Aaron Siri Represents the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency
A federal judge has ordered the FDA to release more documentation related to its COVID-19 vaccine authorization process, following a lawsuit filed by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency in 2021. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth, Texas, on December 6, 2023, requires the FDA to disclose its “emergency use authorization” file for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The case gained attention when the FDA initially claimed it could take decades to process and release the requested records. Judge Pittman, appointed by former President Trump in 2019, stated that with the COVID-19 pandemic now passed, there was no legitimate reason to withhold this information from the American public.
The plaintiff group, comprising professors and scientists from prestigious institutions including Yale, Harvard, UCLA, and Brown, argues that the medical and scientific community has a substantial interest in reviewing the data behind the FDA’s vaccine approval. Their attorney, Aaron Siri, has accused the FDA of attempting to prevent independent scientific review by withholding approximately one million pages of clinical trial documents.
The FDA has responded by noting that it has already produced over one million pages of records and spent more than $3.5 million establishing “unprecedented and extraordinary operations” to comply with previous court directives for expedited record delivery. The agency had argued that the “emergency use authorization” file was not within the scope of the original records request.
The plaintiff group has been making the received documents publicly available on their website, furthering their mission of transparency in public health decision-making.
Source: Reuters, December 6, 2023 – “Federal judge orders FDA to release more COVID vaccine authorization records.”
