FOLLOWING the inebriated confessions of Jordan Tristan Walker of Pfizer, I was intrigued to consider a proposition put to me that pharmaceutical companies must be subject to laws forcing them to disclose any research which poses any risk to public health. At first this seems a reasonable requirement. You would think commercial secrecy cannot override concerns over harm to health. The exposure of possible damaging outcomes can lead to collaboration which could improve an otherwise lost or flawed outcome. Cover-ups and secrecy are narrow-minded and ultimately harmful.
In the 70s the World Health Organisation removed the coding used by pathologists relating to death caused by vaccines. The intent was clearly to hide facts which might lead to better solutions as well as hiding poor practice. Recently governments worldwide, who were in fact the customers on our behalf, agreed that the pharmaceutical companies bringing to market vaccines which had avoided full testing and scrutiny were to be absolved of any financial responsibility resulting from damage caused by their products. The intent was clear from the start: a cover-up to prevent financial harm to the producers.
All financial risk was therefore transferred to the governments who without being in a position properly to assess their liability opened up an enormous burden which ultimately must be passed on to the unwitting public. This was entirely wrong. As agents commissioning these medical products they had a duty of care to their populations to ensure that full disclosure of potential harm was revealed before advising the public that these products were ‘safe and effective’, yet they could not know this.
A counter-proposal might – indeed should – have been put to the pharmaceutical companies by all the government customers in unison that they be allowed a substantial share of any profits to mitigate the financial burden they were assuming. This would have focused the minds of the producers on delivering a safe product as claimed, and would have enabled governments to support their populations financially in the event of any consequential damage.
Of course the pharmaceutical companies would have refused and the propaganda surrounding the whole situation was such that the public and their governments were frightened into believing that there was a danger of substantial damage and deaths and that this vaccine product was a salvation. However, I believe that morally no government should not have accepted such an onerous financial burden, and indeed the simple request by pharmaceutical companies to be absolved of all financial consequences should have been a clear indication of questionable malpractice for profit. Hence I return to the proposal that pharmaceutical companies must be forced to disclose any and all research that poses a risk to public health, with an understanding that by not doing so all responsibility for consequential damage must be their own.
This makes clear the weakness of the proposal in suggesting that any research that causes any risk to public health be subject to laws of disclosure. In reality no business involved in research would agree to this as it is not possible to know beforehand what risks may accrue, and this exposes their intellectual product. Therefore, my alternative proposal is that government customers should never accept total financial responsibility for consequences so clearly beyond their understanding. A much better legal intervention is necessary at the outset of such negotiations to purchase all medical products. Governments must be more rigorous.
If I can work this out, then why did no government across the world or their legal advisers take sufficient precautions to protect their population’s health and wealth? There is a conclusion which appears very sinister.
