Pfizer Accused by UK Pharma Watchdog of 'Bringing Discredit' Upon the Industry

A ruling this March by the British pharmaceutical watchdog, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), upheld a complaint received in February 2023 alleging that Pfizer “misused” social media “to misleadingly and illegally promote their Covic vaccine.” The regulatory body ruled that based on their investigation, Pfizer had violated five rules of the code of practice of the British pharmaceutical industry.

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The complaint was made in relation to a social media post on Twitter (now X) made by a senior US Pfizer employee and re-tweeted by the medical director of Pfizer UK, which was alleged to be promoting an unlicensed medicine and providing misleading data about vaccine efficacy, in violation of the UK Code of Practice. The original Pfizer tweet read as follows:

Our vaccine candidate is 95 per cent effective in preventing Covid-19, and 94 per cent effective in people over 65 years old. We will file all of our data with health authorities within days. Thank you to every volunteer in our trial, and to all who are tirelessly fighting this pandemic.

PMCPA, the “self-regulatory body which administers the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry, independently of the ABPI,” ruled that Pfizer violated five clauses of the code of practice in place in 2019: clause 2 - “bringing discredit upon, and reducing confidence in, the pharmaceutical industry”; clause 3.2 - “promoting an unlicensed medicine”; clause 7.2 - “making a misleading claim”; clause 7.9 - “making claims that did not reflect the available evidence regarding possible adverse reactions”; and clause 9.1 - “failing to maintain high standards.”

The regulatory body noted that the offending tweet “contained limited information regarding the efficacy of the vaccine candidate with no safety information provided,” and observed that

Pfizer had been badly let down not only by the senior UK employee whose re-tweet was the subject of the complaint but by the four other Pfizer UK colleagues, including another senior colleague, who had also re-tweeted the same tweet made by a Pfizer US Global colleague; an action that resulted in the tweet for an unlicensed medicine being proactively disseminated on Twitter to health professionals and members of the public in the UK.

A Pfizer UK spokesman, as reported by The Telegraph, said that the company “fully recognises and accepts the issues highlighted by this PMCPA ruling”, adding that it is “deeply sorry”. It is the sixth time, according to The Telegraph, that Pfizer has been ruled against by the pharmaceutical regulator over its promotion of the Covid-19 vaccine. One ruling by the UK Pharma watchdog, from November 2022, found that Pfizer’s chief executive made “misleading” statements about children’s vaccines.

Pfizer will undoubtedly issue profuse apologies and brush off these rulings as temporary deviations from their “high standards.” But anyone who does a little digging into Pfizer’s troubled past will quickly discover that this is a company that serially betrays the public’s trust, and only temporarily mends its ways when under severe legal and financial pressure, only to relapse at the first opportunity.

Consider the following documented facts about this multi-billion-dollar corporation:

1. History of large fraud settlements: Let’s start with a bit of history: Between 2004 and 2018, Pfizer had to pay out over 5 billion US dollars in cases involving allegations of false claims, kickbacks and bribery, unapproved promotion of medical products, and medical equipment safety offenses, as laid out on this Violation Tracker site. In what the US Department of Justice describes as the largest healthcare fraud settlement in history, Pfizer paid out 2.3 billion US dollars to resolve criminal and civil allegations that the company illegally promoted uses of four of its drugs, as announced by the US Department of Justice on September 2nd, 2009.

2. Worrying whistleblower report on the vaccine trials: But that’s in the past, right? What about Pfizer’s contribution to the production and delivery of vaccinations during the pandemic? Has Pfizer mended its ways and embraced integrity and transparency in spite of its dodgy track record? I’m afraid the available evidence for this is not exactly promising. To begin with, a respected British medical journal, the BMJ, published a whistleblower report detailing serious flaws in the processes used to gather data in the trials carried out by Pfizer for its own vaccines.

3. Misleading and scientifically unsupported statements by Pfizer boss on vaccine’s efficacy at blocking transmission: Pfizer’s misleading and deceptive communications are not the work of distracted interns: they reach all the way to the top of the organisation. Pfizer’s CEO, Mr Albert Bourla, has made numerous statements that either assert or strongly imply that he knew that his vaccine was likely to successfully stop infections and viral transmission, even though his own representative, Ms Janine Small, recently confirmed to an EU Covid commmittee that Pfizer never actually tested the vaccines for their ability to stop transmission before they went to market; nor have available data supported the claim that Pfizer’s Covid vaccines successfully stop transmission.

   Yet, in an exclusive interview on Today aired on September 8th 2020, Mr Bourla appealed to listener’s solidarity with their neighbours, asserting (at 3:55 in the video) that “their decision (to vaccinate or not to vaccinate), they need to understand, will not only affect their lives, which at the end of the day, is their judgment, but will affect the lives of others. Because if they don’t vaccinate, they will become the weak link that will allow this virus to replicate.”

   Similarly, on June 8th 2021, Mr Bourla tweeted, “Although data shows that severe #COVID19 is rare in children, widespread vaccination is a critical tool to help stop transmission. That’s why I’m excited we have begun dosing participants aged 5 to 11 in a global Phase 2/3 study of the Pfizer-BioNTech #COVID19 vaccine” (emphasis added). Where was the solid evidence that his vaccines were or could be “a critical tool to help stop transmission”? Only in his imagination.

4. Doubts of irregularity hanging over communications between EU Commision President and CEO of Pfizer: In April 2021, the New York Times reported on an exchange of text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU's deal projected to secure the purchase of up to 1.8 billion doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The EU Ombudsman, following her investigation, stated that “the handling of this access to documents request leaves the regrettable impression of an EU institution that is not forthcoming on matters of significant public interest…The recent revelations about lobbying tactics by an American multinational in Europe, including leaked text messages, shows the urgency of this issue for public administrations.”

With all of these facts on the table, hopefully the attempt we have seen in recent years to whitewash the pharmaceutical industry as the saviours of humanity, and demonise their critics as unhinged “conspiracy theorists,” will be shown up for what it is: a piece of empty and dangerous propaganda, best consigned to the dustbin of history.

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