Disinfo: Pfizer used to fake clinical trials, from their reputation we can expect anything

Summary

Be curious, type Pfizer at least simply on Wikipedia, in Russian or English. And at the end of the article there will be the longest section “scandals”. They are a lot! You can shoot a detective series: from illegal tests on children with fatal outcomes to falsified trials, lies… <>

Do Pfizer’s top managers know something and expect stock prices to decline when it comes to the administrating the vaccine [against coronavirus] ? Given Pfizer’s reputation, one can expect anything.

Disproof

The pro-Kremlin disinformation outlet mixes up narratives, adding non existent claims to accusations advanced decades ago and settled with plaintiffs since then.

Thus, there are no credible accusations of Pfizer falsifying clinical trial results. Clinical trials are subject to government inspections, in particular, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in US, which has access to patients participating in clinical trials, to the documentation and other material evidence. The FDA did not accuse Pfizer of falsifying any clinical trials. Only Russian Wikipedia, accessed on November 30, 2020, failing to provide links to other sources, claims that an American medical journal did not have a response from Pfizer regarding a suspicion that part of the clinical trials of fluconazole in 1999 were falsified. In fact, FDA successfully registered Pfizer's fluconazole after the said clinical trials.

As for "illegal tests on children with fatal outcomes", Pfizer was sued after 11 children died in a clinical trial when the northern state of Kano was hit by Africa's worst ever meningitis epidemic in 1996. A hundred children were given an experimental oral antibiotic called Trovan, while a further hundred received ceftriaxone, the "gold-standard" treatment of modern medicine. Five children on Trovan died and six on ceftriaxone. But later it was claimed that Pfizer did not have proper consent from parents to use an experimental drug on their children.

Pfizer rejected the accusations of wrongdoing claiming that the trial helped to save lives, the mortality was higher among children not included in the trial and that the healthcare authorities of Nigeria approved the trials properly. However, in November 2014, Pfizer paid compensation to the families of the deceased patients as set forth in the 2009 extra court settlement agreement.

No other convictions or controversies are known for Pfizer's clinical trials involving children or adults.

As for the final conclusion "given Pfizer's reputation, one can expect anything" [from the Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine], first of all, for a news organisation, it is not correct to report about some unknown "expectations", and not about already happened, real events.

The report is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign in support of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus. The same disinformation campaign includes statements such as "Western attacks on the Russian coronavirus vaccine are a corporate cold war against humanity" or "Russian progress in COVID-19 vaccine has become for the West an outrageous challenge"; Russian coronavirus vaccine has dozens of orders unlike the American one.

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Rossia 24 - YouTube (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 222
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 29/11/2020
  • Outlet language(s) Russian
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: US
  • Keywords: coronavirus, vaccination
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Disinfo: Ukraine demonstrated an "attack" on Russia

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) showed a video of exercises during which the offensive on the position of a conventional enemy, probably Russia, was practised.

Nov 28, 2020
Disproof

This is a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative alleging Ukraine's hostility towards Russia.

It's true that the Ukrainian Armed forces conducted a series of military exercises on the Mykolaiv range. The training manoeuvres were instructive and methodological in nature and have been related to summarising the activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the year 2020. There is no proof, nor indication, these exercises were specifically naming Russia as the enemy.

Disinfo: There is no evidence of Holodomor in Ukraine, it was a US tool against the USSR

Initially, it [Holodomor topic] was due to the confrontation between the US and the USSR. The US used any means possible to crush the Soviet Union and to incite hostility between the people. The theme of the famine in Ukraine was, and remains, one of these means.

This terrible famine of people from various nationalities and on various territories completely destroys the idea that there was a ​​genocide of Ukrainians.

Russophobes, parasitising on the theme of the “Holodomor”, use it to incite hostility, and want to make Russia responsible for the famine of 1933.

Nov 28, 2020
Disproof

This is another disinformation narrative claiming that there was no artificially created famine in Ukraine. The Holodomor is well documented and was not invented as anti-Soviet propaganda during the Cold War. The genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933 is confirmed by a huge array of declassified documents, including official documents of the Soviet authorities and the Communist Party. The Security Service of Ukraine has declassified more than 5,000 pages of state archives about the Holodomor.

The Holodomor was an artificial famine created with the aim of destroying the Ukrainian peasantry. The Soviet state took away livestock, crops and seeds from the peasants under the guise that the peasants "plundered" state property. The Soviet law on the seizure of food from peasants was adopted in 1932. The punitive document is known as the "Five Spikelet Law". Everyone who gathered several ears of wheat on the collective farm field was a culprit in the "theft of state property". If the law was not enforced, people were shot, including children. Convicts were not subject to amnesty.

Disinfo: No pro-Kremlin oligarchs exist in Russia

Alexei Navalny appeared recently in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament saying Russian oligarchs Roman Abramovich, Ahmet Usmanov and Boris Rotenberg need to be put on a sanctions list as they are assisting a regime which is poisoning its political opponents. However, Navalny spoke together with certain pro-Western and US-funded opposition figures such as Vladimir Kara-Murza, Vladimir Milov and Ilya Yashin.

Additionally, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov and Vladimir Putin himself have said that no oligarchs exist in Russia today and no firm is receiving favorable treatment by being close to Russia authorities.

Nov 28, 2020
Disproof

The article is an attempt to discredit Alexey Navalny and his participation in a hearing at the European Parliameny, including by flatly denying the collusion between political and business interests around the Kremlin. This story is also consistent with recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.

Oligarchs exist in today's Russia and they have close links with the Kremlin. As far as the three names mentioned by Alexei Navalny in front of the European Parliament, ample evidence exists.