The Food and Drug Administration had asked for 23.5 years to release data it relied on to license the Covid vaccine. A judge in Texas ruled that they have two.
The judge ruled that the FDA must “produce all documents relating to the two vaccines by June 31, 2025.”
The FDA is defending itself in a suit brought by an organization called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparence and other groups. The FDA has said that it would comply with a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request at a rate of 1,000-16,000 pages per month, which would take over 20 years to complete. The judge argued that “democracy dies behind closed doors” and said that the FDA has to step that up to a rate of 180,000 pages per month.
The FDA has argued that complying with this request would divert “funds that could be used to license other drugs.” The plaintiffs say that what “the agency does not disclose, however, is that when pharmaceutical companies apply to license drugs, those pharmaceutical companies pay the agency fees.”
Nice try. Pony up those documents.
