Big Pharma’s ‘Spiderweb’ of Influence on US Medical Ecosystem: Drug Safety Advocate

Drug safety advocate Kim Witczak in Washington on Oct. 6, 2022. Tiffany Coutris/CPI Studios

For nearly 20 years, Kim Witczak has been an advocate for pharmaceutical drug safety and reform, most recently pushing for COVID-19 vaccine transparency and accountability. Witczak was propelled into this work by the suicide of her husband of 10 years, which was alleged to have been caused by the anti-depressant Zoloft, prescribed for his insomnia.

Witczak said that when her husband died, she thought their case was an isolated incident but quickly learned there are broad deficiencies in the U.S. drug safety system and corruption in the medical establishment.

“And then I started finding the ties … I like to call it a spiderweb, where you start seeing how the industry is really, kind of a business,” Witczak told Epoch TV American Thought Leaders program during a recent interview. “It is a big business that is full of conflicts of interest. It’s set up to sell products, and even the approval process at the FDA, there’s so much focus on getting things to market, and not so much after and looking at the harms of medication,” said Witczak.

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Corruption Hampers Vaccine Safety

Because of the conflicts of interest between health agencies and Big Pharma, drug/vaccine safety has been neglected, said Witczak. She thinks the FDA and drug companies should have had more protocols to determine vaccine safety and efficiency since the mRNA was new technology and created at “warp speed.”

In this image from video, Food and Drug Administration officials discuss with the agency's vaccine advisory committee matters relating to an emergency use authorization expansion application from Moderna for its COVID-19 vaccine, in a virtual meeting on Oct. 14, 2021. The Epoch Times via FDA

“The people who approve your products at the FDA are the same people that review safety,” said Witczak, who believes the two jobs should be done by separate groups with no overlap, in order to put the health and safety of the public first.

Witczak has insight into how the FDA advisory boards for vaccines work because she has been the consumer representative on the FDA psychopharmacologic drugs Advisory Committee for the last 20 years.

The Epoch Times reached out to the FDA for comment.

She has seen fast-track mechanisms used to get drugs to market, much like the emergency use authorization act, “But there’s been a whole slew of new drugs that are coming using accelerated approval, which you think is innovation or breakthrough, but what it really means is less rigorous clinical trials and less focus on safety,” said Witczak.

The advisory committees get to hear from experts and the public about the safety of a particular drug and ask questions. Many of the experts and groups that advocate for drug authorization get a large part of their funding from pharmaceutical companies, said Witczak.

“You could go to any of these hearings, and they [special interest groups] have become almost mouthpieces for the pharmaceutical industry,” said Witczak. “Go look at the funding and it’s almost all pharmaceutical funding.”

To add to the lack of transparency and accountability since the COVID pandemic, most of these meetings happen online, which Witczak said has further weakened the drug safety process. These virtual hearings have limited the number of witnesses and removed the human element, she said.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla talks during a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after a visit to oversee the production of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the factory of U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer in Puurs, Belgium, on April 23, 2021. John Thys/Reuters

FDA Captured by Big Pharma

The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) was first enacted in 1992 and amended over a half dozen times. The PDUFA requires Pharmaceutical companies to pay fees to the U.S. government which generates revenue for the FDA, that money is then used in the drug review process and for getting drugs to market as soon as possible.

Witczak estimates that half of the FDA budget comes from Big Pharma, including the PDUFA funds. In this initial PDUFA process, consumers don’t get a say, said Witczak.

“That’s one where there’s the captured kind of, the ties between the FDA and [drug] industry.” Another is the revolving door of an FDA official leaving the agency and working for the drug company or someone in Big pharma, later working for the FDA, said Witczak.

“Maybe the good thing that’s going to come out of this is it’s going to shake up everything, shake up the traditional health care system, the FDA, government, the media system, and maybe we needed this, to show the craziness of what has happened in the last couple of years,” Witczak continued.

Witczak said she is working on a document called “the spider web of pharma’s influence on the whole medical ecosystem.” She is digging into how Big Pharma influences medical education, researchers, medical journals, clinical trials, media, fact-checkers, advertising, Congress, and the FDA.

“Their [Big Pharma] hand prints, fingerprints are everywhere,” said Witczak.

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream led by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies. Monticello/Shutterstock

Mainstream Reporting During COVID

Health agencies and Big Pharma had the news media parroting their talking points, trying to influence the public to get “the jab,” said Witczak.

Before the pandemic, the news media covered the corruption in the FDA and the drug safety issues, but with the pandemic that all changed, said Witczak.

“And all sudden with the vaccines, it was like this [corruption] behavior doesn’t exist anymore. Because this is all for ’the greater good.' It’s a really bizarre thing that’s happened with the media, the ones that actually used to do really great reporting, how much has changed just in the hypocrisy and the messaging that has come from the top down,” said Witczak.

She said she did not see mainstream media hold Anthony Fauci and the NIH (National Institute of Health) accountable for the changing narrative about COVID. But Witczak said the public is catching on to the lack of journalistic integrity in news coverage.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Sept. 14, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The mainstream media should have held Big Pharma and the government accountable and asked them to investigate vaccine safety. “But they [mainstream media] would just keep going to the same talking heads at CDC [and] the FDA,” and they would say there were no significant safety concerns, said Witczak. “If you are a true journalist, you should have been pushing that question a little bit more and asking, where is safety?”

Little Recourse for Vaccine Injured

Witczak sued Pfizer for the wrongful death of her husband, but in the case of the vaccine injured, the pharmaceutical companies are immune from current or future lawsuits for any adverse effects or deaths from the newly developed, novel vaccines said Witczak.

The drug companies’ immunity should have been a red flag for people and now instead of hearing from the vaccine injured, the powers that be are censoring these stories, said Witczak.

“These people aren’t even being acknowledged, and they were doing what the government asked, they were doing their part. And now that they’re injured, they’re like an uncomfortable truth, an inconvenient truth … And they have no recourse for harm.”

The department of U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) set up the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) which has very little money budgeted and a staff of under two dozen, so cannot handle the number of injured from COVID vaccines.

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“First, there has to be an acknowledgment of harms [by CDC and FDA]. But [instead] there’s been an intentional silencing [of vaccine injured],” said Witczak.

Screenshot of Stephanie de Garay and her daughter Maddie de Garay sharing how Maddie was injured from a COVID-19 vaccine at Sen. Ron Johnson's press event on June 28, 2021. Rumble/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

Scientific Debate Stifled

Experts from other countries should have been consulted and their studies and data should have been studied said, Witczak. Instead, doctors and journalists that dissented from the mainstream view of vaccine efficacy and safety were maligned, she continued.

So much so, that it has divided our country and stifled the scientific process, said Witczak.

“And there was no debate. It was like ’this is the science.' And how can it be settled when it was just such a new [product] and … we’re still learning,” said Witczak. “We should want to see and learn and ask questions and have other scientists, not just the one that’s coming out of, Fauci and the NIH and his camp of science.”