The Food and Drug Administration is asking a judge to give it 75 years to produce data concerning the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, up 20 years from a previous request.
The FDA told the court it can work faster than its previously proposed 500-pages-per-month rate, but it also said there are more than 59,000 more pages than mentioned in an earlier filing.
That discovery, and a desire to make sure it can work on other Freedom of Information Act requests at the same time, prompted the fresh request to the judge to allow production of roughly 12,000 pages by Jan. 31, 2022, and 500 pages per month thereafter.
That timeline would take it until at least 2096, Aaron Siri, a lawyer working on the case, wrote in a blog post.
“If you find what you are reading difficult to believe – that is because it is dystopian for the government to give Pfizer billions, mandate Americans to take its product, prohibit Americans from suing for harms, but yet refuse to let Americans see the data underlying its licensure,” Siri said.
Last month, South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman introduced legislation that could eventually force the FDA to release all documents relating to the coronavirus vaccine within the next 100 days – although this might not come to fruition now that a new request has been made.
At the time of the FDA requesting 55 years to release the data, Norman told Fox News: “How does a vaccine that receives approval in 108 days now require 55 years just to release information?
“It sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke.”
Where’s the transparency with the American people?
ThinkCivics researches, examines, and reports on issues that matter most. We deliver explanative, fearless, and insightful analysis for public consumption.
