Pharma Stock ‘Mattered More Than the Price of a Life,’ Physician Tells Senate Roundtable

Guest Post by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Experts who testified at Sen. Ron Johnson’s COVID-19 roundtable described how regulators stifled data, silenced dissenting views and made it possible for drugmakers to prioritize profits over patients under a system where “the price of the stock mattered more than the price of a life.”

Conflicts of interest between government health agencies and pharmaceutical companies fueled suppression of scientific research on issues ranging from alternative COVID-19 treatments to childhood vaccines to the controversial origins of COVID-19, experts told a Senate panel on Monday.

Experts who testified at Sen. Ron Johnson’s roundtable, “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel,” described how regulators systematically stifled data, silenced dissenting views and made it possible for drugmakers to prioritize profits over patients under a system where “the price of the stock mattered more than the price of a life,” according to Dr. Sabine Hazan, CEO of ProgenaBiome.

The corruption led to devastating and lethal consequences, they said, including “sabotaged early treatments, denied natural immunity and vaccine injuries,” and the destruction of “an untold number of people’s lives,” according to Johnson.

Roundtable participants said that scientific research on COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine was stifled — in some cases, costing the researchers in question their jobs.

As part of corrupt public-private partnerships, the big COVID-19 vaccine makers received billions in taxpayer dollars yet operated without full transparency — and with an effective green light from captured agencies to censor countervailing science, a practice that continues today, the speakers explained.

Overall, the panel painted a dystopian picture of a broken oversight system under which “it is nearly impossible to publish data that goes against the national public health narrative” and dissenting evidence is memory-holed to protect careers and bottom lines.

In his opening remarks, Johnson said:

“The COVID pandemic has opened my eyes to the failure and corruption of the global elite and their institutions, including government. Unfortunately, many eyes remain closed, and the global elite will use all of their power to keep them closed.

“In this case, they overhyped fear over a virus they helped create, in order to push a profitable gene therapy platform and gain greater control over our lives. Along the way, they sabotaged early treatment, denied natural immunity and vaccine injuries, caused trillions of dollars of economic devastation and destroyed an untold number of people’s lives.”

‘If doctors cannot publish the data, they cannot find solutions to fix the problems’

Hazan, a gastroenterologist, told the roundtable that in early 2020, her genetic sequencing laboratory was “the first lab to document the entire sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human stool,” and that it lingered “for up to 45 days.”

She contrasted this with the commonly-used PCR test, which identifies “just a little piece of the virus.”

Her subsequent research showed that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, an antibiotic, killed the virus in the stools “but unfortunately … [also] killed the microbiome,” she said. “Therefore, vitamins C, D and zinc [were] added” to the protocol, Hazan said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took no interest in these findings, she said. Hazan said she submitted three protocols to the FDA from her findings and also put three studies into ClinicalTrials.gov to “help doctors more effectively treat COVID.”

The FDA gave Hazan an exemption letter in April 2020, authorizing her to conduct a clinical trial using hydroxychloroquine, only to withdraw it soon after.

When she finally got the green light to start recruiting in May 2020, Hazan found it “impossible to recruit” subjects due to the media-induced fear around hydroxychloroquine.

“This drug was safely given for years for arthritis and lupus with no problems,” she said. Her clinical trial companies also were “banned and censored” from advertising on major social media platforms.

“I do clinical trials for a living, and never … have I not been able to advertise to recruit for a trial on social media,” she said.

Hazan continued her research, collecting stools of patients and noticing those with severe COVID-19 had “a certain bacteria that was missing” compared to people who were highly exposed to but never contracted the virus.

“That bacteria is called bifidobacteria,” Hazan said, calling it “an important and key microbe for immunity” highly present in newborns but “absent” in the elderly.

Yet, Hazan experienced difficulty sharing her findings with the scientific community.

It took eight months to publish her paper, “Lost microbes of COVID-19,” she said, noting that her study “showed vitamin C, if we give it to patients … increased the bifidobacteria.”

Hazan’s research also found ivermectin “increased the bifidobacteria within 24 hours,” yet her research was nevertheless suppressed.

“I published a hypothesis [regarding] what I was observing on the frontline treating patients with COVID, noticing that their oxygen saturation was increasing from ivermectin,” suggesting that “maybe ivermectin increased bifidobacteria,” she said.

Her hypothesis on ivermectin was “the most-read hypothesis in the pandemic,” Hazan said, yet it “was retracted after eight months.”

“It is nearly impossible to publish data that go against the national public health narrative,” Hazan said. “If doctors cannot publish the data, they cannot find solutions to fix the problems.”

Scientist fired from hospital for studying hydroxychloroquine

Other experts who spoke at Monday’s roundtable shared similar experiences.

Christian Perronne, M.D., Ph.D., professor of infectious and tropical diseases at the University of Versailles-St. Quentin, Paris-Saclay in France, said that in 2020, he and his colleagues published “our fantastic experience with the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.”

“We had the lowest mortality in all the Paris area and the lowest in France, just like Dr. Didier Raoult in Marseille,” he said, referring to another French doctor who, according to Le Monde, came under fire for “touting the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19” and “for questionable studies conducted at a research hospital in Marseille.”

Perronne said his paper was “unacceptable for the authorities” — authorities who he said pressured his colleagues and threatened their careers.

“We had to withdraw the article,” he said. “I was fired from my position as the head of the infectious disease department of my hospital … which I occupied for 26 years.”

In 2020, Perronne also faced charges brought by France’s National Council of the Order of Physicians for questioning the COVID-19 vaccine and promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. In 2022, the French Medical Association cleared him of all charges.

Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told the panel there have been 420 controlled trials studying hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment, and “over half a million patients with ivermectin.”

“Summary analysis of this evidence … all shows large-magnitude, statistically significant benefits in all important outcomes,” Kory said. “Yet in this country, ivermectin is considered an ineffective horse dewormer and hydroxychloroquine the drug of ‘fringe, quack, right-wing anti-vaxxers.’”

‘You can’t hide the dead bodies’

In other instances, public health agencies manipulated the results of scientific studies — sometimes with the help of “fact-checkers,” roundtable participants said.

Research by Kevin McKernan, chief scientific officer and founder of Medicinal Genomics, found DNA contamination in the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.

“This work has been replicated by many labs around the world, and now the FDA, the EMA [European Medicines Agency] and even Health Canada have admitted to this,” McKernan said. “The regulatory agencies have admitted that Pfizer also omitted the SV40 sequences that are in their vaccine.”

Yet, these agencies claimed “the DNA is of too little concentration to matter or to be containing DNA of no functional consequence,” he said. “These statements are false and are not supported by any independent testing by these regulators.”

“As someone who has worked on the Human Genome Project, manufacturing millions of plasmas, I can assure you that this is an overt lie,” McKernan said. “DNA contamination can lead to insertional mutagenesis.”

Edward Dowd, author of “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” referred to efforts by governments to downplay increases in excess deaths by changing the methodology used for their calculation. He said:

“Certain governments are now changing how they calculate these numbers. The ONS [United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics] just announced a change to the calculation methodology for their excess death number, which reduces, obviously, the excess deaths, because they like that result better.”

Dowd, who studied insurance industry data showing significant increases in excess deaths and disabilities starting shortly after the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, said that even with changes in government methodologies, insurers continue to see increased rates of excess deaths.

“The actuarial tables that the insurance companies use haven’t changed, so excess deaths are continuing … especially in the working-age population,” Dowd said. “These deaths are undeniable. You can’t hide the dead bodies.”

David Gortler, a doctor of pharmacy and scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center focusing on FDA oversight and drug safety, said that has been trying to get information from public health agencies on “what’s considered an active ingredient [and] what’s considered an inactive ingredient” in the COVID-19 vaccines.

“The question is, why do we even need to ask for it?” Gortler said. “How can ethical physicians and pharmacists continue to administer and promote these injections without a full disclosure of what the ingredients are?”

Government, Big Pharma funded creation of ‘public health empire’

Roundtable participants cited numerous examples of government interference and lack of transparency.

Johnson said his office requested unredacted versions of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails, but in 2021, “we received basically the same 4,000 redacted pages.” Even after narrowing the request to 400 pages in January 2022, Johnson said, “They allowed us to look at 50 pages at a time in a reading room” from which “we couldn’t take copies.”

“We are down to the last 50 pages. They will not release these. It’s been now going close to two years … Do you think there might be some incriminating information in this?” he asked.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) and co-author of “DPT: A Shot in the Dark, said officials “at the highest levels of the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice and Homeland Security … and even 17 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, asked PayPal to defund the NVIC.”

“They worked with political operatives and corporate legacy and social media to silence my voice and other voices for talking online about vaccine reactions and the fact that people who get vaccinated can still get infected and transmit infection,” she said.

“We were thrown off of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter in the space of seven months in 2021.” She said the censorship campaign was condoned “by the highest levels of government.”

For many of the participants, the underlying factors behind such censorship efforts and the lack of government transparency involve financial conflicts of interest.

“Congress directed federal agencies to create lucrative public-private business partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry, a business deal that has broken America’s public health system,” Fisher said.

She added:

“Legislation enacted in the 1990s and after Sept. 11, 2001, laid the groundwork for the rise of a public health empire, which is funded and operated by government and the wealthiest and most politically powerful individuals, corporations and public and private institutions in the world.

“Now, those operating that empire are threatening our legal right in this constitutional republic to exercise freedom of thought, speech, and conscience.”

As part of this, “manufacturers were funded with billions of taxpayer dollars, including Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech,” Gortler said. “Since taxpayers funded the private for-profit research, why don’t we have 100% transparency on what we paid for?”

Kory said, “No one knows the total amount of money provided by drug companies to physicians.” From annual reports of the top nine U.S.-based drug companies, Kory estimated taxpayers have spent “tens of billions of dollars a year.”

Hazan said that while pharmaceutical companies once worked with doctors, now they are “captured by the price of the stock venture capitalists own in pharmaceutical companies.”

“What we saw [in] this pandemic was the price of the stock mattered more than the price of a life,” she said.

Watch the Senate roundtable here: