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TGA considers approving mRNA flu jab despite a 2.2% serious injury rate

Australia’s drug regulator answers questions for controversial over-50s gene-vaccine while Moderna needles for a slice of the US$31 billion cancer market

Alison Bevege's avatar
Alison Bevege
Aug 22, 2026
Cross-posted by Letters from Australia
"Apart from 3 RNAs (12.5 micrograms of each RNA) encoding influenza strain hemagglutinin (HA) glycoproteins: • A/Missouri/11/2025 (H1N1) pdm09-like virus; • A/Michigan/105/20 an A/Darwin/1415/2025 (H3N2)-like virus • B/Pennsylvania/19/2025 each 0.38 mL dose of MFLUSIVA contains the following ingredients: a total lipid content of 0.759 mg (SM-102 (heptadecan-9-yl 8-{(2-hydroxyethyl) [6-oxo-6-(undecyloxy) hexyl] amino}octanoate), polyethylene glycol [PEG] 2000 dimyristoyl glycerol [DMG], cholesterol, and 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine [DSPC]), 0.189 mg Tromethamine, 0.934 mg Tromethamine hydrochloride, 32.6 mg Sucrose, and water for injection. More about Tromethamine as a direct cause of Adverse Events https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/tromethamine-is-a-hazardous-substance"
- GeoffPainPhD

Moderna has a new influenza gene-vaccine that may seriously injure or kill 2.2 percent of recipients.

This sounds like an exaggeration. It’s not.

That is what Moderna’s own studies for mRNA-1010 “mFlusiva” show, as published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Moderna to profit from flu fear. Pic: Alison Bevege, Bondi Beach, 27 December 2021

Serious adverse events were reported in 2.2 percent of the recipients of mRNA-1010, during the Moderna-funded trial.

A “serious adverse event” is an injury that causes death, persistent disability, in-patient hospitalisation or other serious medical episode.

Here it is, see for yourself: Efficacy and Safety of an mRNA Seasonal Influenza Vaccine in Adults, by Leroux-Roels, I; et al.

Of the 20,350 people injected with mRNA-1010, 455 were seriously injured.

The Moderna researchers hid the exact number of injuries from the published study, sticking with “2.2 percent”. It’s in a supplementary appendix that you can’t access without an institutional log-in.

But you can find it in a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) memorandum here, in table 20 on page 54. Archived here.

You can also find tables with more granular descriptions of the injuries at that document.

Moderna reduced 455 down to 449 injuries in Table S8 of its paywalled supplementary document, included in journalist Maryanne Demasi’s analysis here.

Moderna’s trial investigators concluded only three of those 449 injuries were “vaccine-related”. The word “related” injects ambiguity, when there is none.

Forest of the Fallen, Coogee Beach. Pic: Bevege, 17 September 2023

The investigators were a mix of Moderna employees and “independent” clinical trial investigators all of whom were directly funded by Moderna and Blackstone life Sciences, owned by Blackstone, the asset manager which spawned BlackRock.

The Moderna-funded trial used its direct employees on the same team as the independent investigators, ensuring that it was not independent at all.

The trial did not compare the Moderna product with an inert, saline placebo, but against a GSK flu vaccine: Fluarix (also known as Alpharix).

The GSK product harmed less people in the trial than the mRNA did: 392 died or were seriously maimed by GSK’s Fluarix out of 20,353 for 1.9 percent.

All participants in the trial were aged 50 or older.

For this level of risk, Moderna’s mRNA-1010 only gives an absolute risk reduction for influenza of 0.8 percent.

Australia is considering releasing mRNA-1010

Australia’s drug regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration is now considering mRNA-1010 for authorisation in Australia.

You can see the landing page here.

The TGA initially ignored my media request (deadline August 20) asking whether they are going to approve a product with such an alarming potential risk of injury and death.

They have now answered this request.

The TGA Contact Center wrote the following via email:

“All prescription medicines and vaccines are subject to a rigorous scientific and regulatory assessment before any decision is made on registration in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG). As part of this process, the TGA assesses all relevant evidence submitted by the sponsor, including data relating to the product's quality, safety and efficacy, to determine whether the overall benefits outweigh the risks for the proposed Australian population.

A decision on registration will only be made once the TGA has completed its assessment and determined whether the application meets Australia's regulatory requirements.

As the application remains under evaluation, the TGA is unable to provide a comment or speculate on the outcome of an application before the evaluation process has been completed.”

A better question would have been: if they approve it, who is going to be liable for the injuries and deaths? Will the taxpayer again be on the hook as they were for the covid products?

The TGA refuses to publish the names of those within the agency who are directly responsible for approving these products.

Those people are known as the Delegate or Delegates of the Secretary of the Department of Health.

Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, the Department’s Secretary is the one who holds the statutory power to decide whether to register a medicine. They have the legal power to delegate this authority, to the person who actually signs the approval decision.

It is important to know exactly who is responsible for signing these decisions.

Without knowing their names, you can’t know if they are compromised by ties to the companies involved, and you can’t take legal action for redress if injured.

This is the exact defense that was recently heard in Federal Court during the Covid Vaccine Class Action.

Kafka defense in Federal Court after government refuses to name key gene-vaccine decision-makers

Alison Bevege
·
Jul 25
Kafka defense in Federal Court after government refuses to name key gene-vaccine decision-makers

The Commonwealth Government hid the identities of key decision-makers who approved the controversial covid gene-vaccines, the Federal Court heard on Thursday.

Read full story

It’s a vital matter of public interest that this information be published.

The TGA has so far refused to release the names of the delegates who decided to provisionally approve the covid gene-vaccines in 2021, and in their most recent response to my Freedom of Information request, they have tried to impose charges.

Moderna jumps the queue at the FDA

Moderna used a Priority Review Voucher to force the US drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) into an expedited six-month review timeline instead of the standard 10-month review.

These short-cut vouchers are awarded to companies to expedite treatments for things like “neglected tropical diseases” for which there isn’t any existing help.

But once a company has a voucher they can sell it to Big Pharma and it can be used for anything.

They typically sell for up to US$100 million, but at least one recent sale raked in more than US$200 million with prices reportedly surging in the last three years. That gives you an idea of what it’s worth to Big Pharma to shave four months off the safety review process.

Why the FDA chose to approve these shots with no true placebo and a hugely high injury rate is a question for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, head of the over-arching body that oversees all the US health departments including the FDA, NIAID, NIH and Barda.

Kennedy has been increasingly isolated as his lieutenants have been forced out, one by one, and his reforms have been blocked in the courts.

For more on the controversial FDA authorisation of Moderna’s mRNA-1010 product and the isolation of HHS Secretary RFK Jr, see Highwire journalist Jefferey Jaxen’s analysis Is FDA’s New mRNA Flu Shot Approval Proof of Agency’s MAHA Purge?

The FDA’s Acting Commissioner is now Kyle Diamantas, the former Deputy Commissioner for Food who was Kennedy’s Senior Counselor. He replaced Marty Makary who resigned in May.

Journalist Maryanne Demasi has written that the FDA’s own briefing document “exposes clear regulatory malfeasance” because they used pooled data to hide the safety signal in her piece FDA’s botched review of Moderna’s flu mRNA vaccine.

20 years of evidence show flu vaccines don’t really work

Injected influenza vaccines are notoriously ineffective because they provoke blood-borne antibodies which are not useful for fighting off infections that come in through your mucosa.

They don’t stimulate mucosal immunity which is what you need to fight off respiratory-spread infections.

The Cochrane Collaboration was long regarded as the gold standard of science, the peer-reviewer of peer-reviewed studies.

Three separate Cochrane reviews over 20 years have looked at all the evidence for the traditional influenza vaccines, and have concluded there is little evidence that they do much of benefit at all.

“Current yearly registration of candidate influenza vaccines is based on their ability to trigger a good antibody response. But antibody responses are poor predictors of field protection. This is another example of the use of surrogate outcomes in biomedicine, where effects on clinically important outcomes remain unmeasured or unproven from randomised trials: complications and death by influenza,” the Cochrane reviewers wrote.

They are not even certain what causes “influenza-like illnesses”.

In the course of their reviews, Cochrane noted that influenza vaccines make you more (not less) likely to contract other respiratory illnesses.

Now, thanks to mRNA, we can add “dangerous” in addition to a shot that’s not really working.

For an excellent breakdown of Moderna’s mRNA-1010 mFlusiva product, see Dr John Campbell’s YouTube below.

Moderna wants cancer vaccine profits, too

There’s a lot of money in cancer because people will pay anything not to die.

Merck’s cancer immunotherapy Keytruda was the world’s top-earning drug in 2025, raking in US$31.7 billion in sales.

Moderna, which is more correctly viewed as a US Government public-private partnership rather than a normal corporation, has partnered with Merck for a slice of the pie.

Moderna and Merck jointly developed mRNA-4157, the “Intismeran autogene”.

They partnered it with Keytruda, and they are now advertising it via press release.

Intismeran is an investigational, personalised mRNA-based cancer “vaccine” which is custom-designed after analysing a sample of the victim’s tumour.

The idea is to enhance the body’s anti-tumour response alongside Keytruda.

Individualised cancer treatment was a pipe-dream of mRNA for years.

Merck and Moderna have announced their Phase III study results via press release here, archived here.

Oncology Professor Angus Dalgleish says the mRNA products themselves cause cancer due to various problems including immune suppression, DNA contamination and the presence of Simian Virus-40 promoter sequences.

'It's the crime of the century': leading cancer specialist warns Australia on mRNA tumors, briefs Parliament

'It's the crime of the century': leading cancer specialist warns Australia on mRNA tumors, briefs Parliament

Alison Bevege
·
October 7, 2024
Read full story

You won’t be surprised to learn, as Maryanne Demasi reports, Moderna and Merck have not released the data.

“No Phase III results have been published in the peer-reviewed literature, and none have been posted to ClinicalTrials.gov,” Demasi writes.

It’s science by press release again.

It’s just not good enough.

But watch the Mainstream Media report these claims unchallenged, credulous reporters taking at face value everything the white coats tell them.

All the university experts will back them up, because Moderna’s mRNA empire, backed by Gates Foundation, Welcome Trust and the NIH, is funding all of their institutions.

All my Substacks are free and in the public interest, please do share and re-use with credit attribution and a link back to the Substack would be appreciated also.

Visit me on X at LettersFromOz

If you wish to voice your concerns about the mRNA technology directly to the TGA, their contact details are as follows. Be polite and factual only, please.

Therapeutic Goods Administration general line: 1800 020 653 call 9am to 5pm Australian Eastern Time, Monday to Friday only.

From overseas: +61 2 6289 4124 or Fax: (02) 6203 1605. Email: Email for general enquiries: info@tga.gov.au

Write a letter to: TGA, PO Box 100, Woden, ACT, 2606

TGA street address for couriers is the Gulgana Building, 27 Scherger Drive, Fairbairn ACT 2609, which houses the departments handling medical devices and prescription medications authorisation.

Or complain via their online complaints form: https://www.tga.gov.au/contact-us/complaints

Edits/updates: 23 August - changed paragraph order on adverse events to flow better, added updated info on the new cost of Priority Review Vouchers and turned comments on.

27 August - UPDATE - TGA responded via email to my media request, their response has been included above. I have no doubt that the only reason they responded was because of you, the wonderful readers of this Substack, who I have no doubt made use of the TGA’s contact details above, prompting them to respond. Thank you.

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