The U.K.’s primary pharmaceutical watchdog has accused Pfizer of making “misleading” claims that failed to account for possible adverse reactions by promoting its “unlicensed” COVID shot on social media.
According to the ruling, the complaint made by an unnamed “member of the public” to the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) criticized Pfizer’s “misuse of social media to misleadingly and illegally promote their COVID vaccine.”
The complaint was related to a 2020 social media post by a Pfizer employee on Twitter, which is now called X. The post, which was re-posted by several Pfizer U.K. employees, including one senior employee, read:
Our vaccine candidate is 95 percent effective in preventing COVID-19, and 94 per cent effective in people over 65 years old. We will file all of our data with health authorities within days. Thank you to every volunteer in our trial, and to all who are tirelessly fighting this pandemic.
The PMCPA noted in its ruling that the post “contained limited information regarding the efficacy of the vaccine candidate with no safety information provided.”
According to the PMCPA, the post led to an “unlicensed medicine being proactively disseminated on Twitter to health professions and members of the public in the U.K.”
The U.K. watchdog’s panel concluded that “Pfizer U.K. employees, including two senior employees, retweeting on their personal Twitter accounts about the company’s COVID-19 potential vaccine prior to the grant of its marketing authorization, meant that Pfizer had brought discredit upon and reduced confidence in the pharmaceutical industry.”
According to GB News, a Pfizer U.K. spokesman said the company “fully recognizes and accepts the issues highlighted by this PMCPA ruling,” and is “deeply sorry.”
“Pfizer U.K. has a comprehensive policy on personal use of social media in relation to Pfizer’s business which prohibits colleagues from interacting with any social media related to Pfizer’s medicines and vaccines – backed by staff briefings and training,” the spokesman said.
“The personal use of social media by U.K. pharmaceutical industry employees in relation to company business is a challenging area for pharmaceutical companies, in which we continue to take all of the appropriate steps that are reasonably expected of a pharmaceutical company,” the spokesman concluded.
Pfizer U.K. said it had launched a review of its employees’ compliance with its rules for social media use.
This is already the sixth time that PMCPA has repudiated Pfizer. In November 2022, the U.K. drug regulator ruled that the pharma giant’s CEO, Albert Bourla, was “misleading” the public by claiming that his company’s COVID-19 vaccine was safe and necessary for young children.
The complaint against Pfizer in 2022 was brought forward by UsForThem, a group consisting of parents drawing attention to the specific challenges that children faced during the pandemic.
In response to the latest ruling against Pfizer, the head of legal affairs of UsForThem, Ben Kingsley, said: “It’s astonishing how many times Pfizer’s senior executives have been found guilty of serious regulatory offences – in this case including the most serious offence of all under the UK Code of Practice.”
“Yet the consequences for Pfizer and the individuals concerned continue to be derisory. This hopeless system of regulation for a multi-billion dollar life and death industry has become a sham, in dire need of reform,” he concluded.