Freedom of Information Act requests are rarely speedy, but when a group of scientists asked the federal government to share the data it relied upon in licensing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, the response went beyond typical bureaucratic foot-dragging. As in 55 years beyond. That's how long the Food & Drug Administration in court papers this week proposes it should be given to review and release the trove of vaccine-related documents responsive to the request. If a federal judge in Texas agrees, plaintiffs Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency can expect to see the full record in 2076. The 1967 FOIA law requires federal agencies to respond to information requests within 20 business days. Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA note in court papers that the plaintiffs are seeking a huge amount of vaccine-related material about 329,000 pages. The plaintiffs, a group of more than 30 professors and scientists ... filed suit in September in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, seeking expedited access to the records. But the FDA can't simply turn the documents over. The records must be reviewed to redact "confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials," wrote DOJ lawyers. To meet the plaintiffs' proposed FOIA deadline, the FDA would have to process a daunting 80,000 pages a month. But the plaintiffs note that the FDA has 18,000 employees and a budget of $6 billion.