The National Institutes of Health has withdrew it’s motion to dismiss a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense on Wednesday after the organization insisted on keeping hold of records pertaining to communications between NIH researchers and people who contacted the organization about their COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
In April, CHD filed a lawsuit against the NIH on the grounds that the organization had violated the Freedom of Information Act by failing to provide the requested documents nearly six months after the initial request and by keeping important information from the public.
Last month, NIH requested that the lawsuit be dismissed. However, the agency requested permission from the court on Wednesday to withdraw its motion to dismiss the case, stating that it “has determined that it will respond to Plaintiff’s FOIA request” and asking for an extension of time until August 4 to do so.
On Thursday, the judge granted NIH’s request.
Following CHD’s opposition to the NIH’s motion to dismiss last week, which disputed the NIH’s assertions that the FOIA request was “broad and vague” and that it did not “reasonably describe” the requested records, the NIH then changed it’s mind.
The motion “ignores every fact that undercuts its arguments, as well as 25 pages of exhibits,” according to CHD’s filing, which claimed that NIH had cherry-picked portions of the FOIA request to support its case for dismissal.
The NIH was accused of “stonewalling” by Kim Mack Rosenberg, acting general counsel for CHD, because the organization had previously told CHD it had enough information to accommodate the request but never did. Instead, it stopped responding to CHD’s correspondence and later made “baseless claims” in court filings in an effort to have the case dismissed, according to Rosenberg.
CHD argued that its FOIA request was actually very specific in its opposition to NIH’s motion to dismiss. CHD had narrowed and specified its request through earlier back-and-forth correspondence with NIH, and it had given NIH a list of 10 individuals whose communications should be searched as well as a list of search terms to be used to locate the documents.
NIH responded that “since the filing of the motion to dismiss and after considering Plaintiff’s opposition,” the agency decided to fulfill the FOIA request rather than seeking to dismiss the lawsuit.
According to CHD’s lawsuit, numerous individuals with severe, ongoing health issues following the COVID-19 vaccination—including cardiovascular, neurological, and muscular problems—contacted NIH researchers in early 2021.
For testing, the NIH brought some of them in.
The NIH brought some of them in for testing and treatment, as reported in a Jan. 20, 2022, article in Science, and documented a portion of that work in a publicly available paper that detailed an observational study it carried out on 23 people reporting neuropathic symptoms after COVID-19 vaccination.
Several vaccine-injured people, including Brianne Dressen, founder of the React19 nonprofit that supports people with long-term COVID-19 vaccine injuries, also detailed their interactions with NIH to The Defender. They reported that NIH was initially responsive and investigated their injuries but later abruptly halted communication with them.
In response to a FOIA request from CHD, ten NIH researchers were asked to provide communications with people who contacted NIH about health issues they had after receiving COVID-19 injections.
All NIH call logs demonstrating communications with vaccine-injured people, all emails sent and received from them, and all internal communications between NIH researchers regarding any affected people were requested by CHD.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login