Aaron Siri is the Managing Partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP and has experience in civil litigation matters, with a focus on civil rights, class actions and commercial litigation. | Facebook/The Aaron Siri Appreciation Society
Aaron Siri is the Managing Partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP and has experience in civil litigation matters, with a focus on civil rights, class actions and commercial litigation. | Facebook/The Aaron Siri Appreciation Society
At last month’s Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee hearing, civil rights attorney Aaron Siri said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be a cold, hard and independent regulatory agency that looks at data clinically to decide whether a vaccine is safe and effective.
“The FDA does not stay in its lane,” Siri said during the hearing. "It promotes products even before they are licensed. They view themselves as antagonistic to the population, instead of siding with and protecting consumers. They side with the companies to defend against any claims made by consumers."
Siri, who works with the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), employs more than 30 professionals who engage exclusively in vaccine policy work, vaccine injury claims, as well as vaccine exemptions for military, immigration, school and work.
“The unique nature of the vaccine practice we have is we don’t represent pharmaceutical companies,” he said at the hearing. “We bring the cases that are typically seeking to hold companies and the government accountable (with) regard to their work and practice related to vaccines.”
The New York-based class action and complex civil litigator sued the FDA because it refused to release data showing the licensing process for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
“They took the position that they were only going to produce 500 pages a day, which would have taken at least 75 years or longer,” he said. “The FDA had to be ordered by a federal judge, by a separate branch of government, to timely produce the data it relied upon for licensing the COVID-19 vaccine.”
Siri was among the panelists at the hearing who critiqued the state of Arizona’s COVID-19 response. The two-day event was cochaired by state Rep. Steve Montenegro (R-Litchfield Park) and state Sen. Janae Shamp (R-Surprise).
“The critical issue from my perspective is recognizing that vaccines are just products,” Siri told the audience at the hearing. “They are not given by God at Sinai. They're just products. There is what public health authorities tell you about their safety and efficacy, and then there is a reality to what that actually is.”
Siri also touched on topics like vaccine injuries, data transparency, mRNA clinical trials and deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines.
“The moment they coerce and mandate you to take a vaccine, they make the question of the safety and efficacy of those products no longer just a medical issue,” he said during his nearly two-hour presentation. “They make it a civil and individual rights issue. I'm not talking about this from a medical perspective. I'm talking about safety and advocacy from a civil and individual rights perspective.”
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