Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is suing Pfizer for allegedly violating his state’s Consumer Protection Act, arguing the drug maker “misled the public” about the safety of its COVID vaccine.
The civil suit was filed on Monday, alleging that Pfizer hid adverse side effects from the shots, which Kobach’s suit said included heart issues and sudden death.
“Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths. Pfizer concealed this critical safety information from the public,” the lawsuit.pdfc) argued.
The suit further alleged the company knew its vaccines were not only unsafe, but ineffective.
Kobach said that armed with information the vaccine did not work as advertised, Pfizer “concealed this critical effectiveness information from the public.”
“Pfizer misled Kansans about the effect of the COVID-19 vaccine on transmission of COVID-19,” Kobach claimed.
The suit also argued Pfizer went to great lengths to hide information that might have damaged trust in the company’s vaccine.
“To keep the public from learning the truth, Pfizer worked to censor speech on social media that questioned Pfizer’s claims about its COVID-19 vaccine” the suit argued.
Kobach’s 179-page filing said the drug maker was motivated to push its vaccine on the public by any means available because it stood to cash in.
"Thanks to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer more than doubled its profits from 2020 to 2021, reporting $22 billion in total profits in 2021," the lawsuit said.
“Pfizer must be held accountable for falsely representing the benefits of its COVID-19 vaccine while concealing and suppressing the truth about its vaccine’s safety risks, waning effectiveness, and inability to prevent transmission,” Kobach concluded.
On behalf of his state, he is seeking “civil monetary penalties, damages, and injunctive relief from misleading and deceptive statements made in marketing its COVID-19 vaccine.”
In a statement to KSNT-TV in Topeka, Pfizer stood by its vaccine and dismissed the civil suit as frivolous.
“We are proud to have developed the COVID-19 vaccine in record time in the midst of a global pandemic and saved countless lives,” Pfizer said.
“The representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based,” the pharmaceutical giant continued. “The Company believes that the state’s case has no merit and will respond to the suit in due course.”
Pfizer concluded:
“Pfizer is deeply committed to the well-being of the patients it serves and has no higher priority than ensuring the safety and effectiveness of its treatments and vaccines. Since its initial authorization by FDA in December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to more than 1.5 billion people, demonstrated a favorable safety profile in all age groups, and helped protect against severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death.
“Patient safety is our number one priority, which is why we follow diligent safety and monitoring protocols.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously concluded that cases of heart conditions such as those cited by Kobach had been linked to young men who had recently received a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
