By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 2, 2026
Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., an epidemiologist and sports physician, said her decision to follow the data during the COVID-19 pandemic came at a steep professional price.
Her research challenged policies on school closures, masking and COVID-19 vaccines. She said the fallout included losing her position at the University of California, Davis, being dropped from an NPR interview and being fired from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Høeg said her experience exposed the unwillingness of universities, media and public health institutions to adapt when research conflicted with their accepted narratives.
In an interview this week with investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker on The DisInformation Chronicle, Høeg said institutions too often treated the accepted narrative as settled and then dismissed or attacked people who questioned it.
That approach did more than distort the public discussion about COVID-19, Høeg said. It also created a scientific and institutional culture that could affect how other medical questions are handled long after the pandemic.
For Høeg, the solution is simple: Scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads.
“It’s a core belief of mine that you have to be objective when you’re doing scientific studies,” she said. “Otherwise, you just shouldn’t do them. It’s pointless if you’re not willing to be objective.”
‘I … didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in’
During the pandemic, Høeg published 30 to 40 papers on COVID-19 transmission, masking, youth sports, vaccine risk-benefit, pregnancy, long COVID, visitor restrictions and testing.
Some of her research challenged widely accepted claims.
One study found little evidence of COVID-19 transmission among children in Wisconsin schools, which was consistent with data from Europe. Another examined myocarditis risk in boys after their second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose and found the risks outweighed the benefits in boys who didn’t have underlying health conditions.
Høeg said she didn’t initially understand the professional risks she was taking by challenging the prevailing narrative.
“There was sort of a hesitancy to do this sort of research because I think people were afraid for their careers,” she said. “I actually was blessed with having recently moved from Denmark and didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in by doing these sorts of studies.”
At the time, Høeg was conducting research at the University of California, Davis.
She said the university received calls, including from Nature magazine, complaining about her studies on pandemic policies. Eventually, the university asked her not to use her affiliation with the school.
Høeg said the university refused to renew her voluntary position in 2022, after the European Journal of Clinical Investigation published her study on myocarditis risks in boys who received the COVID-19 vaccine.
NPR also dropped an interview with Høeg for “All Things Considered” after she raised concerns about masking children during outdoor sports.
In a pre-interview discussion with NPR, she told the outlet, “We don’t have evidence that these masks work to prevent transmission. … Bottom line is, we shouldn’t be doing these unproven things to children that are harmful.”
Soon after, NPR told Høeg she was no longer needed for the interview.
“It does say a lot about our universities and institutions because it’s like they had been brainwashed to an extent to believe what the media was saying rather than actually look at the data,” Høeg said.
‘They repeated the same wording … even when the data didn’t back it up’
In 2022, Høeg and her colleagues conducted a follow-up analysis of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on school mask mandates.
Høeg said their analysis used a larger dataset and a longer time period and reached the opposite conclusion about the relationship between mask mandates and COVID-19 transmission among children.
The team’s submission to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) was rejected. Høeg said reviewers described the submission as “rife with polemics.”
“Well, maybe it’s polarizing if you disagree with it,” Høeg said.
The rejection unearthed an underlying problem at the CDC, according to Høeg.
“They have a scientific agenda,” she said. “And so as soon as you have a scientific agenda, science has been thrown out the window. Science doesn’t have an agenda other than to find the truth.”
A 2024 analysis by Høeg and colleagues examined 77 mask studies published in the MMWR beginning in 2020. According to Høeg, 75% of the studies said masks were effective, while only 14% reported statistically significant results and none were randomized studies.
One finding especially stood out to her: She said 5% of the studies found masks were connected to higher infection rates, yet “they still concluded that masks worked.”
“They repeated the same wording over and over again in each of the studies, that ‘masks are necessary to decrease the spread’ and ‘masks are critical in controlling the case rates of COVID-19,’” she said. “They use the same sort of wording even when the data didn’t back it up at all.”
‘Why are we demonizing people for looking into this?’
Those concerns followed Høeg into the FDA in late 2025 when she was named acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).
A leaked memo from then-FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad said career staff had linked at least 10 child deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine between 2021 and 2024.
Høeg said she reviewed the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports and found that investigations involving medical records and autopsies had already been conducted.
“My question at the time was … why are these not being made public?” Høeg told Thacker.
Høeg said news leaked that she would present information about the deaths and their possible association with COVID-19 vaccines. She said the media response focused on portraying her as an “anti-vaxxer” rather than asking why the deaths had been investigated but not publicly disclosed.
“If we have these sorts of deaths happening in children due to medical products of any kind, why are we sitting on them for years?” she asked. “That’s the take-home I want people to have from this.”
She also questioned why people who investigate potential safety problems are attacked for trying to expose the dangers.
“Why are we demonizing people for looking into this? … Isn’t that what the public wants?” she asked.
‘The deep state really is a thing’
In May, just days after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, Høeg said she arrived at work to find media reports claiming she had resigned — something she said she knew nothing about.
FDA lawyers later asked her to resign, but she refused to sign the letter. She was subsequently locked out of the agency’s systems and escorted from the building.
Høeg said she never received a performance-based explanation for her termination. She also said the person identified as the author of her termination memo later denied writing or seeing it.
According to Høeg, agency lawyers told her the order came from “way above their pay grade.”
The experience changed how she viewed other departures from the agency. “It opened my eyes to the fact that maybe a number of the people who I thought had resigned really had not resigned,” she said.
“The deep state really is a thing,” she added.
‘Women who want to get pregnant … should be told about these risks’
For Høeg, the concerns she encountered during the COVID-19 era are not limited to COVID-19.
In 2025, she helped organize an FDA panel examining potential risks associated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, during pregnancy.
The American Psychiatric Association criticized the panel for what it called “misinterpretation and unbalanced viewpoints.” Høeg said the media also portrayed any discussion of potential risks as “misinformation about SSRI use” and a signal that depression wasn’t being taken seriously.
According to Høeg, the panel discussed risks already addressed in FDA labeling and scientific research, including miscarriage, premature birth, postpartum hemorrhage, congenital heart defects and neonatal adaptation syndrome.
“This should not be controversial that women who want to get pregnant and who are pregnant should be told about these risks,” she said.
She also warned about the lack of ongoing monitoring of drug safety.
“The FDA is not actively investigating the safety of these products in pregnancy or at all after the initial trials are done,” she said.
Høeg said the discussion should not be interpreted as an argument against treating depression. “I don’t think that any of this should be synonymous with not taking depression seriously,” she said. “That’s just nonsense.”
‘There’s just no reporting on this. … People have died taking this drug’
Høeg also discussed Tavneos, the Amgen-manufactured brand name for avacopan, a drug approved to treat a type of blood-vessel inflammation.
While at CDER, Høeg said she raised concerns that the pivotal clinical trial used to approve the drug had included manipulated data.
According to Høeg, at least eight deaths had been attributed to the drug because of liver injury.
The New England Journal of Medicine later retracted the paper detailing the trial, and European regulators withdrew the drug’s authorization. While the FDA has proposed withdrawing Tavneos’ approval, it remains available in the U.S.
Yet, the media barely covered it.
“There’s just no reporting on this,” Høeg said. “People have died taking this drug. … We asked for them to withdraw it from the market, and the media is just totally silent.”
Thacker: ‘There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber’
Høeg said it is troubling that some of the most disputed COVID-19 policies are still treated as settled questions.
“How is this still part of our collective conversation that people … are still saying school closures were necessary and mask mandates were necessary?” she asked.
Thacker said the failure to learn from those policies could have consequences during the next pandemic. People who developed a “false sense of safety from masks” during COVID-19 could mistakenly assume masks will protect them from a more dangerous virus in the future, he said.
Thacker also questioned whether the country understands anything about the COVID-19 vaccines. “There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber,” he said.
Høeg said the problem stems from the widespread failure to reconsider policies when the evidence changed.
“Once the government decided this is what we have to do, they just kept digging in, even though the data didn’t support it,” she said.
“This is why I keep doing these interviews, because it’s important for people to know the truth.”
Watch Høeg on ‘The DisInformation Chronicle’ podcast here:
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 2, 2026
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Thursday sued Pfizer and its CEO, Albert Bourla, alleging that the drugmaker misled the public by marketing its COVID-19 vaccine as safe and effective while not disclosing the vaccine’s potential risks to pregnant women, children and teenagers.
The 49-page lawsuit alleges Pfizer violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act by deceptively marketing its vaccine to the public in turn for making billions of dollars in profit.
According to the complaint, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine marketing campaign focused on two principal themes: that the shot “posed no material safety risks” and that “mass vaccination was necessary to stop the transmission of COVID-19” — even though Pfizer never tested the vaccine’s ability to stop the virus from spreading.
Pfizer possessed extensive evidence that its vaccine caused serious adverse events — including 1,223 reported deaths following vaccination as of February 2021 and 52 miscarriages among vaccinated pregnant women. However, the company assured the public the vaccine was safe.
“Today we sued Pfizer for deceptively marketing the products as safe — making billions — while pregnant women were miscarrying their babies and teenagers were having heart attacks,” Uthmeier said in a statement.
Florida AG says state has track record of success with similar lawsuits
In a statement, Pfizer said the allegations are baseless, and that the “representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based” and that it “stands behind the safety and efficacy” of the product.
But Forrest B. Saunders, communications director for Uthmeier’s office, told The Defender “the complaint and comments by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier speak for themselves.”
Saunders said Florida has a track record of success with such lawsuits, having “recovered millions for Floridians through consumer protection efforts.”
Naomi Wolf, CEO of Daily Clout and author of “The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity,” helped release documents in 2023 and 2024 revealing serious adverse events among pregnant women and irreversible harms to reproductive health. She called the lawsuit “a glimmer of potential justice long overdue.”
Florida resident Haley Schwartz, who was seriously injured following her COVID-19 vaccination in 2021, also welcomed the suit. She said injuries caused by the vaccine “have received inadequate attention” for years.
“Finally seeing these issues examined through a formal legal process feels significant and creates an important opportunity for greater scrutiny, transparency, and accountability regarding what was communicated to the public,” Schwartz said.
The lawsuit seeks civil penalties of $10,000 for each violation of the state’s consumer protection law — and $15,000 for each violation involving an elderly or disabled person.
Florida seeks to force Pfizer to return some of its profits and is asking for a permanent injunction against further deceptive practices.
Pfizer’s deceptive marketing sought to ‘ensure windfall profits’
According to the complaint, Pfizer engaged in a deceptive and “wide-ranging marketing campaign” to “drive consumer demand” for its COVID-19 vaccine, overcome widespread public skepticism and “ensure windfall profits.”
“This emphasis on the purported safety of the vaccine directly responded to widespread public concerns about a pharmaceutical product that had been developed on an unusually accelerated timeline, with uniquely limited testing and oversight, and employing novel mRNA technology,” the complaint states.
Pfizer’s campaign included public statements by Bourla claiming the COVID-19 vaccine was safe. The complaint cites a January 2023 interview in which Bourla claimed that Pfizer had not detected “a single [safety] signal” linked to the vaccine.
The complaint suggests public skepticism was warranted:
“Pfizer knew that data showed its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to myocarditis and pericarditis among minors; had reason to believe its COVID-19 vaccine would cause adverse events for pregnant women and their unborn babies in the first trimester, including miscarriage [and] thousands of reports of other adverse events including stroke and even death, especially among the elderly.”
By Feb. 28, 2021, Pfizer’s internal adverse event database already contained 158,893 adverse event reports and reports of 1,223 deaths linked to its COVID-19 shot, according to the complaint.
Pfizer by then also “possessed reports for 458 pregnant women exposed to its COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy” — over half of whom sustained at least one adverse event. Of 52 miscarriages, most occurred during the first trimester, “many within days of vaccination.”
Pfizer ended its COVID-19 vaccine trial involving pregnant women early, due to low participation, particularly among women in the early stages of pregnancy. But the drugmaker didn’t disclose “material facts already in its possession showing the risks associated with its COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy.”
Pfizer official admitted vaccine not tested for stopping transmission
Pfizer promoted its COVID-19 vaccine as a means of “protecting … loved ones” through a “wide-ranging marketing campaign” which suggested that the vaccine would stop the spread of COVID-19, the suit alleges.
But Janine Small, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, said the vaccine was not tested on stopping the virus, according to a 2021 statement cited in the lawsuit.
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the “assurances of safety the company gave required knowledge Pfizer simply did not have.”
He cited a February 2021 Pfizer “nonclinical overview” document listing an extensive range of safety studies Pfizer did not conduct.
“Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine may actually have been the least-studied approved product it has made this century,” Jablonowski said.
The lawsuit alleges that Pfizer’s misleading marketing claims translated into a financial windfall for Pfizer and Bourla. Between 2020 and 2023, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine revenue exceeded $80 billion, and Bourla received nearly $102 million in compensation.
Legal liability shield may not protect Pfizer in Florida lawsuit
COVID-19 countermeasures, including vaccines, are protected by a legal liability shield under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) of 2005.
Attorney Ray Flores, CHD’s senior outside counsel, said these protections may not extend to state-level consumer protection cases.
“All states have consumer protection statutes that normally would allow individual consumers to bring suit for fraudulent practices. Under the PREP Act, however, only states have the potential for successful suits,” Flores said.
Kansas and Texas have active lawsuits against Pfizer in the 10th and 5th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, respectively. The suits make similar claims to Florida’s — namely, that Pfizer violated state consumer protection laws by marketing its COVID-19 vaccine as safe and effective.
“All three cases are remarkably similar, as they are brought under parens patriae,” a legal principle that allows states to file lawsuits to protect state residents, Flores said.
However, he said Florida’s lawsuit may face obstacles, as Pfizer may seek to move the case from state to federal court “to invoke PREP Act protection” — similar to what the company did in the Kansas and Texas lawsuits.
Flores said other states may be waiting on the sidelines for the outcomes of the Texas and Kansas cases.
“I wish more attorneys general would take such legal action,” Flores said. “There was a rumor back in 2024 that Utah, Mississippi and Louisiana were also suing Pfizer. It sounded good, and got lots of press, but it was never true.”
Flores also said he would like to see state attorneys general pressure U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “flex his muscles” by ending the PREP Act’s liability shield for COVID-19 vaccines.
Bourla defended the liability shield for vaccine makers in an interview last year.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
C'est un texte court, ce qu'on appelle souvent une novella, et c'est un texte ancien (2008), mais il est une parfaite introduction à l'univers d'un des plus importants auteurs de science-fiction d'aujourd'hui. Ian McDonald fait montre dans Aspects d'une imagination rarement déployée avec autant de vigueur et aussi peu de pages, et y met déjà en scène l'essentiel de ses préoccupations. Dans un lointain futur, l'humanité s'est multipliée en quantité d'espèces, toutes adaptées à des environnements très différents. Sur Tay, monde-océan, le jeune Ptey va se rendre à la Maison de Multiplication, pour « déplier » les huit personnalités qui le constituent, chaque « aspect » possédant un nom, un caractère propre… Mais, « la nuit où Pley traversa la mer pour aller se faire fracasser l'âme, huit cents étoiles entreprirent de traverser le ciel ». Une invasion extraterrestre (si tant est que le mot ait encore un sens) qui va le conduire à un voyage à travers l'espace : il suit ces membres de la communauté « anpreen » qui fuient une menace obscure, et au long d'une épopée de millions d'années, il changera de forme, il changera de nom, il accueillera sa posthumanité. On pense, et peu importe le nombre de pages, à L'Odyssée, on pense à un classique du genre comme Créateur d'étoiles (réédité en 2026 aux mêmes éditions Le Bélial') d'Olaf Stapledon, pour cette évocation des divers destins d'une humanité en miettes et qui se cherche.
Ce goût des peuples, des cultures, est spécifique de l'art de McDonald. Dès ses premiers romans, il a fait glisser la science-fiction hors de l'occidentalisme qui l'imprègne si souvent. Père écossais, mère irlandaise, il a 5 ans en 1965 quand sa famille s'installe en Irlande du Nord, et il vit toujours à Belfast. Ce sont d'abord les conflits qui déchiraient son pays qu'il a transposés dans un avenir assez crédible. Puis il s'est ouvert à l'Inde dans ce qui demeure son chef-d'œuvre, Le Fleuve des dieux (Folio SF, 2013) — en 2047, une rivalité très forte naît autour des problèmes liés à la gestion de l'eau —, à la Turquie avec La Maison des derviches (Folio SF, 2015), qui met en scène, là encore dans un avenir proche, deux thèmes qui lui deviendront chers, la nanotechnologie et le terrorisme… Et ce ne sont là que quelques titres parmi d'autres. Tous témoignent de l'intérêt que McDonald porte aux mœurs, aux langues, aux systèmes philosophiques « exotiques », quitte à les aborder dans toutes leurs complexités et à rendre la lecture de ses livres plus difficile que les space operas classiques. En déplaçant ainsi le centre de ses histoires, il interroge la colonisation, le capitalisme ou l'intelligence artificielle (IA) du point de vue des victimes du système.
On pouvait craindre que, à l'instar de celle d'un James A. Michener déclinant sur tous les coins du globe la même forme de récit contant un lieu, de la préhistoire aux temps modernes, cette quête ne tourne au procédé. Mais McDonald s'est renouvelé en investissant d'autres… espaces. Dans la trilogie Luna (2015-2019), les conflits liés à la mondialisation sur la Lune deviennent un feuilleton qui a beaucoup été comparé au Trône de fer. Et c'est l'univers galactique qui devient le terrain de jeu et le champ de bataille des forces du profit. Le space opera avec McDonald est parfois énigmatique, souvent initiatique, toujours politique et assez enthousiasmant.
Traduit de l'anglais par Gilles Goullet Le Bélial', Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne, 2026, 128 pages, 11,90 euros.
« J'en ai une telle joie que cela me remue jusqu'au fond des entrailles. » Le lecteur pourra être surpris d'apprendre que ce cri triomphal de Johann Wolfgang von Goethe accompagne sa découverte d'un os. Oliver Matuschek raconte la passion avec laquelle il a cherché à démontrer toute sa vie l'existence de l'os intermaxillaire chez tous les mammifères, contre l'avis de ses contemporains : « pour presque tous les anatomistes », son absence « chez l'homme constituait une caractéristique décisive qui prouvait une évolution distincte de celle des animaux ». La volonté de démontrer que l'éléphant en possède un lui aussi anime Goethe, qui composera finalement un Essai d'ostéologie comparée, dont le texte était accompagné de dix-huit illustrations de Johann Christian Wilhem Waitz, reproduites avec soin par les éditions Macula avec d'autres documents d'époque. On plonge dans un monde intellectuel passionné pour lequel un détail anatomique n'est pas une information vaine ni sèche : « Chaque créature n'est qu'une nuance et un son à l'intérieur d'une vaste harmonie qu'il faut étudier elle aussi dans sa totalité, sinon chaque élément n'est qu'une lettre morte. »
Traduit de l'allemand par Brigitte Cain-Hérudent, Macula, Paris, 2025, 96 pages, 18 euros.
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