The FDA and Moderna’s cosy relationship: how lax rules enable a revolving door culture

[Red Phoenix]

After holding oversight roles for covid vaccines, two regulators from the US Food and Drug Administration went to work for Moderna.

Report by Peter DOSHI - Senior Editor of the BMJ (British Medcal Journal): < see source-link >

 

Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2486

 

[TorquayFan]

Thanks for that Red - Moderna also seem to have an 'inside track' in the UK.

Edited November 25, 2023 by TorquayFan

[owl sees all]

In the last quarter of 2019 Moderna had nothing. and looked like going under. Someone had a word and within 6 months their shares has gone up 20 fold.

 

[connda]

Regulatory Capture
Provide favorable regulatory decisions for those corporations you "regulate" and then when you retire or "move on" from government service, hop on board an extremely lucrative career ladder as a reward for your services.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I guess it will be left to history to judge if the U.S. FDA did the right thing... Thus far, the results say YES!

 

COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say

June 24, 2022

 

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.

...

“Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines.”

 

The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.

 

(more)

 

https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-england-54d29ae3af5c700f15d704c14ee224b5

 

 

AND

 

 

Report: COVID-19 vaccines saved US $1.15 trillion, 3 million lives

December 14, 2022

 

"A Commonwealth Fund study estimates that, through November 2022, COVID-19 vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million US hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths and saved the country $1.15 trillion.

...

Approved COVID-19 vaccines have been available in the United States since December of 2020. Since Dec 12, 2020, 82 million infections, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 798,000 deaths have been reported in the United States.

 

"Without vaccination the U.S. would have experienced 1.5 times more infections, 3.8 times more hospitalizations, and 4.1 times more deaths," the authors wrote. "These losses would have been accompanied by more than $1 trillion in additional medical costs that were averted because of fewer infections, hospitalizations, and deaths."

 

(more)

 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/report-covid-19-vaccines-saved-us-115-trillion-3-million-lives

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Also, the headline of the OP article is predictably off-target, since "revolving door" typically is meant to refer to people/employees/execs who leave Sector A, go to Sector B, and then come back to Sector A. That's what makes it a "revolving door," because they come back to where they started after leaving.

 

In the case at hand, apparently, the two FDA former employees left government service and took private sector jobs -- something that happens all the time and every day across the federal government. But, contrary to the notion of "revolving door," they have NOT then gone back into government service.

 

And, as the OP article notes, even their private sector role once they left the FDA severely restricts any ability for them in the future to do much for their private employer directly involving the FDA, as would be reasonable and expected from an ethics perspective.

 

From the OP report:

 

"[FDA] Employees are required to adhere to post-government employment guidance: restrictions include a permanent ban on “switching sides,” defined as “a lifetime ban on communicating to or appearing before the government on behalf of their new employer or anyone else regarding specific party matters in which they participated personally and substantially during their entire government service.”

 

So much for Peter Doshi's revolving door....

 

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

But then again, none of this should be particularly surprising given that Doshi is something of the BMJ's resident anti-vaxer, with a long history of what real researchers in the field of vaccines and medical experts (which he is not, having his PhD in anthropology and history) say have been misleading and inaccurate anti-vax reports.

 

Such as:

Peer review fail: Vaccine publishes antivax propaganda disguised as “reanalyses” of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data

In order portray COVID-19 vaccines as dangerous, Peter Doshi has now managed to get poorly designed and performed “reanalyses” of the clinical trial data used by the FDA to grant emergency use approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines published in two reputable journals, The BMJ and Vaccine? What happened?

 

September 5, 2022

...

"I also listed a number of other examples of The BMJ‘s failures with respect to reports and studies on vaccines, a pattern that, unfortunately, did predate the pandemic and has been traceable to one of its editors, Peter Doshi, who has a long history of antivaccine-adjacent and outright antivaccine stylings going back at least to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Indeed, one of his “reanalyses” resulted in what I like to call the “slasher lie” about the Pfizer vaccine that it is only 12-19% effective against COVID-19."

 

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/peer-review-fail-vaccine-publishes-antivax-propaganda/

 

AND

 

"Shocking" Report On Flu Vaccine Is Neither Shocking Nor Correct

Nov 3, 2014

...

So I was surprised to stumble upon an article titled “Johns Hopkins Scientist Reveals Shocking Report on Flu Vaccines,” which popped up on an anti-vaccine website two weeks ago.... I soon discovered that this article contained only a tiny seed of truth, surrounded by a mountain of anti-vaccine misinformation. Most of it focused on a report published in early 2013 by Peter Doshi, a former postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins.

...

But Doshi’s motivation, as evidenced by the relentlessly negative slant of his entire article, seems to be to convince people that the flu vaccine is bad.

 

Not surprisingly, the anti-vaccine movement has embraced Doshi (for example, here and here). And unfortunately, he seems to have accepted their acclaim: in 2009, he spoke at an anti-vaccine conference hosted by NVIC, a notorious (and misleadingly named) anti-vaccination group."

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2014/11/03/shocking-report-on-flu-vaccine-is-neither-shocking-nor-correct/?sh=7131873778a7

 

 

"Doshi earned an A.B. in anthropology from Brown University, an A.M. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and Ph.D. in history, anthropology, and science, technology and society from MIT."

 

https://faculty.rx.umaryland.edu/pdoshi/

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[Red Phoenix]

47 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

I guess it will be left to history to judge if the U.S. FDA did the right thing... Thus far, the results say YES!

 

COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say

June 24, 2022

 

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.

...

“Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines.”

 

The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.

 

(more)

 

https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-england-54d29ae3af5c700f15d704c14ee224b5

 

 

AND

 

 

Report: COVID-19 vaccines saved US $1.15 trillion, 3 million lives

December 14, 2022

 

"A Commonwealth Fund study estimates that, through November 2022, COVID-19 vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million US hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths and saved the country $1.15 trillion.

...

Approved COVID-19 vaccines have been available in the United States since December of 2020. Since Dec 12, 2020, 82 million infections, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 798,000 deaths have been reported in the United States.

 

"Without vaccination the U.S. would have experienced 1.5 times more infections, 3.8 times more hospitalizations, and 4.1 times more deaths," the authors wrote. "These losses would have been accompanied by more than $1 trillion in additional medical costs that were averted because of fewer infections, hospitalizations, and deaths."

 

(more)

 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/report-covid-19-vaccines-saved-us-115-trillion-3-million-lives

 

~

Repeating a lie 24/7 doesn't make it true! 

But as you wrote: history will judge. 

[stevenl]

32 minutes ago, Red Phoenix said:

~

Repeating a lie 24/7 doesn't make it true! 

But as you wrote: history will judge. 

Denying facts doesn't make them lies.

[TorquayFan]

I've borrowed this post from a Forum elsewhere but the point is well made about Moderna's cosy relationships in the UK too and how lax rules enable a revolving door culture :-

"Did Rishi Sunak benefit from Covid vaccine maker Moderna's stock rise? https://www.businesstoday.in/amp/latest/world/story/did-rishi-sunak-benefit-from-covid-vaccine-maker-modernas-stock-rise-heres-what-the-uk-pm-has-to-say-370386-2023-02-15

Prof Van Tam Moderna - Former Covid medical officer. Van-Tam takes role at vaccine maker Moderna https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/18/former-covid-medical-officer-van-tam-takes-role-at-vaccine-maker-moderna

UK cements 10-year-partnership with Moderna in major boost for vaccines and research. Moderna to invest in mRNA research and development (R&D) in the UK, and build a state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing centre with the ability to produce up to 250 million vaccines a year. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-cements-10-year-partnership-with-moderna-in-major-boost-for-vaccines-and-research "

 

Nice work if you can get it !

Edited November 26, 2023 by TorquayFan

[Amethyst]

A post making a factual claim without any supporting source / weblink has been removed for contravening the forum's Community Standards.

 

"In factual areas such as news forums and current affairs topics member content that is claimed or portrayed as a fact should be supported by a link to a relevant reputable source."

 

[TorquayFan]

The danger with Moderna taking a stranglehold on US/UK Govt. vaccine policy is that something actually better than mRNA might be missed as even with compelling trial data, it becomes harder to challenge conventional wisdom.

 

I've posted before about Scancell a Nottingham based Company who have a DNA based Covid vaccine, (amongst many other things).

 

After shelving 'Covidity', a DNA vaccine, it was picked up for further work by Texas BioMed - they comment, "It’s a big deal. We have inquiries from all over the world. Actually, we had from South Korea, India, France and UK,” Kulkarni said.The research on the DNA COVID vaccine is being done with a company in the UK, and it’s looking very promising. Kulkarni and his team just finished the phase using mice, and he said it was almost 100% effective. There were also no serious side effects. . . .

. . . The research team is now waiting for official approval to move into primate studies, hopefully followed by FDA human clinical trials."

 

https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/10/02/new-type-of-covid-vaccine-showing-promise-at-texas-biomed/

 

There's a video here which is worth the watch - fascinating.

[Eleftheros]

On 11/25/2023 at 6:30 PM, stevenl said:

Denying facts doesn't make them lies.

A media report, employing the phrase "scientists say", does not constitute a "fact", or anything close to it, except for people who are exceptionally gullible or willfully blind.