By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

Among the many incredible revelations over the past five years is the extent of the power of the pharmaceutical companies. Through advertising, they have been able to shape media content. That in turn has affected digital content companies, which responded from 2020 onward by taking down posts that questioned the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines.

They have captured universities and medical journals with donations and other forms of financial control. Finally, they are far more decisive in driving the agenda of governments than we ever knew. Just for example, we found out in 2023 that the NIH shared thousands of patents with pharma, with a market value approaching $1-2 billion. This was all made possible by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which was pushed as a form of privatization but only ended up entrenching the worst corporatist corruptions.

The hold over governments was cemented with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which granted a liability shield to the makers of products that appear on the childhood schedule. The injured are simply not permitted to fight it out in civilian courts. No other industry enjoys such sweeping indemnification under the law.

Pharma today arguably competes with the military munitions industry in its hold over power. No other industry in human history has managed to close the economies of 194 countries to force most of the world's population to wait for its inoculation. Such power makes the East India Company, against which the American founders revolted, look like a corner grocery by comparison.

There is ample talk about how much pharma has suffered since its vaunted product flopped. But let's not be naive. Their power is still ubiquitously on display in every sector of society. The fight at the state level for over-the-counter therapeutics – and for medical freedom for the citizenry – reveals the scope of the challenges ahead. The reformers that now head agencies in Washington are fighting daily through a thicket of influence that goes back many decades.

Just how far in the past does this power extend?

Legend has it that Edward Jenner invented and proved vaccination in 1796 (not a new method but simply cross immunity), a famed discovery celebrated by Thomas Jefferson. In fact, the actual proof of cross immunity from cow pox dates from 22 year earlier with the work of a British farmer named Benjamin Jesty who first proved what folklore had long speculated. Jesty languished in obscurity while Dr. Jenner became the physician to the king himself. Jenner's achievement earned him global fame that reached American shores, where fears of smallpox were society wide.

The first federal effort to push vaccination – however primitive and dangerous – was from President James Madison. "The Act to Encourage Vaccination" of 1813 required that smallpox vaccines be given away for free and properly delivered to anyone who requests them. James Smith (1771–1841), known as the "Jenner of America") had actively lobbied Madison, promising "to forward a supply of genuine Vaccine Matter to the several Surgeons now in the Actual service of the United States—so that, should it be deem'd expedient, they might immediately secure the troops under their Care, from any danger they may be liable to, in case they were exposed to the Contagion of the Small Pox."

Smith was appointed as the vaccine agent for the country. The pretext for such an unusual action – the federal government was not in the business of pushing medical or consumer products at all – was the aftermath of the War of 1812, which gave rise to widespread disease fears. At first, vaccination was limited to wealthy elites and only years later reached the general population. As injury and death piled up, and amidst cries of profiteering and corruption, Congress acted decisively in 1822 to repeal the act.

The turning point in public opinion was what came to be known as the Tarboro Tragedy. James Smith, had...