The agency is shielding the names of those working on the project.
QUICK FACTS:
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will not release the identities of their team members working on vaccine safety.
- Journalists from The Epoch Times looked for information on the employees working on vaccine safety as part of an investigation of the CDC’s possible analysis of post-vaccination heart inflammation.
- The CDC manages a database called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), where people can file a report about injury or adverse event reports following vaccination.
- The Epoch Times Journalist filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that requires government agencies to comply with information requests.
- The CDC reportedly denied the request in full.
DENIAL OF THE FOIA:
- While there are exemptions to FOIA that allows agencies to exempt information from the public’s review, questions have arisen about the CDC’s use of an exemption.
- CDC FOIA officer Roger Andoh cited an exemption that protects “personnel and medical files and similar files” if the disclosure of the files “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
- “The information that has been withheld under Exemption 6 consists of employee names. We have determined that the individual(s) to whom this information pertains has a substantial privacy interest in withholding it,” Andoh said.
- Some watchdog groups have questioned the withholding, including OpenTheBooks.com, whose founder and CEO, Adam Andrzejewski, said in a statement, “If Democrats and Republicans want the American people to trust government institutions, i.e. CDC, NIH and all the others, one would think members of Congress, agency bureaucrats, and the president’s administration would be motivated to start by offering transparency and eliminating the taxpayer’s justifiable questions and worries.”
- “Not having the ability to see into the bureaucracy is troubling and these agencies are rife with conflicts of interest. Denying transparency to the public is never the answer,” he added.
BACKGROUND:
- Because the raw data from VAERS does not offer a full picture of potential safety risks, according to the CDC, experts are required to analyze data to see if dangers exist.
- The teams whose information the CDC is shielding include those tasked with reviewing data on post-vaccination blood clotting, post-vaccination heart inflammation, and one other team that analyzes various data connected with vaccines.
- Two of the teams are working directly with information about conditions credited to COVID-19 vaccinations.
- The teams’ work has been cited by CDC officials while speaking in meetings about vaccines, but other public-facing information does not clarify which persons work on what teams.
