Lawyers for Australia’s medical regulator have written to former Liberal MP Craig Kelly demanding the United Australia Party (UAP) and Kelly stop distributing misleading information on COVID-19 vaccines drawn from the regulator’s adverse event notifications database.
A Sydney Morning Herald report says the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) lawyers also allege the UAP leader breached copyright by taking select extracts from the regulator’s adverse event notifications database, which were then distributed to the public through text messages. Lawyers for the TGA “have written to United Australia Party leader Craig Kelly alleging breach of copyright and demanding that the party stops distributing incomplete extracts of adverse event reports relating to COVID-19 vaccines that the TGA believes could be seriously misleading", the medical regulator said.
The party, founded by Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer, has sent messages to more than 14 million phones with misleading information about vaccines. Last week the medical regulator was preparing to take legal action against Kelly over the text campaign. The database of adverse event notifications does not show whether a medicine or vaccine caused the reported side effect.
The TGA has to conduct further investigations before any connection can be confirmed, and reports of confirmed or probable adverse events linked to the vaccines are published in weekly vaccine safety reports. “The extracts disseminated by the United Australia Party excluded this important information at the beginning of the reports as well as the statement indicating that the information is subject to copyright under Australian law,” the TGA statement said.
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