UK Doctors Group That Pushed COVID Shots for Teens Hid Payments From Pfizer

The U.K.’s Royal College of General Practitioners, which represents over 53,000 GPs, failed to declare payments it received from Pfizer while advocating that children be given the COVID-19 vaccine.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

The U.K.’s Royal College of General Practitioners (GP) failed to declare payments it received from Pfizer while it was advocating that children be given the COVID-19 vaccine, The Telegraph reported last week.

The Royal College of GPs, which represents 54,000 GPs, is the U.K.’s professional body for general medical practitioners, similar to the American Medical Association in the U.S.

In 2021, Pfizer gave the organization 102,820 British pounds ($125,558 USD at current exchange rates) through “donations and grants” and “benefits in kind.” That was more than double the 49,324 pounds ($60,232) Pfizer gave the organization in 2020, up from only 4,309 pounds ($5,262) in 2019.

In September 2021, the U.K.’s chief medical officers, the highest-ranking government public health advisers, asked parents to vaccinate their children to keep schools open, according to The Telegraph.

They issued that advice even though the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises the government on vaccination, opted not to recommend universal vaccination for 12- to 15-year-olds. The JCVI said the benefits of vaccination for that age group were only “marginally greater than the potential known harms.”

Before the chief medical officers made their announcement contradicting the JCVI’s recommendation, they held a series of meetings with public health experts, including with the Royal College of GPs, to solicit their input.

U.K. children’s health advocacy group UsForThem obtained the meeting minutes, which were shared with The Telegraph, through a request made under freedom of information laws.

The minutes showed that the then-chair of the Royal College of GPs, Dr. Martin Marshall, advocated rolling out a COVID-19 vaccine for children. He said the organization had “consulted widely” and there was a “strong consensus” among doctors in favor of vaccinating children ages 12-15.

He also said doctors agreed that if those children were not vaccinated, inequality would worsen.

“Again, they emphasised the importance of how the communication is done,” Marshall said, according to The Telegraph. “They are very concerned about inequalities — which works in both ways — if we don’t vaccinate then inequalities will be exacerbated, if we do and there is differential uptake then this will also exacerbate.”

Although all participants were asked to disclose their conflicts of interest, Marshall did not declare the payments from Pfizer. Pfizer was the only vaccine manufacturer at the time with a COVID-19 shot authorized for kids.

UsForThem founder Molly Kingsley told The Telegraph:

“The CMO [chief medical officer] decision to proceed with the vaccination of children despite the fact that the JCVI had previously declined to authorise a mass rollout was one of — if not the — single most ethically contentious decisions of the entire pandemic.

“In that context, surely one has to question not only what looks to be a material conflict of interest that was not declared, but also why an apparently conflicted party was in the meeting in the first place.”

Dr. James Thorp, who has documented conflicts of interest by medical associations in the U.S., told The Defender the Royal College of GP’s recommendation to give the Pfizer shots to children without supporting scientific data and after having accepted money from Pfizer, “is egregious and appalling.”

However, he said, it isn’t surprising.

“The U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand were the five countries in the world most aggressively pushing the draconian COVID-19 narratives, even demanding inoculations in the most vulnerable, pregnant women, preborns and newborns,” Thorp added.

Six days after meeting the Royal College of GPs, the chief medical officers recommended that the approximately 3 million adolescent school children ages 12-15 living in the U.K. get the shot.

A spokesperson for the Royal College of GPs said in a statement that the college participated in many meetings related to “finding solutions to the health emergency. This particular meeting was purely advisory in nature, and the College had no decision-making role.”

The college follows a “strict sponsorship policy” when working with Big Pharma and complies with the U.K.’s industry guidelines, the spokesperson said. She said the college maintains editorial control of all of its content.

“The College’s income from Pfizer for the year ending March 31 2022 was related to educational resources on migraine and arthritis, amounting to 0.26 per cent of total RCGP income, and had no bearing on discussions related to the pandemic,” she added.

A spokesperson for Pfizer told The Telegraph that the payments Pfizer makes to healthcare organizations are not related to or contingent on them recommending Pfizer’s medications.

Pfizer did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.

Conflicts of interest rampant among public health advisers in vaccine industry

The Telegraph story is the latest of many reports since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic exposing financial ties between government advisers, medical professional organizations, public health agencies and Big Pharma.

“In the U.S., the money trail among the stakeholders of the COVID-19 vaccine to those who pushed the shots is well-established and includes the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) as a founding member of the COVID-19 Community Corps,” Thorp said.

Professional organizations including ACOG took $11 million from the CDC to promote the COVID-19 vaccine as “safe and effective” for pregnant women, according to an investigation co-authored by attorney Maggie Thorp.

Professional organizations like ACOG actively solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from corporate sponsors each year, whom they then promote at their conferences, on their website and in their journals.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) takes in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually directly from companies that make childhood vaccines and other drugs, according to its website.

For example, Moderna, which makes COVID-19 and RSV vaccines; Sanofi, which makes Hib B, DPT, meningococcal and other vaccines; and Merck, which makes HPV, MMR, varicella (chickenpox) and other vaccines, each donate more than $50,000 per year to the AAP.

Direct funding from pharmaceutical companies also extends to the highest levels of public health advisers in the U.S.

The Defender reported that nine new members named in 2024 to the committee that advises the CDC on vaccine recommendations have financial ties to pharmaceutical companies or have worked with public health agencies to promote the COVID-19, RSV or HPV vaccines.

The Defender also reported in 2021 that all 17 members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee who voted 17-0 in favor of authorizing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 5-11 have deep ties to pharma.

Even the peer review process has been corrupted by money from Big Pharma. Payments to peer reviewers for The British Medical Journal, Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine included over $1 billion to individuals or their institutions for research and $64.18 million in general payments, including travel and meals, between 2020 and 2022 alone.