Fact Checkers Caught Looking the Other Way (Again!) As Pfizer Nabbed Spreading Vaccine Misinformation and “Bringing Discredit” on the Entire Industry
Pfizer’s COVID vaccine corruption adds further evidence that fact checkers are the pharmaceutical industry’s partners in crime.
A UK pharmaceutical body has accused Pfizer of “bringing discredit” on their entire industry after Pfizer’s senior executives promoted the COVID vaccine on social media before it had even been licensed, breaching the regulatory code five times by making misleading claims, ignoring industry standards, and marketing unlicensed medicines.
This is the sixth time the body has reprimanded Pfizer over COVID-19 vaccine promotion, a list that includes an incident in late 2021, when Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was found to have given misleading statements about children’s vaccines during a BBC interview. That same year, CNN Business named Bourla “CEO of the Year,” and his estimated worth is now over $35 million.
Last week’s ruling against Pfizer by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) further emphasizes the breadth of Pfizer’s lies about their COVID vaccine. PMCPA found that Pfizer began violating industry standards in 2020 to promote their COVID vaccine, meaning Pfizer was misleading the public about their vaccine throughout the pandemic, even before announcing preliminary results of their COVID-19 clinical trials in late 2020.
How bad are we talking here? Put it this way: PMCPA’s blunt rulings against Pfizer are doubly surprising because the UK pharmaceutical industry set up PMCPA in 1993 as a self-regulating body that is staffed with industry insiders. One wonders how more often the PMCPA would have called out Pfizer for violating regulations if it was actually independent of the very corporations it’s supposed to watch over.
Seriously, people. It’s that bad.
But prepare yourself, it’s gonna get worse.
