Texas Attorney General Files Lawsuit Over Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Claims

Illustration of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. (Wikimedia Commons / US Secretary of Defense)

JAKARTA - COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Pfizer has been sued by the Attorney General of Texas, United States regarding claims of vaccine effectiveness, while the company says its vaccine claims are accurate and based on science.

The lawsuit was announced on the Texas Attorney General's website on November 30.

In a complaint filed in Lubbock County State Court, Attorney General Ken Paxton said Pfizer was misleading in claiming its vaccine was 95 percent effective, because it offered a "relative risk reduction" for people who took it.

Paxton said the claim was based on only two months of clinical trial data, and the "absolute risk reduction" of vaccine recipients showed the vaccine was only 0.85 percent effective.

He also said the pandemic was getting worse, even after people started using the vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech.

"Pfizer intentionally misrepresented the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and censored people who threatened to spread the truth in order to facilitate rapid adoption of the product and expand its commercial opportunities," reads the complaint, reported by Reuters, December 1.

The lawsuit aims to stop New York-based Pfizer from making false claims and stifling “truthful statements” about its vaccine, and fined it more than $10 million for violating a Texas law that protects consumers from deceptive marketing.

Paxton himself, who is a Republican, criticized the Biden Administration's efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this year, he began investigating whether Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson misrepresented the efficacy of their vaccines, to examine the "scientific and ethical basis" in public health decisions dealing with COVID-19.

"Pfizer is not telling the truth about their COVID-19 vaccine," Paxton said in a statement.

"We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were forced by draconian vaccine mandates to take defective products sold on falsehoods," he continued.

Separately, it is known that more than 1.5 billion people have received the Pfizer vaccine. The drugmaker has reported revenue of more than 74 billion US dollars in 2021 and 2022 related to COVID-19 vaccinations.

In a statement, Pfizer said its statements about its vaccine were "accurate and based on science" and that it believed Paxton's lawsuit was without merit.

"The company believes that the cases brought by the states are without merit," Pfizer wrote in an emailed statement, adding that its representation of the vaccine has been "accurate and science-based" as reported by Fierce Pharma.

Pfizer also said its vaccine has "demonstrated a good safety profile across all age groups, and helps protect against adverse outcomes of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death."

It is known that infectious disease experts say relative risk reduction is a more meaningful way to assess the efficacy of a vaccine than absolute risk reduction. Relative risk indicates how well a vaccine protects recipients compared to a control group in a study.

This lawsuit is the second that Paxton filed against Pfizer in November. Previously, he sued Pfizer and manufacturer Tris Pharma regarding the ADHD drug, Quillivant XR.

In the case unsealed on November 21, Paxton accused Pfizer and its suppliers of manipulating quality control tests, resulting in the distribution of an ineffective drug to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.