FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: FDA offers to release 12k pages of vaccine data by end of January

FOIA News (2015-2023)Allan BlutsteinComment

We'll all be dead before FDA releases full COVID vaccine record, plaintiffs say

By Jenna Greene, Reuters, Dec. 13, 2021

In advance of a court hearing before a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration has offered by the end of January to make public 12,000 pages of data that it relied on to license Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

At first glance, that sounds like a lot of material.

Except a group of scientists and doctors who’ve sued the agency under the Freedom of Information Act is seeking an estimated 400,000-plus additional pages of information about the vaccine’s approval. Under the FDA’s proposed schedule – the agency pledges to release “a minimum” of 500 pages a month after the initial dump – the full trove might not be made public until the year 2097.

Read more here.