Horowitz: Gov’t watchdog reports internal allegations of political interference in science at NIH/CDC/FDA

"Respondents from CDC and FDA told us they did not report potential political interference in scientific decision-making because they feared retaliation." While these words from a brand-new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report are not earth-shattering to anyone paying attention over the past two years, they are a bombshell coming from a government agency.

The GAO just released a report on political interference in scientific decisions, based on interviews with employees of the four HHS agencies most responsible for the coronavirus response. The findings were derived from personal interviews as well as tips offered to a confidential hotline set up for the investigation. The investigators’ conclusion, which they conveyed in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees and committees overseeing HHS, was that these agencies “do not have procedures that define political interference in scientific decision-making or describe how it should be reported and addressed.”

The four agencies subject to the GAO investigation were the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

The GAO investigators revealed to Congress that "a few respondents from CDC and FDA stated they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings." What were the consequences? "Some of these respondents believed that this potential political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of COVID-19-related scientific findings."

Oh, so you mean political science, cronyism, and fear of retaliation explain why dangerous novel vaccines and therapeutics got immediate approval as standard of care (and even used for mandates) despite sketchy data and no established safety profile, while dozens of promising already-FDA-approved off-label drugs were ignored or denigrated – all for politics? Yeah, no kidding.

The reason this is so earth-shattering is not that pay-for-play is new to government agencies, such as the EPA or the DOD, for example, where outside cronies use politics and money to corrupt good public policy all the time. It’s that our very lives, liberty, and bodily integrity have now been pegged to the whims of “science.” Thus, the agencies tasked with studying that science are not only run by political science, but have zero procedures in place to root out the inevitable political control of that science, which results in nothing short of life-and-death decisions.

Moreover, these agencies suffer from a particular moral hazard in the sense that the very corporations most likely to corrupt the science and poison the bodies of the people pay the bills and salaries of these agencies. Prior to 1992, the FDA was prohibited from accepting fees from drug companies. Following the passage of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which allowed it to collect fees, “user fees have played an important role in expediting the drug approval process,” according to the FDA’s website. How “important” is this role? By 2017, Big Pharma paid 75% of the FDA’s drug review budget. Much of the agency’s funding comes from the “nonprofit” CDC Foundation authorized in that 1992 bill, which is funded by companies like Pfizer and Merck. Science magazine reported in 2018 that nearly half the doctors and scientists on the FDA’s various advisory committees received funding from Big Pharma companies to get their drugs approved.

Private emails released via FOIA revealed several months ago that the CDC Foundation worked with Facebook, Merck, the WHO, and other pharma entities on an “Alliance for Advancing Health Online” initiative to control the narrative. So whether it’s issues of off-label early treatments, vaccine safety and efficacy, science about asymptomatic transmission, or the threat of COVID to children, every morsel of information put out by the HHS agencies is influenced and controlled by pharma and Big Tech to steer a specific outcome that will always benefit Big Pharma.

Gee, is it any wonder why the FDA has just approved a failed and toxic drug like remdesivir even for babies and toddlers as standard of care for $3,000, while refusing to offer even tacit approval for existing, fully approved drugs like fluvoxamine, budesonide, hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin? They didn’t even complete the study on remdesivir for babies, and it won’t be finished until next year! In fact, even this week, the FDA continued to horse around with the Nobel Prize-winning ivermectin, while approving Merck’s true horse drug Molnupiravir, which is so dangerous that even the media has attacked it.

Oh, and now HHS can work with the DHS’ new “Disinformation Governing Board” to enforce Big Pharma fascism on behalf of their benefactors.

This is not your grandfather’s bureaucratic pay-for-play scheme. This affects the lives and bodies of hundreds of millions of people. There used to be a limit to how much they were willing to bend life science for political science and greed. Now, there is no limit.

There’s a reason why the pharma fascists and the biomedical tyrants need this degree of control, collusion, subsidization, and censorship to succeed in their plot. At a recent Canadian parliamentary committee hearing, the president of Astra Zeneca Canada could not answer why the company vigorously lobbied governments for complete exemption from all liability.

I think we know the answer. They can’t afford accountability and liability, and they can get away with ensuring they will never be held responsible. The only immunity the shots convey is for the manufacturers. Who is going to hold them responsible? Can you name the number of Republicans running for office this year on the promise to alter the powers of HHS and its relationship with Big Pharma? You won’t need more than one hand to count the names.