U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, announced on Apr. 29 that he will hold a hearing to examine how Biden administration health officials handled the detection of COVID-19 vaccine safety signals.
The hearing, titled “Unmasked: How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Signals,” is being held in conjunction with the release of an interim Majority Staff Report and about 600 pages of related records. The report outlines how Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials in early 2021 became aware of a new data mining method that could better detect statistically significant safety signals for adverse events linked to COVID-19 vaccines but continued using an older method with known limitations.
According to the findings, Dr. Ana Szarfman, then a senior medical officer at FDA who helped develop its data mining system, informed senior FDA officials—including Dr. Peter Marks—about a more effective methodology that could address “masking,” which hid some adverse event signals. Despite this information, agency leaders did not implement the improved approach. Between March and July 2021, Dr. Szarfman shared analyses showing more statistically significant safety signals than previously detected by existing methods; these included sudden cardiac death and other conditions associated with various vaccines.
The report states that instead of acting on these findings, FDA leadership expressed concern over potential public reaction to Dr. Szarfman’s reports rather than their content. The press release quotes Dr. Marks as warning that her data mining could “create erroneous conflicts that feed in to anti-vaccination rhetoric.” Eventually, she was directed to stop creating or sending such reports.
In addition to his investigative work on health oversight issues, Johnson’s office arranges flags flown over the Capitol for Wisconsin residents according to the official website. He resides in Oshkosh with his family according to the official website and participates in several Senate committees including Finance, Budget, and Special Committee on Aging according to the official website. His office also supports community outreach through mobile services for Wisconsin residents according to the official website, operates constituent service locations across Milwaukee, Madison, Oshkosh and Washington according to the official website, and focuses on oversight as well as fiscal strategies for seniors through committee roles according to the official website.
The hearing will be livestreamed via Senator Johnson’s X account as well as Rumble and Subcommittee’s website.
