There is a particular kind of government betrayal that arrives not with a bang, but with an obscure bureaucratic memo. No dramatic announcement, no press conference, no honest accounting to the public.
Just a directive, handed down through internal channels, telling scientists to withdraw publication of their work — work they spent years producing; that taxpayers spent millions funding; that concluded, simply and clearly, that vaccines are safe.
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That is what has been happening at the FDA. And it should disgust and anger every American who has ever trusted a public health institution.
TRUMP AND RFK JR. JUST BLEW UP THE CHILDHOOD VACCINE SCHEDULE
FDA officials have blocked publication of multiple studies that found widely used COVID-19 and shingles vaccines are safe. Two COVID vaccine studies — both peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in respected medical journals — were withdrawn after government scientists were directed in October by their bosses to pull them. And in February, agency officials refused to sign off on abstracts for two studies of Shingrix, the shingles vaccine, preventing them from being presented at a major drug safety conference.
The research simply disappeared into a bureaucratic void.
The FDA’s explanation, offered through a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman, was that the studies drew “broad conclusions not supported by the underlying data.” This defense doesn’t hold up, according to independent experts who reviewed the withdrawn studies. Dr. Caleb Alexander of Johns Hopkins, a drug safety and methodology specialist, found “nothing inherently problematic” about the research. Dr. Jeffrey Morris, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s biostatistics division, called the studies generally well done. Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard, who has collaborated with the FDA extensively, said the agency’s work met “the highest standards of scientific investigation” — and called the withdrawal “censorship.”
These are not partisan voices or vaccine activists. These are accomplished scientists evaluating their peers’ methodology. Their verdict is clear and correct. The FDA’s stated justification is not.
Consider what these studies found. One examined 7.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who received COVID vaccines. Of 14 potential adverse outcomes studied — including heart attacks, strokes, and Guillain-Barré syndrome — only one elevated risk appeared: a severe allergic reaction affecting roughly one in a million recipients of the Pfizer vaccine. Another study of 4.2 million vaccine recipients found rare cases of fever-related seizures and myocarditis, both already known to be associated with COVID vaccines, and concluded that “the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.” The Shingrix safety study found results consistent with what was already on the vaccine’s label. Again, the benefits outweigh the risks.
In other words, the data supported the vaccines — so, to mollify the anti-vaccine lobby, the data had to go.
What makes this especially damning is the selective standard being applied. While rigorous, peer-reviewed safety studies are being buried, other information — unvetted, alarming, and of dubious provenance — flows freely. A memo by Dr. Vinay Prasad, until recently the head of the FDA organization that regulates vaccines, generated widespread coverage by claiming COVID vaccines were linked to the deaths of “at least 10 children.” The agency has never substantiated or explained that claim.
The double standard could not be more stark: Scientific evidence supporting vaccines is suppressed while unsupported claims casting doubt on them are amplified.
This is not scientific caution. It is scientific corruption dressed in the language of rigor. “Gold-standard science” may be their mantra, but it isn’t reality.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, was blunt, calling FDA’s actions “a pretty active act of sabotage.” Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease specialist fired from a CDC vaccines advisory panel last summer, explained why large post-market surveillance studies are so critical — they examine millions of patients, far beyond the numbers in pre-approval clinical trials. Doctors, patients, and policymakers rely on them. Suppressing them does not protect public safety. It endangers it.
There is a downstream cost to this malfeasance that extends far beyond any individual vaccine or study. Public trust in health institutions is not abstract — it determines whether people get vaccinated, whether they take their children to the doctor, and whether they will believe what scientists tell them during the next pandemic. Every suppressed study, every withdrawn paper, every career government scientist harassed or silenced damages the credibility built over decades.
WHAT IF YOUR ‘DOCTOR’ HAS 300 MILLION FOLLOWERS AND ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY?
The FDA was created to protect Americans from unsafe medicines and other products — not to protect a political agenda from inconvenient data. When it begins to suppress its own scientists’ findings because those findings are politically incorrect, it has abandoned its fundamental mission.
Dr. Kesselheim put it simply: At any other moment in history, this would be a major scandal demanding congressional hearings and leadership resignations. He is right. The question is whether this moment will be treated with the seriousness it demands — or whether the censorship will continue, the science will keep disappearing, and no one will be held to account.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Scholar at the Science Literacy Project. A 15-year veteran of the FDA, he was the founding director of its Office of Biotechnology.
