The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will not release its review of post-COVID-19-vaccination heart inflammation.
The CDC has been performing abstractions on reports of post-vaccination myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
But the agency is saying that federal law prevents it from releasing the results.
The abstractions “are considered medical records which are withheld in full from disclosure,” the CDC told The Epoch Times in a recent letter, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request.
One of the exemptions in the act says that agencies can withhold materials that are “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute, if that statute (i) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue; or (ii) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld; and (B) if enacted after the date of enactment of the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009, specifically cites to this paragraph.”
The CDC pointed to the Public Health Service Act, which was enacted in 1944, and says that vaccine injury reports and other information that may identify a person shall not be made available to any person except the person who received the vaccine or a legal representative for that person.
The information sought is available through the CDC website without details that would identify patients, the agency also said.
The CDC said that it does not have a formal definition of “abstraction” but that it means the process of reviewing medical records, including autopsy reports and death certificates, and recording data in a database. “Please note that this definition means that any abstracted data, because they originate from medical records, is also considered medical records,” a CDC records officer told The Epoch Times in an email.
‘Coverup’
Refusing to release the data raises concerns about transparency, according to Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center.
