Former Alternative Für Deutschland (AfD) politicians Frauke Petry and her husband Marcus Pretzell announced they are suing COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer BioNTech for deceiving people about the protective effect of the vaccine.
They refer to a statement by BioNTech founder and CEO Uğur Sahin to the “Bild” newspaper : “The number of people who have a positive corona PCR test and are therefore potentially contagious decreases by 92 percent after the vaccination. With this knowledge, we now also know that if enough people are vaccinated, we can effectively contain the pandemic.”
Petry and Pretzell want to help people in Germany who have been vaccinated with BioNTech to sue the company for damages.
“No other vaccine manufacturer has made statements about the effectiveness of the vaccine that are as precise as BioNTech. Those who place medical devices on the market have a completely different responsibility with regard to such advertising promises than politicians,” Petry told Welt.
Frauke Petry was party spokeswoman for the AfD from 2013 to 2017. Her husband, Marcus Pretzell, was a member of the European Parliament and chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Pretzell who works as a lawyer, has drafted a “model lawsuit” to help people across Germany sue Biotech for damages. The first lawsuit was filed with the Wiesbaden district court on Wednesday.
“We already have a handful of plaintiffs and hope to have many more join us,” Petry said.
To finance the lawsuits, Petry and Pretzell founded the association Defend Freedom, which states its purpose is to fight state restrictions on freedom – not just in the case of vaccination.
“The facts are very simple,” says Pretzell: “Our clients were deceived by Sahin’s statement about the protective effect of the vaccination.” The aspect of foreign protection played a decisive role for many in the vaccination decision, according to the complaint. With his “false promises of salvation”, Sahin violated, among other things, the provisions of the law against unfair competition, the drug advertising law and the drug law.
Because the misinformation was already “ubiquitous,” Pretzell writes, the false expectations of the patients could no longer be remedied by the informational discussion before the vaccination. The consent of his clients to the bodily harm, which the vaccination basically represents, is therefore no longer applicable.
Sahin is an “indirect perpetrator”, is guilty of bodily harm and must compensate those affected for the damage caused.
The amount of the compensation for pain and suffering should be “based on the remuneration usually paid to test subjects for corresponding clinical studies”. These would be in the order of 2500 euros. However, since there were no previous preclinical studies in the specific case and the plaintiff was “an involuntary participant in such a clinical study”, compensation for pain and suffering of up to EUR 5,000 does not seem unreasonable in view of the increased risk.
Pretzell said the model lawsuit was an opportunity to “write legal history”.
Lawsuit by Pfizer Whistleblower
Former Pfizer employee and whistleblower Brook Jackson claims that the company deliberately misled the U.S government regarding the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. She is suing Pfizer for vaccine study fraud, including violating trial protocol, violating federal regulations falsifying clinical trial results, and making fraudulent claims regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
According to her website, Brook Jackson was hired as a Regional Director in September 2020 for two of the three clinical trial sites in Texas that were participating in Pfizer’s pivotal, Phase III, mRNA (“vaccine”) clinical trial. She claims to have witnessed “blatant” and “widespread” misconduct that violated the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Code of Federal Regulations “every, single day”.
According to “False Claims Act Complaint” filed by Brooks, Pfizer’s alleged fraudulent actions were motivated by the prospect of earning “billions” with the sale of the vaccine:
“In the race to secure billions in federal funding and become the first to market, Defendants deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question. Namely, Defendants concealed violations of both their clinical trial protocol and federal regulations, including falsification of clinical trial documents. Due to Defendants’ scheme, millions of Americans have received a misbranded vaccination which is potentially not as effective as represented. The vaccine’s U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) authorization resulted from a deeply flawed clinical trial that violated FDA regulations. Defendants have profited from the COVID-19 pandemic at the expense of the United States and its citizens by abusing the scientific process.” (p. 1)
Brooks claims the purpose of the alleged “fraudulent scheme” by Pfizer was to push the US government to buy the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which it would not have bought otherwise:
“Defendants’ fraudulent scheme caused DoD to pay billions that it would not have paid had it known that the safety and efficacy of the vaccine at issue was not properly proven. At worst, the vaccine could be far less effective than represented, and DoD has purchased something that will not protect the public from COVID-19 as effectively as claimed.” (p. 4)
