Why I don't trust the TGA's misinformation claims

Trust us. We’d trust you…

Characteristic of my entire involvement with all things COVID-19 I’ve been bumbling along minding my own business and then somehow got dragged into this new controversy over alleged DNA contamination in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the Australian TGA’s assertion that this is all misinformation. Source. There is little point in me commenting directly, with people like Dr Kevin McKernan and Dr David Speicher already capably responding to the strong claims about their work. Source and Source. So what I contribute is contextual information, concerning the nature and track record of the TGA, and why I don’t trust them.

Firstly, it is important to recognise that while the TGA is supposed to be a federal agency, much like the FDA or CDC in the US, it is funded almost exclusively (only around 96%) by Big Pharma. Come up with all the excuses you want, like “it’s just fees, bro”, or “it’s because of grants”. Their money comes from Big Pharma. They work for Big Pharma. There literally would be direct employees of companies like Pfizer that earn a greater share of their incomes (5% and up) elsewhere. The TGA also happens to approve the vast majority of drug company applications. They at least have the foresight to keep up appearances by rejecting some here and there (around 10%). They don’t even deny their almost exclusive reliance on Big Pharma funding, they just deny that this is a conflict of interest. In a bygone era this would be a huge scandal. Watergate, which led to arguably the most powerful person in the world resigning from their post (which they won in an almost incomprehensible landslide), was nothing compared to today’s shenanigans - like the US government casually admitting, and not apologising, for their highly deceptive anti-vax campaign carried out in Asia. That’s enough, nothing more needs to be said. The end.

Okay then.

Okay, while that is enough to sow some seeds of doubt, there’s more, a lot more.

Another reason I don’t trust the TGA is that they are quite passive, despite their claims to the contrary: “The TGA rigorously assesses vaccines for safety, quality and efficacy before they can be used in Australia. Vaccines receive the same high level of scrutiny as other prescription medicines and related therapeutic goods.” Source. That must be why they waited for one of their effective employers, Merck, to withdraw rofecoxib, instead of acting in the interests of the public. Source. This must also be why they cancelled pholcodine (which was considered ‘safe and effective’ for around 7 decades) in early 2023, after Europe did the same in late 2022. Source and Source. But surely the TGA directly and rigorously tested the COVID jabs, right? As they say in Australia, “yeah nah” (Google Translate will tell you that the Bogan to English translation is “no”). The similarly funded FDA gave Pfizer’s vaccine provisional approval in December 2020, taking only days to make up their minds, after a ‘rigorous’ trial by Pfizer-BioNTech that ran for weeks and weeks. Source. Effectively working for the same people, the TGA duly followed very soon after, in January 2021. Source. Combined with the first point, it’s worth asking what the TGA actually does. Apart from doing the bidding of Big Pharma, that is.

Next, despite all their resources (Big Pharma has deep pockets, and deep connections, being effectively owned by the same few people who own the mainstream media [you may have heard of CNN, MSNBC, and… Fox News], energy companies, tech companies, junk food companies, etc.), the TGA is apparently not up to date with the science they are purportedly about. They continue to maintain that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Source. No mention of the published research by the likes of Peter Doshi or myself on how suspect counting windows lead to exaggerated efficacy/effectiveness and safety estimates. Or how journalist Jason Olbourne and I exposed NSW Health for doing such things in their infamous COVID-19 reports. Or the issue of perceived negative effectiveness, which I managed to mention in the BMJ and the Australian Journal of General Practice. There’s much more that can be said on this, published in major medical journals, like how it looks very obvious that the risks of the jabs outweigh the benefits in young and healthy people (read this and this and this), but we’d be here all day.

Getting closer to the issue of DNA contamination, there is also the little matter of FOI 4558, concerning batch testing of the Pfizer jab, being pretty much entirely (around 70 pages) redacted. Source. Transparency! This is not how you get people to ‘trust the science’.

Literally goes on like this.

Finally, I think there is at least one area where we can say the TGA is not guilty of a mere mistake or fifty, which we can call misinformation, but outright disinformation, or what we used to call lying. The TGA, in 2024, talks a big game about “the patient’s informed consent for all vaccinations”, including patients being made “aware of any rare side effects associated with the vaccine and symptoms to look out for”. Source. Of course they would, it’s serious stuff, right? You could expect lawsuits over stuff like informed consent… The TGA also thought this was very important back in June 2021. Source. After this, the very next month, the TGA reported: “Very rare cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been observed following vaccination with COMIRNATY. These cases have primarily occurred within 14 days following vaccination, more often after the second vaccination, and more often in younger men.” Source. And last year: “We are carefully monitoring and reviewing reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart or membrane around the heart) following vaccination. These are usually temporary conditions, with most people getting better within a few days.” Source. Apart from the “usually” bit for what is potentially fatal, where was the informed consent of the people getting jabbed before the TGA started talking about these ‘rare side effects’? Let the lawsuits begin. Especially when ‘rare side effects’ don’t look so rare when totalled up with the others, and when comparing with the virtually nil (maybe even negative?) benefit of the jabs in the young and healthy.

In sum, the TGA effectively works for Big Pharma. They do not do their due diligence, historically, or now regarding the latest science on the jabs that they ostensibly want us to trust. They refuse to share their data with us, so that we can scrutinise and hopefully be satisfied with their claims. They even talk about informed consent concerning side effects yet refuse to acknowledge that they didn’t ensure we all properly provided informed consent when we rolled up our sleeves en masse. So you’ll have to forgive me if I have questions when they accuse independent scientists of misinformation, and instead want to wage (in my case, continue) legal warfare. Knowing all this I don’t understand why anyone (except Big Pharma) could trust the TGA.

Okay then.