A House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday addressed the “politicization” of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the pandemic, revealing that the Biden administration has allegedly pressured medical experts to speed up the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to children before sufficient testing has been completed to confirm or refute their safety.
At the start of the subcommittee hearing, “Following the Science?: Oversight of Biden’s COVID-19 Executive State Response,” Chairman Thomas Massie (R-KY) read past testimony from Dr. Marion Gruber, former director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines. Dr. Gruber spoke about a conversation she had with Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, about the effectiveness of COVID vaccines in children. According to Chairman Massie, Dr. Gruber said more trials need to be done in children, particularly males ages 12-17, while Dr. Marks reportedly called for a further shortening of the vaccine’s approval timeline and making it mandatory.
“Right after the warning came out that myocarditis and pericarditis were real serious side effects of the vaccine, the FDA’s top scientists had already agreed to shorten the timeline as much as possible, right after they got word that there were serious side effects,” Massey said. “And then Peter Marks, instead of saying, ‘We’re going to give you more time to study this,’ he told them to shorten the timeline even more.”
“And when they said it was not possible to shorten the timeline, he fired them. He took them off the job and assigned them to other duties. The top vaccine official who had been there for 30 years left his job because he wanted more time to study the effectiveness of the vaccine. And they were told we need to do this quickly because it needs to be mandated.”
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Chairman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) delivers opening statements at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust Subcommittee on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Handouts)
“The Biden Administration has mandated vaccinations for military and school-going youth despite a lack of testing and data and increasing reports of vaccine injuries. Decisions like this by the administrative state are concerning. The FDA should not have approved vaccines for children, EOA or otherwise, without adequate testing. COVID vaccination injuries are real.”
During a separate question-and-answer session, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked the witnesses, “Do you agree that the biggest reason for vaccine hesitancy is what the U.S. government has told us about COVID and the vaccine itself?”
“I agree,” says Dr. Jordan Vaughn, an internist in private practice in Birmingham, Ala. “They’re told one thing, and then most people, when the opposite happens, they usually start to wonder who told them that.”
“I think the reason for the hesitancy to get the vaccine, the reason this has become such a politicized issue, is because the government has repeatedly and repeatedly misrepresented things,” Jordan said.
Vaughn testified at the hearing that since 2022 he has treated more than 2,000 “extraordinary patients” who suffered complications from COVID-19 vaccinations, including more than 30 military members.
He gave the specific examples of six previously healthy service members who were suddenly hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, chest pain and shortness of breath after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and a mandatory booster shot. Some required emergency surgery to remove their pancreas, others became so weak they could barely walk, and some were eventually discharged after being deemed no longer physically fit to serve. In one case, a man went into cardiac arrest and died on his bathroom floor.
A nurse holds a COVID-19 vaccination card at a NYC Health Hospital vaccination clinic in Brooklyn, New York City, on January 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Craig Rattle, File)
“Trust in medicine and public health has been shattered, particularly for people with vaccine injuries. Many of these patients were hesitant to get vaccinated because they knew their immune system was susceptible or they had already been infected with COVID-19,” Vaughn said in his opening statement.
“But the August 2021 military, federal and OSHA mandate has forced these individuals to decide whether to get vaccinated against their conscience and common sense or lose their careers and gainful employment. For them, disabled by the side effects of the mandated shot, their once-cherished careers have become secondary to the simple hope of a diagnosis and possible treatment. Most egregious of all, the mandate is unnecessarily harming our service members.”
“Following new data emerging in the spring of 2021 on young athletes’ hearts and myocarditis from modified mRNA COVID-19 injections, the FDA and Biden administration sought to expedite approval and mandate it for the military in the name of military preparedness,” Vaughn said.
Witnesses will be sworn in at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Subcommittee on June 26, 2024. (Handouts)
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Jordan then told Vaughn, “Tell me about that relationship and how politics influenced the relationship that’s supposed to exist between doctor and patient.”
“I think the biggest loss of trust has come when people are forced to do things that go against their conscience. And I think one of the things that needs to be improved, especially for doctors who know their patients, is that some patients don’t need their immune systems stimulated in a certain way,” said Vaughan, who is also founder of the Microvascular Research Foundation, an organization that works to find treatments for vaccine injury and long-term COVID-19.
“That knowledge is something that doctor and patient have, that exists in a relationship. It’s not something you find when you roll down your car window in a parking lot.”
Among the witnesses was Aaron Siri, a vaccine litigation expert who handles lawsuits over injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Jordan Vaughn will testify before the House Judiciary Committee’s Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Subcommittee on June 26, 2024. (Handouts)
He told Jordan: “There are billions of dollars at stake for the pharmaceutical companies that really influenced how the vaccine was rolled out. It’s a financial conflict of interest, especially considering they didn’t have to pay out injured workers. The federal government contractually agreed that immunity would be included in every vaccine that was rolled out, so the pharmaceutical companies knew about it in advance.”
Along with Gruber, his former boss, Dr. Philip Kraus, former deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccine Research and Review, also testified at Wednesday’s hearing, saying he resigned after 30 years in various roles within the FDA in protest of political pressure from the Biden administration to approve a booster dose of the vaccine for younger people in 2021.
“The rapid move toward a mandate, foreshadowed by other statements from the Biden Administration, suggests that the rapid consideration of the vaccine was motivated by a desire to make the vaccine mandatory rather than other public health considerations,” Kraus said in his opening statement.
A nurse prepares the COVID vaccine. (Getty Images)
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“It’s unrealistic to think that politicians aren’t interested in vaccine policy in the middle of a pandemic,” he added. “Of course, politicians may want to influence decision-making to gain political capital, but every time this happens, trust is eroded as a collateral damage. If politicians take responsibility for their decisions now and express that responsibility, at least transparency will be maintained and trust in public health institutions will not be affected.”
“But when a politically appointed, Senate-confirmed head of an agency announces these decisions as if they were the result of normal procedures, it becomes nearly impossible for the public and physicians to determine which decisions are public health-based and which are politically motivated.”
