-double-jabbed-children-in-uk-5200-8200-more-likely-to-die.html
This 4 minute video is a must watch.
Yellow Boards By The Road … for the love of humanity … and all the dead children
Monday 12th September 3pm to 4pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A332 Windsor Rd &
A329 London Road
Ascot SL5 8FE
Wednesday 14th September 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A4 Bath Road &
Pound Lane Sonning
Wokingham RG4 6TB
Thursday 15th September 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction B3408 London Road &
Wokingham Road
Bracknell RG42 4FH
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Unfortunately the timing of the release of this information is not ideal. From last Thursday until September 19th the attention of the world’s media is focused on the death of a 96 year old lady.
God Bless these brave doctors.