Senator Asks CDC to Clear Up Conflicting Statements on Vaccine Safety Research

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) speaks during a hearing in Washington on Jan. 24, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A U.S. senator is asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to clear up conflicting statements on whether a specific method of COVID-19 vaccine safety research is being conducted.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked CDC Director Rochelle Walensky for details after The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, a CDC doctor, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System since February 2021.

That conflicted with the CDC telling the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method “is outside of th[e] agency’s purview.”

“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson told Walensky in a new letter, released on July 26 and dated July 25.

“The American people deserve the truth and you have not been providing it. That is why I, together with millions of Americans, have completely lost faith in the CDC and other federal health agencies. It is time to start regaining their confidence and your agency’s integrity by coming clean, being transparent, and telling the truth,” Johnson wrote.

He asked for Walensky to immediately respond to a letter he sent before requesting information on the CDC’s vaccine safety research. He also requested she confirm whether Dr. Su’s statement is true and if it is, why the CDC claimed it had not conducted the analyses.

And if Dr. Su’s statement is accurate, Johnson wants all of the Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses that the CDC has performed since February 2021.

Finally, Johnson asked for Dr. Su to be made available for an interview with his office concerning the data examinations.

The CDC and Walensky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks in Washington on June 16, 2022. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Background

The CDC said in an operating procedures document dated Jan. 29, 2021, that it “will perform” Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR), a type of data mining analysis that compares the counts of adverse event reports following vaccination with one vaccine to those that have been reported after receipt of another vaccine or vaccines.

The same language was included in an updated document released in February.

But in a recent response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Children’s Health Defense, CDC records officer Roger Andoh said he spoke with the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, which informed him “that no PRRs were conducted by the CDC.”

“Furthermore, data mining is outside of th[e] agency’s purview,” Andoh added.

Dr. Su heads the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office.

A CDC spokesperson defended the agency’s vaccine safety monitoring efforts in an earlier email to The Epoch Times, noting that the agencies detected post-vaccination heart inflammation and blood clotting in the summer of 2021.