Political Interference in Federal Pandemic Actions Documented by US General Accountability Office
Now we need congressional action to fix major federal agencies allowing political interference
Any American with a functioning brain knows that the entire public health system has been corrupted by political forces. Now comes an official investigation by a trusted federal agency that confirms political interterence during the pandemic. If Republicans take control of Congress they should use this report as the basis for intense investigations of federal public health agencies. All the high level people from Fauci down need to be replaced. Often GAO reports get major media attention; but odds are there will be little to no media coverage of this report.
As reported by TrialSiteNews: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ‘altered’ COVID-19 guidance in response to political pressure and in fact, reports are out that the one-time trustworthy apex federal health agencies ‘suppressed’ findings associated with SARS-CoV-2 in a new bombshell report associated with investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Apparently, GAO investigators probed for such actions conducting a series of interviews with managers and higher-up officials employed with the agencies. Now, evidence mounts for what has been reporting on for a couple of years now: ‘political interference’ associated with scientific reports and possibly even tampered with study results to skew or bias the results.
The 37-page GAO report issued a warning that these American federal agencies don’t have any mechanism to stop or even report whistleblower allegations involving political interference. The U.S. government inspectors discovered in interviews with whistleblowers that they didn’t raise any concern due to fear of retaliation. Additionally, because there was no way to raise such concerns systematically and objectively, they kept quiet.
Although it has been reported over 40% of the FDA’s revenues derive from pharmaceutical fees, they apparently have no way to address political interference in scientific decision-making. This seems very odd. For example, it has been reported of very overt and seemingly unacceptable behavior involving social media attacks on the repurposed drug ivermectin. Top officials at the FDA were involved in what appeared to look like a disinformation campaign backed possibly by industry and the Biden administration. To be fair, TrialSite called out politicization problems associated with the Trump administration and both the FDA and CDC.
The NIH went on the record that they do not have existing procedures addressing political interference because they have never experienced such interference before. Yet an interview at NIH reported an instance of political interference.
Recommendations
The GAO issued seven (7) recommendations to the various agencies including the CDC, FDA, as well as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Health and Human Services itself. New procedures must be developed for reporting and addressing these bombshell allegations of political interference, and staff must be trained on how to report such whistleblower allegations. While the HHS concurred, TrialSite has reported throughout the pandemic patterns of heavy bias in favor of the pharmaceutical industry and high-priced vaccines and drugs versus low-cost repurposed generic therapies despite the fact that the conditions were urgent. Pfizer forecasts at least $50 billion from the vaccines in the first two years since the vaccine was controversially approved (the FDA essentially split the BNT162b2 and Comirnaty products in two--one remained an emergency use authorized (EUA) product and the other a fully approved product. Only the EUA product would be used yet it was approved. Many critics suggest the FDA accelerated the approval to back Biden administration's moves to introduce vaccine mandates at the federal level while encouraging them at the local government level.
More than policies and procedures must be put in place as a culture of politicization has become clearly apparent during the pandemic, regardless of administration—they are all complicit in this unfortunate emerging dynamic.
Call to Action: Follow the link to read the GAO report. These agencies need to be fully investigated by Congress.
This is from the GAO report:
“None of the agencies in our review—CDC, FDA, NIH, and ASPR—have procedures specific to reporting and addressing potential political interference in scientific decision-making. Instead, agency officials explained that potential political interference in scientific decision-making may be reported and addressed internally on a case-by-case basis or through existing internal scientific integrity procedures intended for other purposes. In particular: • CDC officials said that potential political interference in scientific decision-making would be handled on a case-by-case basis, typically by being elevated to senior CDC leadership. • FDA officials said that the agency does not have procedures specific to reporting and addressing potential political interference in scientific decision-making. FDA officials told us such issues would be routed through the agency’s scientific dispute resolution procedure. However, this procedure does not reference political interference in scientific Agency Scientific Integrity Policies and Procedures Do Not Define Political Interference or Describe How It Should Be Reported and Addressed
According to FDA officials, the scientific dispute resolution procedure would address any underlying scientific disagreements, and potential political interference in scientific decision-making would be referred to the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG).20 • NIH officials stated that potential political interference in scientific decision-making could be reported to NIH’s Division of Program Integrity in the Office of Management Assessment, which is responsible for receiving allegations and investigating employee misconduct. However, NIH officials also told us the Division of Program Integrity does not have a definition of political interference in scientific decision-making and does not track political interference in scientific decision-making separately from other types of misconduct allegations, such as misuse of grant or contract funds. Additionally, NIH’s scientific integrity policy does not identify reporting allegations of political interference in scientific decision-making to the Division of Program Integrity as the intended procedure for handling such issues. • ASPR officials stated that ASPR follows HHS’s scientific integrity policy. However, HHS does not have documented procedures for reporting and addressing political interference in scientific decisionmaking.”
“Ensuring sound scientific decision-making is vital to supporting sustained advances in the nation’s public health security, especially during a global health emergency. HHS agencies that have led the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic regularly make scientific decisions that have broad public health consequences. To maintain public trust and credibility, these agencies need to ensure that these decisions are evidence-based and free from political interference.”
But at this point there is no reason for Americans to trust federal public health agencies and even state and local ones. They all have been corrupted by political forces that all too often serve certain private sector interests, especially BIG Pharma. This pervasive corruption, more than just the COVID virus, has killed and harmed millions of Americans.
