IMA Calls on Congress to End Regulatory Capture & National Citizens’ Coalition Calls on Scientific Publishers to Correct ‘Misinformation’ Errors

October 12, 2026

https://imahealth.substack.com/p/ima-after-the-bmj-investigation-congress?

IMA: After The BMJ Investigation, Congress Must Act

After The BMJ investigation, IMA calls on Congress to end regulatory capture with five reforms to fix the vaccine safety failures the probe exposed.

Independent Medical Alliance

Oct 01, 2026

After The BMJ investigation, Congress must act

Did industry capture help silence COVID shot safety warnings? The BMJ’s findings demand an answer from lawmakers.

The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a national coalition of independent physicians, researchers and clinicians, today called on Congress to end the regulatory capture that may have contributed to the COVID vaccine safety failures documented by The BMJ.

The BMJ found that CDC and FDA officials were warned that the data mining tool they relied on to scan vaccine injury reports was blind to signals from the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots. Officials kept the tool and told the FDA scientist who raised the problem to back off. Then they assured the public there were no safety signals.

Pfizer and Moderna had record years. Pfizer’s Comirnaty brought in roughly $37 billion to $38 billion in each of 2021 and 2022. Moderna went from $803 million in revenue in 2020 to more than $18 billion in 2021, almost entirely from Spikevax.

The CDC didn’t run its second promised analysis until 2022. When it did, the analysis flagged myocarditis and other events as safety signals week after week, even as the CDC director publicly described the results as showing nothing unexpected.

Throughout the rollout, the federal government acted as regulator, largest buyer, liability shield, and, with Moderna, development partner. Several senior officials who oversaw these products later took high-paying jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.

“Congress needs to connect the dots and find out exactly where the pressure to overlook this data came from,” said Dr. Joseph Varon, President and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. “Frontline doctors, me included, were speaking up about the injuries we were seeing from the COVID shot. They used flawed FDA and CDC data to shut us down.”

IMA is calling on Congress to enact five reforms.

1. Separate the functions. The FDA’s biologics center authorized the mRNA shots and also controlled the safety analysis that could have raised questions about them. The CDC promoted vaccine uptake while co-running VAERS. Post-market vaccine safety should sit in an office that does not answer to the people responsible for vaccination rates, and whose findings cannot be overruled because they might fuel “rhetoric.”

2. Slow the revolving door. Senior officials who personally handled authorization, labeling or safety-signal decisions for a class of products should be barred for a set number of years from taking a paycheck, consulting contract or board seat with any manufacturer of that class. The FDA should also publish an annual accounting of where its departing medical reviewers go.

3. Make safety analyses public from day one. Any emergency product that floods VAERS should automatically trigger at least two pre-specified data mining methods, including one designed to catch effects shared across a product class. Post weekly results to a public docket the same week they’re produced. If a method is known to be insensitive, every official statement that cites it should say so.

4. Protect the scientist who brings bad news. Ana Szarfman was a career FDA officer. She was told to hold off, and when she persisted, to stop. Congress should give federal safety scientists who flag defects in active surveillance systems statutory protection, including a private right of action if they are removed from the work for speaking up.

5. Put practicing physicians in the room. Safety rules that affect every household shouldn’t be written only by people who will never treat the 24-year-old with chest pain. Frontline doctors need a real seat at the table.

“We’re done accepting ‘trust us’ from agencies that kept a broken alarm running and then pointed to the silence,” Varon said. “If they want the public’s trust back, they can start by taking the fox out of the henhouse.”

The BMJ investigation is available at bmj.com. To arrange an interview with one of our doctors, contact Lynne@imahealth.org.

About Dr. Joseph Varon

Dr. Joseph Varon is a critical care physician, professor, and president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. He has authored over 1000 peer-reviewed publications and serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Independent Medicine. You can read more of Dr. Varon’s IMA posts here.

For more:

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https://read.sayerji.com/p/correct-the-record-make-accountability?

Peer-Reviewed Misinformation: The Journals That Lent Science’s Authority to a Blacklist

How the “Disinformation Dozen” narrative moved into academic literature—and why major publishers must answer for the claims they published.

Sayer Ji

Oct 08, 2026

An open letter to Springer Nature, ACM, Sage, and The BMJ, exposing discrepancies between their published claims and editorial correction policies—with highlighted policy-versus-passage exhibits and a demand for stronger scientific accountability and the issuance of formal corrections.

Share the X thread for this open letter.

This investigation is part of a broader effort to establish accountability for the use of misinformation designations against identifiable Americans.

In September 2026, we launched Restore the First, a national citizens’ coalition bringing together 20 organizations and eight independent media outlets to address censorship, government accountability, and enforceable protections for First Amendment rights.

The coalition was convened by six Americans named in the original “Disinformation Dozen” report. Our work now extends beyond the conduct of government agencies and technology platforms to a question of scientific accountability: What happens when published research perpetuates inaccurate or unsupported allegations against the very people targeted for censorship?

We are calling on scientific publishers to examine the documented discrepancies, correct consequential errors, and strengthen their correction policies so that no individual is denied an impartial review because of their views or reputation.

The institutions that claim authority to identify misinformation must themselves be accountable for the accuracy of their claims.

The Organization Behind the Blacklist Now Faces Federal Scrutiny

In a striking development, Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate—the organization responsible for the original “Disinformation Dozen” campaign—is now the subject of U.S. government deportation proceedings. In September 2026, a federal district court dismissed his lawsuit challenging the government’s actions, and Ahmed appealed.

Although these immigration proceedings do not constitute a judicial finding that CCDH’s research was false, they place renewed scrutiny on an organization whose allegations helped shape media coverage, government pressure, and subsequent academic publications.

The question for scientific publishers is unavoidable: Did they independently scrutinize CCDH’s evidence before lending their institutional authority to allegations against identifiable Americans?

The credibility of a scientific claim must rest on its evidence—not on the influence or perceived authority of the organization promoting it. (See link for article)

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**Comment**

It was recently exposed by MedPage Today that ACIP decisions were “really made” behind closed doors, in violation of FAHA.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires that advisory committees serving the executive branch operate with strict public transparency, establishing that meetings must generally be open to public attendance and announced in advance via the Federal Register.

For more:

The worst purveyors of ‘misinformation’ for the past six years have been our public ‘health authorities,’ government, science publications, mainstream medicine, the White House, & media, Big Tech, globalists, Big Pharma, and ‘professional’ medical groups.

Category:

Activism, research, Treatment, vaccines, Viruses

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