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FDA Adviser Inadvertently Confirms Pfizer is Doing Gain-of-Function Research

by Will Jones
1 February 2023 5:03 PM

They’re starting to come now – the ‘debunkings’ of the Pfizer undercover video sting, in which executive Jordon Trishton Walker, “Director of Research and Development – Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning”, tells his ‘date’ that Pfizer is looking to mutate the virus “so we could create preemptively developed new vaccines, right”.

Pfizer released a statement on Friday, which notably did not deny that Dr. Walker works for the company (a fact which has anyway been confirmed via internet searches). Now the latest ‘debunking’ effort comes from Medpage Today.

After making the odd claim that “it is currently unclear if the man in the video is actually an employee of Pfizer, and if that is his real name” (journalism isn’t what it used to be), writer Michael DePeau-Wilson notes that Pfizer’s statement “summarily debunk[ed] the claims made in the video”, as the company stated that it “has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research” related to its “ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine”.

While it is true that the statement does say this, it also says that “we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern”. Furthermore, it admits that:

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. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.

Despite the initial denial, then, what is being described here plainly is gain-of-function research – after all, the company is engineering the original virus to express the spike protein from new variants of concern, variants which are ‘of concern’ precisely because their spike protein has immune-evasive properties.

In case there is any doubt about this, FDA vaccine adviser Dr. Paul Offit inadvertently confirms it in the Medpage piece.

“Usually, when people talk about gaining function, they’re talking about making it so that the virus is either more deadly or more easily transmitted or that it now can jump species,” Dr. Offit says.

“[T]rying to make the virus more immune-evasive or more contagious… would be considered gain-of-function research,” he adds.

Right, so exactly what Pfizer has said it is doing – engineering “the original SARS-CoV-2 virus… to express the spike protein from new variants of concern”.

Offit tries to obfuscate, stressing that “Pfizer has been working with an mRNA platform that is coded for coronavirus spike proteins, not a whole virus”.

Yes, the vaccine does not use whole virus. But no one said it does. The matter at hand is what Pfizer is doing to the virus as part of its vaccine development research. And Pfizer is clear that it is engineering “the original SARS-CoV-2 virus… to express the spike protein from new variants of concern”. The whole virus, note.

Offit then implies that it isn’t gain-of-function research because the variant has already been created by “mother nature” and Pfizer is just reproducing what nature has already done.

If there was some evil hand back there that was trying to make the virus more immune-evasive or more contagious, that would be considered gain-of-function research, but it’s not happening. The evil hand is mother nature.

But even if the variant already exists in nature, that doesn’t mean it’s not gain-of-function research to engineer a virus to gain the immune-evasive mutation in the lab. Besides, how can you be sure you’re producing the exact same variant and not some subtly (or not-so-subtly) new and more immune-evasive variant?

Offit then appears to betray an ignorance of the process of making the vaccine, as he says the “remarkably effective” development involved sequencing SARS-CoV-2 in “a matter of months”. In fact, the virus was sequenced several times even in the last week of December 2019, and took a couple of days each time, not months.

Perhaps needing to restore his reputation with the politico-medical establishment after his criticism of the boosters last month (is this why he was given the job of defending Pfizer?), he is now effusive with praise for the mRNA vaccines. “This is the best medical achievement in my lifetime,” he says. “And my lifetime includes the development of the polio vaccine.”

Thus, despite the denials that what Pfizer is doing is gain-of-function research – denials which presumably take advantage of the fact that ‘gain-of-function’ is not rigorously defined – it’s clear that what Pfizer admits to doing falls squarely within the definition cited by Dr. Offit, namely the commonly accepted one, which includes making the virus more “immune-evasive”.

And they appear to tacitly acknowledge that, which is why they make their excuses. In Pfizer’s case, that it is “required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products” and “carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world”. In Offit’s case that Pfizer was just copying “mother nature”.

In fact, though, as Dr. Robert Malone has pointed out, Pfizer has previously been upfront that it is doing this research, including in an August 2021 article in STAT News, and almost nothing in the undercover video is new. Why such a fuss was made about scrubbing it from the internet is therefore an interesting question – though this may be more linked to the sensation around it than the facts, which Pfizer’s response anyway did not deny. How could it, when those facts were already on public record?

Perhaps the main lesson, then, is that we all need to be paying more attention.

We also need to think hard about what kind of research should be allowed and what should be banned. The reaction to the Project Veritas video suggests a strong feeling that this kind of work should not be done – including when it is (supposedly) imitating what nature has already created. The fear in the public is real and justified, and relates to the folly of engineering viruses to make them worse. Can this ever be a good idea? My feeling is there’s no need to go beyond the viruses and variants nature already provides us with, and to stick to using real specimens, not engineered ones. But the current regulatory regime and scientific establishment clearly disagrees.

Whatever the right answer, we need to be able to talk about this properly. Not be subject to global, military grade censorship when someone tries to raise the topic as a matter of public concern, albeit in a sensational (and entertaining) way.

Tags: COVID-19Gain of Function ResearchPfizerProject VeritasVaccineVariants

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20 Comments
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago

“We also need to think hard about what kind of research should be allowed and what should be banned.”

Big pharma, “public health”, governments, medicine/vaccine “regulators”, the entire medical establishment globally with few exceptions, those working in academia in related fields, have colluded and doubled down in the most damaging and costly “public health” action in global history, by some margin. They are a menace and cannot be trusted. It’s hard to imagine that anything other than banishing the lot of them and starting again is going to fix that. Deeply corrupt and dishonest.

134
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

GOF research needs to be banned yesterday, worldwide, NO exceptions! It is all risk and no benefit. No real cures or safe vaccines have ever resulted from it, only dangerous viruses, which can leak out at any time.

Last edited 2 years ago by True Spirit of America Party
8
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riskit
riskit
2 years ago

Is it all incidental ? and even true – could it still be a smokescreen ?

https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/why-all-the-breathless-finger-wagging?

16
-1
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
2 years ago
Reply to  riskit

Is Pfizer the fall guy for the oligarchs, in other words?

0
0
Sforzesca
Sforzesca
2 years ago

Some may think it a backward step for humanity if all biomed/genetic/viral research/defence, lol,/ labs were fire bombed to a crisp, with, unfortunately all those responsible involved inside. Oh, as an aside, all bigpharma conglomerates as well.

Others may think that would be doing a service to humanity.

If that were to happen, do you think humanity would be better off?

48
-2
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
2 years ago
Reply to  Sforzesca

Apointless question because it is not going to happen.

6
-10
Mogwai
Mogwai
2 years ago

This did make me chuckle though. Good on them. Wonder how long it was parked there for. It seems totally fitting that this bloke goes viral…

https://rumble.com/v27wiby-project-veritas-rented-an-led-truck-and-parked-it-outside-of-pfizer-world-h.html

29
0
Valerius
Valerius
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Brilliant

8
0
RW
RW
2 years ago

We could perhaps ban GOP (“gain of Pfizer”) research, to prevent the creation of more medical products which end up being a gain for Pfizer and a loss for everyone else.

40
0
Elizabeth Hart
Elizabeth Hart
2 years ago

That scientists were trying to ‘mutate viruses’ emerged in December 2011, when Ron Fouchier announced at the European Scientific Working group on Influenza (ESWI) meeting that his team had “mutated the hell out of H5N1”.
This was very alarming…research that was first called ‘dual use’, and them became known as ‘gain of function’.
At the time, I questioned if this research, which was funded by Fauci’s NIH, was in breach of the Biological Weapons Convention, see:
An open letter to the NSABB re the political and ethical implications of lethal virus development, 31 January 2012.
A submission to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) re Opposition to Lab-engineering of Potentially Lethal Pathogens,17 December 2012.

17
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Elizabeth Hart
Elizabeth Hart
2 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Hart

But here’s something interesting to think about re Fouchier and co ‘mutating the hell out of H5N1’…
As I note in my letter to the CDC and HHS in December 2012, linked to in my previous comment:

Subsequent to the furore surrounding his controversial research, Fouchier did a 180 degree turnaround on his claims about the lethality of his lab-engineered virus. Apparently the virus he created was neither as contagious nor as dangerous as people had been led to believe. (Emphasis added.)

So it wasn’t deadly after all… All that beat up for what exactly?
Just like Covid, which also isn’t so deadly after all… But Covid was a manufactured crisis that created the highly lucrative Covid industry, which was also used as the excuse to implement controls over the population.

19
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Elizabeth Hart
Elizabeth Hart
2 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Hart

Speaking of gain of function, consider an interview re controversial influenza H7N9 gain of function experiments, broadcast on Dispatch Radio in August 2013, in which Vincent Racaniello, Higgins Professor of Microbiology & Immunology, Columbia University, stated:

So a ‘gain of function’ simply means that you take a virus and you change it in some way so it does something new, so it does something that it didn’t do before. That’s all that means. It’s quite simple. So you could for example take this H7N9 virus and make it resistant to an anti-viral drug, that would be a gain of function…

So, to really understand how this virus works, and really any other virus, we do gain of function studies all the time. We don’t make a big deal of it, we don’t write letters telling the world that we’re going to do them because that’s not the way science works. Science works by just doing your experiments. We do this because we would like to see what kinds of changes would lead to a gain of function, and what would be the consequences. 

So, in the case of this virus, these investigators want to make the virus drug resistant. As you know, there are a couple of anti-virals that you can use if you get influenza – Tamiflu, Relenza – and these investigators want to make the virus resistant.  And the reason they want to do that is to see if a drug resistant mutant would have any properties that would make it scarier in people. 

So there is really a goal to these experiments. They want to know if you change the virus what might be the consequences for people.  And as I said this is done all the time but these virologists decided to tell the world about it. 

Vincent Racaniello says “we do gain of function studies all the time. We don’t make a big deal of it, we don’t write letters telling the world that we’re going to do them because that’s not the way science works. Science works by just doing your experiments.” Vincent Racaniello seems to infer that it is acceptable for scientists to manipulate viruses, e.g. make a “virus drug resistant…to see if a drug resistant mutant would have any properties that would make it scarier in people” without telling “the world about it”. (I challenged Vincent Racaniello about his comments on his Virology blog post “Virologists plan influenza H7N9 gain of function experiments” in August 2013, but he did not respond.)
I suggest Vincent Racaniello’s attitude is arrogant and irresponsible. 
How many other scientists are undertaking this type of research “without telling the world about it”, and with scant regard for potentially disastrous consequences?  For example, are scientists manipulating the ebola virus to “make it scarier in people”?
See more on my webpage: Arrogant scientists and dangerous ‘gain-of-function’ experiments – a letter to the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB)

16
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Hart

Science works by observing nature in order to derive theories about its working which are then to be tested with repeatable experiments. Making perfectly random changes to nucleotide acids in order to see what happens is not science.

1
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Hart

The one argument agains the Sars-CoV2 lab leak theory is It worked.

0
0
Myra
Myra
2 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Hart

The discussion on gain of function research has been going on for decades.
I personally am on the side of thinking it is a bad idea. Any possible upside of this kind of research does not weigh up against the potential danger of tinkering with nature. And there have been multiple lab leaks over the years…

9
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  Myra

Until we have a complete understanding of the chemical processes which occur in complex organisms, any tinkering with them at the molecular level is – at best – hapless fumbling of children who have no idea what they’re actually doing. There’s no point in even discussing this seriously.

1
0
10navigator
10navigator
2 years ago

In tens of thousands of years time, an inter-stellar craft will land on an Earth with no homo-sapiens. The travellers will perform their tests and determine that the planet was previously populated with a highly intelligent life-form. Not sufficiently so however to prevent it wiping itself out. The Captain of the visiting craft will quip, “Serves ’em right.”

7
0
RTSC
RTSC
2 years ago

Dr John Campbell’s podcast about the Pfizer sting is hilarious. Do watch to the end when he quotes Shakespeare.

https://rumble.com/v27jm5o-prizer-allergations.html

2
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
2 years ago

Wow, they are more diabolical than I thought!

1
0
sskinner
sskinner
2 years ago

If Gain of Function testing isn’t happening then why is there a name for it? Here is a Wiipedia extract:
“Gain-of-function research (GoF research or GoFR) is medical research that genetically alters an organism in a way that may enhance the biological functions of gene products. This may include an altered pathogenesis, transmissibility, or host range, i.e., the types of hosts that a microorganism can infect. This research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics. For example, influenza B can infect only humans and harbor seals.[1] Introducing a mutation that would allow influenza B to infect rabbits in a controlled laboratory situation would be considered a gain-of-function experiment, as the virus did not previously have that function.[2][3] That type of experiment could then help reveal which parts of the virus’s genome correspond to the species that it can infect, enabling the creation of antiviral medicines which block this function…”

And here is a Nature.com extract:
“In Greek mythology, the Chimaera was a fire-breathing monster, a horrifying mishmash of lion, goat and snake that laid waste to the countryside. In 2015, virologists led by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reported the creation of their own chimaera. They took a version of the coronavirus responsible for the deadly outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the early 2000s — now known as SARS-CoV — and adorned it with surface proteins from a different coronavirus taken from Chinese horseshoe bats. In the laboratory, this particular mash-up was able to break into human cells and also make mice ill1. This chimaera came with a message: other coronaviruses have the potential to spark a human pandemic. In just a few years’ time, that warning would prove prescient, as a distant cousin of SARS-CoV has now killed more than 4.9 million people worldwide…”

0
0

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