US state sues Pfizer over ‘misleading’ Covid-19 vaccine claims

The company hid evidence linking its shots to heart inflammation conditions, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has claimed

The US state of Kansas has initiated legal action against Pfizer over “misleading claims” that the pharmaceutical giant allegedly made regarding its Covid-19 vaccine’s effectiveness and the risks associated with it.

Several manufacturers began developing Covid-19 vaccines in the months after the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared a pandemic in March 2020. Governments across the world subsequently began mandating inoculation. According to federal data, more than 366 million doses of Pfizer’s original coronavirus vaccine were administered in the US alone.

On Monday, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit claiming that Pfizer had deliberately hidden evidence linking the vaccine to myocarditis and pregnancy complications.

“Pfizer made multiple misleading statements to deceive the public about its vaccine at a time when Americans needed the truth,” Kobach said in a statement.

In June 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a warning with respect to Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines about the elevated risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, both rare heart inflammation conditions.

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According to the attorney general’s complaint, the US pharmaceutical company had also mendaciously claimed that its shots were effective while being aware that the protection the vaccine provided against the virus grew weaker over time and was not enough to fend off certain Covid-19 strains.

Kobach also argued that Pfizer misleadingly asserted that its vaccine prevented coronavirus transmission, even though the company later acknowledged that it had never actually studied this aspect.

Moreover, Kobach accused the pharmaceutical company of cooperating with social media to “censor speech critical” of Covid-19 vaccines. The lawsuit charged that Pfizer’s alleged misleading statements constituted a violation of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. The state is now seeking unspecified monetary damages.

The Hill quoted a company representative as saying that the lawsuit has “no merit” and insisting that the “representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based.”

Last November, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a similar lawsuit against the pharmaceutical giant, accusing it of “unlawfully misrepresenting the effectiveness of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion of the product.”

Earlier this month, Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit released a study indicating that medical professionals and drug recipients reported “serious injuries and deaths following vaccination” according to “various official databases.” According to researchers, “suspected” adverse events associated with inoculation may have contributed to excess mortality in 47 countries between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022.