Texas judge orders FDA to release Pfizer data to American public

A federal judge in Texas ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday to release tens of thousands of pages of data it used to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

The court’s decision came after public health and medical professionals sued the FDA under a Freedom of Information Act request that demanded more transparency, Reuters reported. 

Although the FDA originally agreed to release 12,000 pages by the end of January and a "minimum" of 500 pages a month going forward, the litigants objected stating that such a schedule meant that it would be 2097 before all the documents were made public.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman sided with the claimants and called the group’s FOIA request "of paramount public importance," before demanding that the FDA release 55,000 pages a month.

Under the new timeline, the FDA should release all of the requested documents in 8 months.

"Even if the FDA may not see it this way, I think Pittman did the agency—and the country—a big favor by expediting the document production," Greene wrote.

Aaron Siri, the lawyer representing the group, called Pittman’s ruling 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."

Last month, Siri took to Substack to write that it is “dystopian for the government to give Pfizer billions, mandate Americans to take its product, prohibit Americans from suing for harm, but yet refuse to let Americans see the data underlying its licensure."