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.
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.
Pfizer’s statement goes on to describe the research it acknowledges conducting. 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.
Robert Malone says
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