Pfizer denied it conducts gain-of-function research on COVID-19 in a long-awaited but indirect response to a bombshell Project Veritas hidden camera sting that captured a company official describing either proposed or ongoing experiments by the pharmaceutical firm.
“Allegations have recently been made related to gain of function and directed evolution research at Pfizer and the company would like to set the record straight,” the company’s statement began. “In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.”
The company statement, released late Friday, did not mention the Project Veritas video, which was posted Wednesday evening and has received over 20 million views despite being banned from YouTube. In that video, a man identified as Jordon Walker, Pfizer’s director of research and development, strategic operations – mRNA scientific planner, divulges that the company has considered mutating COVID-19 through “directed evolution” in monkeys to develop new vaccines.
Almost 20,000,000 views 👀 pic.twitter.com/xaRvlD5qTo
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) January 28, 2023
In a subsequent video, Walker is confronted by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and claims he lied on the video to impress his date. In a disturbing meltdown, Walker seizes a tablet from O’Keefe and smashes it.
In the original video, Walker’s claim the company has at least considered mutating the virus in order to manufacture vaccines is just one of several disturbing assertions. He also implies federal regulators don’t enforce laws on Pfizer in hopes of landing jobs there and that the company expects COVID to be a “cash cow” for years to come.
When Walker described to the undercover Project Veritas reporter the process of mutating the virus by infecting monkeys, the reporter opines that it sounds like gain-of-function research, in which viruses are manipulated to become more dangerous. Gain-of-function research, possibly funded in part by a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is suspected by some experts in the alleged creation of COVID-19 inside a lab in Wuhan, China. Walker insists the research he is describing is “directed evolution” research and not gain-of-function.
Pfizer’s statement goes on to describe the research it acknowledges conducting.
“Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern,” the Pfizer statement read. “This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required.”
Pfizer said the research usually involves only computer simulations, but added that, “in a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.”
Critics accused Pfizer of dissembling and said that what the company acknowledged in its statement is effectively gain-of-function research.
1) Pfizer lawyers did not throw their Director of R&D Operations and Scientific Planning under the bus. 2) there is no denial of what he said. 3) No denial that he is Pfizer staff. 4) Swapping new spike sequences into original Wuhan-1 is technically gain of function research.
— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) January 28, 2023
“Swapping new spike sequences into original Wuhan-1 is technically gain of function research,” tweeted Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the mRNA technology used to deliver Pfizer’s COVID vaccine but has since warned that it is unsafe and ineffective.