Judicial Watch Sues HHS for Records of
Communication from Top FDA Officials Who Resigned Reportedly over COVID
Booster Shots
Two of our nation’s top
vaccine scientists – called giants in the field – are no
longer at their posts in the FDA, and it appears that the Biden White
House’s politicization of the COVID vaccines is the reason.
To get to the bottom of it, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services for records of
communication from Dr.
Marion Gruber and Dr.
Philip Krause, the former director and deputy director of the Food and
Drug Administration’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, who
reportedly resigned during the White House’s push to approve the COVID-19
“booster shot” (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No.
1:22-cv-00292)).
We sued in the United States District Court of the District of Columbia
after HHS failed to respond to a September 3, 2021, FOIA request for:
- All emails sent to and from Center for Biologics Evaluation and
Research Director Marion Gruber regarding the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention/CDC, the Advisory Committee on Immunization (ACIP), and/or
“booster vaccines” for the prevention and/or treatment of SARS-CoV-2
and/or COVID-19.
- All emails sent to and from Center for Biologics Evaluation and
Research Deputy Director Phil Krause regarding the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention/CDC, the Advisory Committee on Immunization (ACIP),
and/or “booster vaccines” for the prevention and/or treatment of
SARS-CoV-2 and/or COVID-19.
On September 22, 2021, the FDA approved the use of a booster dose of the
Pfizer drug. According to the organization’s news
release, the FDA “amended the emergency use authorization (EUA) for
the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to allow for use of a single booster
dose, to be administered at least six months after completion of the
primary series” for people at “high risk” of “severe
COVID-19.”
On September 13, 2021, Gruber
and Krause were among a group of resigning
doctors who agreed that, “Available evidence doesn’t yet indicate a
need for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots among the general population
…”
Also, on September 13, 2021, The Lancet published a paper
to which Gruber and Krause contributed that noted:
Careful and public scrutiny of the evolving data will be needed to assure
that decisions about boosting are informed by reliable science more than by
politics.… Widespread boosting should be undertaken only if there is
clear evidence that it is appropriate.
This booster shot cover-up shows the FDA is politicized and corrupt. The
American people have a right to know about the safety and efficacy of the
COVID-19 vaccines – especially given that officials in the FDA seem to
have objected to the agency’s recommendations about the vaccines.
Judicial Watch and CatholicVote Sue for Biden Border
Crisis
President Biden has a lot of explaining to do about his administration’s
spurious actions along the border. Now we learn that federal bureaucrats
are shoveling your tax dollars to charities to do their dirty work.
Joining with CatholicVote Civic Action, we filed a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) lawsuit for communications between the Department of Homeland
Security and the Department of Health and Human Services with Catholic
organizations that were aiding illegal immigrants near the Texas border (CatholicVote
Civic Action and Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security and
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No.
1:22-cv-00290)).
CatholicVote.org
is a community of patriotic Americans who believe that the timeless truths
of the Catholic faith are good for America. It makes its mission “to
inspire every Catholic in America to live out the truths of our faith in
public life.”
We sued in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
after both the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and HHS failed to respond to
FOIA requests on September 1, 2021.
The first FOIA request is for:
All communications between the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and any of
the following:
- The Diocese of Brownsville (San Juan, Texas);
- Bishop Daniel E. Flores in his capacity as Bishop of the Diocese of
Brownsville, Texas;
- Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (“CCRGV”);
- Sister Norma Pimentel in her capacity as the Executive Director of
CCRGV; or
- The Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas.
The second FOIA request is for:
All communications between the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding any of the following:
- Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (“CCRGV”);
- Sister Norma Pimentel in her capacity as the Executive Director of
CCRGV; or
- the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas.
In a February 3 interview, Sister Pimentel acknowledged that her charity is
reimbursed with tax dollars to buy “very few” plane and bus tickets for
illegal aliens to move throughout the United States.
In July 2021, a Texas Police Officer encountered a COVID-positive
illegal immigrant family at a fast food restaurant near the border who
had been released by Border Patrol. The family told the officer that
Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley “had booked all the rooms in
the hotel to house undocumented immigrants detained by Border Patrol.”
The police added, “Border Patrol was quarantining other undocumented
individuals who were COVID positive, or showed symptoms of illness, then
handing them over to the non-profit. Catholic Charities would in turn place
the undocumented individuals in hotels …”
On July 28, 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive
order halting the transportation of illegal immigrants by any person
other than, “a federal, state or local law-enforcement official.”
“The Biden administration has refused to provide copies of communications
between Catholic-affiliated charities and organizations at the border,”
said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote. “Their lack of transparency
and obstruction forced us to file these federal lawsuits. American
Catholics deserve to know the full extent of the U.S. government's role in
funding and coordinating with Catholic church affiliated agencies at the
border, and what role these agencies played in the record surge of illegal
immigrants over the past year. We will do whatever is necessary to uncover
the truth.”
Americans have the right to know how the Biden administration is using tax
dollars to conspire with “charities” and release illegal immigrants
into their communities.
U.S. Taxpayer Funded Korean COVID Test Turns Out to Be
Flawed
The federal government continues to demonstrate its ineptitude in dealing
with COVID-19. The latest: It shelled out millions for a test that
doesn’t work. And, as our Corruption Chronicles reports,
we had to learn this from the Philippines:
A COVID-19 test developed by a Korean company with a $10.3 million infusion
from the U.S. government is so flawed at least one state stopped using it
after just a few weeks and a third-world country flagged it as defective
months ago. In late September, the rapid antigen tests received Emergency
Use Authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test
individuals suspected by healthcare providers of being infected and by the
end of December the authorization was expanded to include asymptomatic
individuals. The test is made by South Korean manufacturer GenBody and is
being promoted by a “minority-owned, female-led” public relations
agency based in southern California.
Utah began using GenBody in late December at state-run testing sites. This
week the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) announced it will temporarily
pause the use of the on-site rapid antigen tests at all state-operated
facilities after data revealed more than half of the tests resulted in a
false negative. “The UDOH analyzed test results from nearly 18,000 Utah
residents who received both GenBody rapid antigen and PCR tests on the same
day,” the UDOH statement says. “Among people who tested positive by
PCR, more than half of them tested negative by GenBody rapid antigen test;
this was true even for people who reported COVID-like symptoms.” State
epidemiologists raised questions about the performance of the GenBody rapid
tests, the agency further writes.
In a local newspaper article Utah state epidemiologist Leisha Nolen says
concerns were raised last week when mobile testing partners “noticed that
they were getting a lot more negatives that would come up later as
positives.” The health official reveals that for every 100 people who
tested positive on a PCR test, only 38% tested positive on the GenBody
rapid antigen test. “Even for those who displayed clear symptoms of
COVID-19, only 41% out of every 100 who tested positive on a PCR test also
tested positive on a GenBody rapid test,” the news story says, adding
that Nolan and her colleagues “were really concerned by those numbers.”
The UDOH announcement acknowledges that rapid antigen tests are known to be
less likely to identify a positive individual, but the difference
identified in the state analysis was higher than expected.
Back in October, officials in the Philippines—an impoverished third-world
country—issued a warning against 10 COVID-19 antigen and rapid tests that
failed to meet its health department standards. GenBody appears at the top
of the list. A director at the Philippine FDA explains in a local media
report that all of the tests were manufactured abroad and failed to comply
with the standard for sensitivity and specificity set by the southeast
Asian country’s Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), the
agency charged with protecting Filipinos against infectious disease.
“Those test kits published with failed performance validation were not
able to comply with the standard set for sensitivity, specificity or
both,” according to the Filipino FDA director who is identified in the
news article as Maria Cecilia Matienzo.
GenBody received $10.3 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) to develop the COVID-19 test kits. The money was doled out
under a program called Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) launched by
the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a division of HHS, to speed
innovation in the development, commercialization and implantation of
technologies for COVID-19 testing. “Accurate, fast, easy-to-use, and
widely accessible testing is required before the nation can safely return
to normal life,” the NIH writes in its overview of RADx. The initiative
is described as a national call for scientists and organizations to bring
their innovative ideas for new COVID-19 testing approaches and strategies.
“Funded projects include new applications of existing technologies that
make tests easier to use, easier to access, and more accurate,” according
to the NIH. “At the same time, NIH is seeking opportunities to move more
advanced diagnostic technologies swiftly through the development pipeline
toward commercialization and broad availability — with the goal of making
millions of tests per week available to Americans, particularly those most
vulnerable to and/or disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, and having
even more tests available in time for the 2020–2021 flu season.”
Until next week …
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