The Vaccine Safety Questions No One is Asking at the Covid Inquiry

January 21, 2025 antivax

The UK Covid Inquiry started its Module 4 oral hearings about vaccines and therapeutics on January 14th 2025. Matt Hancock appeared on January 16th. He basically got off scot-free. There is a long list of hugely important questions which were not asked, either by Hugo Keith KC for the inquiry or by any of the KCs acting for the core participants.

The Perseus Group, which I represent, helpfully included a list of questions at the end of its written evidence to the inquiry covering both the Covid vaccines and medicine regulation in general. Judging by the lack of searching questions in Module 4 so far, they have either not read our evidence or are ignoring it.

So I want to highlight a few of our questions here in the faint hope that the other witnesses, notably MHRA, will not also be given a ‘Hancock-style’ easy ride when they appear before the Inquiry over the next two weeks.

Process 1 vs Process 2
When Hancock gave evidence, I was shouting at the screen, urging someone to ask him if he knew that the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna Covid vaccines which were approved for roll-out to the public (using manufacturing Process 2) were different to those used in the clinical trials (manufacturing Process 1) and that there was no safety evidence bridging the two. If you don’t believe me, read paragraphs 32-35 of our written evidence, which are based entirely on MHRA’s replies to FOIs, and my article about the issue in September 2023.

To be clear, the question is not whether MHRA was aware (it obviously was); rather, the question is did Ministers know about it prior to authorisation? If they didn’t know (and Hancock doesn’t mention it in his written evidence), alarm bells should be ringing about MHRA and the UK Vaccine Task Force (which would also have been aware about the issues associated with scaling up production); and if Ministers did know, what were they told and did they question MHRA about the safety implications, and why were neither Ministers nor MHRA transparent with the public about the issue?

To be clear, Hancock might say it was MHRA which approved the vaccines, but it was actually Lord Bethell, one of his Ministers, who signed them off even though Hancock was the Licensing Authority, accountable to Parliament under the Human Medicine Regulations.

One can only hope that the inquiry KC or core participants KCs ask MHRA and Kate Bingham about this – not just about who knew what and when, but also about the consequential safety concerns relating to RNA integrity, DNA contamination and batch inconsistency (paras 36-44 of our written evidence).

Evidence to support Covid vaccination of children
Hancock should also have been asked what changed after the public statements by him and Kate Bingham, head of the UK Vaccine Task Force in autumn 2020, that this was an “adult vaccine” because children were at negligible risk from COVID-19.

Indeed, there was also a complete lack of long term safety data, and the evidence about the effect on transmission was flimsy at best. See paragraphs 46-51 and 121 of our written evidence for details. One can only hope that the inquiry KC or core participants’ KCs ask MHRA, Kate Bingham, Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer) and Jenny Harries (UK Health Security Agency) about this policy ‘U-turn’ when they give their oral evidence.

The next two questions are about medicine regulation in general. I’m covering these because a) the inquiry seems so keen to focus on ‘systems and processes’ and not so much about the safety of the Covid vaccines, and b) if the inquiry is going to come up with recommendations, shouldn’t it be testing these on witnesses? So, for example: