Scientists say the experiments Pfizer has conducted with the coronavirus are the industry standard. However, since the publication of an undercover video through the conservative activist organization Project Veritas, unsubstantiated claims have been circulating that the company is transforming the virus for its own benefit.
The exact origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, remains unknown. Many scientists believe the virus likely originated in bats and then spread to humans directly or indirectly, through contact with an animal. Such zoonotic transfers have already happened with the coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS.
A paper published in Science in July 2022 analyzed the available evidence and implicated the wildlife industry and the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, as the site of the overflow. The first cases of COVID-19, even those that are not known. Market link: They are clustering around the market, and animals vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, such as raccoon dogs, are known to have been sold on the market in late 2019.
However, no intermediate animals have been identified. In the absence of evidence of animal-to-human transfer, some scientists say additional research is needed and that there may have been an accidental leak in the lab, either of an herbal virus or a lab-enhanced virus.
U. S. intelligence agencies are not allowed to do so. The U. S. government is divided over origin, with 4 entities plus the National Intelligence Council landing on an herbal origin, and the FBI and Department of Energy reportedly concluding that a laboratory origin is “very likely. “Two others are undecided. There is no evidence left for either hypothesis.
However, there is agreement that the coronavirus “evolved as a biological weapon. “
Many coronavirus scientists say that a lab is unlikely to escape and that a leak of a modified virus is highly unlikely, if not impossible.
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An undercover video from conservative activist organization Project Veritas has generated baseless claims that Pfizer is transforming the coronavirus into an elaborate plot to sell more vaccines. There is no such conspiracy and the company denied the allegations in a statement.
Netizens now cite a sentence about some experiments Pfizer is doing for its COVID-19 antiviral drug Paxlovid to falsely claim that the company “admitted” to investigating profit in function.
As we will explain, there is debate over whether the reports described can be considered a gain of power, a nebulous term that has taken on politically since some Republicans and others have claimed, without credible evidence, that the coronavirus originated from such an experiment. However, there is no evidence that Pfizer conducted an unusual investigation, nor is there any indication of a nefarious plot to increase sales of COVID-19 vaccines.
The uproar over Pfizer began when Project Veritas, known for its arguable and deceptively edited videos, released an undercover video featuring a user known as a Pfizer executive named Jordon Trishton Walker on Jan. 25.
Walker, who describes himself in the video as “director of mRNA studies and expansion, strategic operations and clinical planning,” says Pfizer is “exploring” the coronavirus mutation, or SARS-CoV-2, to “preemptively expand new vaccines. “He then describes a theoretical experiment infecting monkeys as a way to download a mutated virus.
In an excerpt from the edited video, the undercover agent asks if the experiments are profitable. Walker says no and refers to “directed evolution,” which he says is “very different. “
The video went viral, with more than 30 million views on Twitter on Feb. 7, according to the social media company’s public statistics.
Two days after the video aired, Pfizer responded by saying it “would like to set the record straight” and that “Pfizer has not conducted gain-of-function studies or led the evolution” of its COVID-19 vaccine.
Pfizer, however, added that as part of the Food and Drug Administration’s and other regulators’ requirements for its oral antiviral treatment against COVID-19, the company is acting “in vitro (p. e. g. , in a laboratory culture dish) to identify possible resistance. “mutations in nirmatrelvir”, referring to the main component of Paxlovid.
“With a naturally evolving virus, it is vital to regularly assess the activity of an antiviral,” he continued. In a limited number of cases where a whole virus does not understand a known gain in functional mutations, that virus can be changed to allow evaluation of antiviral activity in cells.
“In addition, in vitro resistance variety experiments are being conducted in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our bioty point 3 (BSL3) laboratory to evaluate whether the main protease can mutate to produce resistant strains of the virus,” Pfizer said. He added, stressing once again that studies are required through regulators and are conducted through many laboratories.
It was misinterpreted as an admission that Pfizer was conducting complicated experiments that it shouldn’t have done and, in some cases, was taken as evidence of the alleged conspiracy depicted in the Project Veritas video.
Quoting the word “limited number of cases” from Pfizer’s statement, Dr. Robert Malone, a known purveyor of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, wrote on Twitter, “= we plead guilty, your honor. “
“It’s not like Pfizer just admitted that it used the profit to create biological weapons,” another Twitter user wrote in a Feb. 4 tweet.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson also misleadingly stated in a segment of his show, which he clipped and shared via conservative commentator Dan Bongino on Facebook, that the Project Veritas video “contained no misinformation” and with his statement, “Pfizer admitted it. “
Several scientists told us that Walker misinformed and that the experiments he described as discussed, but not conducted, would make little sense to Pfizer.
Tyler Starr, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah who studies the evolution of proteins in SARS-CoV-2 viruses, called Walker’s comments “clumsy nonsense. “
“I think he’s transparent from the title of his assignment, his education and the way he talks that he’s not that close to the reports himself, and I take very little attitude about what he says about how and what experiments are planned and why. “says in an email (emphasis added).
“Of course, it’s an experiment imaginable to get the virus through vaccinated primates to see what might happen, but that experiment would be very expensive (and potentially risky),” he said. “Either way, primates wouldn’t dominate the broader facets. “of human transmission very effectively, so there is no genuine goal in doing this experiment. “
Dr. Stanley Perlman, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Iowa and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, agreed. resistance. ” It wouldn’t be very helpful for a pharmaceutical company to do it. “
“No one transmits the virus to monkeys repeatedly. I don’t know how helpful it will be, especially without the strain (treatment) of drugs,” Dr. Raymond F told us. Schinazi, a biochemist at Emory University School of Medicine who designs and develops new antivirals, in an email. He wondered if Walker had a background in virology or a genuine idea of what Pfizer was doing.
Starr said it seemed credible that Walker simply described the discussions that took place, “[b]but it could be between an organization of other executives with little virological education like him as a kind of ‘brainstorming’ discussion in the world. “, “far from anything that can be done in practice.
“In fact, he reads me as someone who was in a verbal exchange that technically he was only smart enough to perceive about 25%, which is the real danger zone for the maximum effect of ignorance!”
Thomas Gallagher, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Loyola University Chicago who studies coronaviruses, also said he did not find Walker “a credible spokesman for Pfizer’s virological research. “
We tried to play Walker, but without success. Pfizer responded to inquiries.
But as we wrote in a story about another secret Project Veritas video with Walker, a guy with his call appears to have graduated from UT Southwestern School of Medicine in 2018. He then interned at Tufts Medical Center for a year in general surgery, and then hired through Boston Consulting Group from January 2020 to June 2021. This suggests that Walker has limited or no experience in virology.
In the Project Veritas video, in which the band revealed themselves to Walker, he said so.
“I’m even a scientist by training. . . I come from a consulting firm that does business,” Walker said. “This is absurd. “
The video, which was released on Jan. 26, though it was promoted far less than any of the secret videos, shows Walker getting angry, calling police and at one point grabbing and smashing on the ground an iPad Project Veritas was going to show him. secret. Recorded video.
“I was looking to impress a date. Lying,” the confrontation said. “Why do you do this to someone who only works at one company to literally help the public?”
The most important claim of the moment, similar to the Project Veritas video, comes from Pfizer’s statement in response to the video, though the company did not call the community.
Pfizer has denied doing “targeted or won evolutionary research” for its COVID-19 vaccines. But a few sentences describing the workings of its antiviral, Paxlovid, were interpreted as an admission that the company had researched the utility as , with some other people suggesting unsubstantiated that it was evidence that Pfizer was actually mutating viruses to deliberately release them to the public to sell more vaccines.
Experts told us that the experiments described are standard. Some of them would possibly be an improvement of function, but it depends on the definition of the term someone gives. And even if they were, that doesn’t mean Pfizer shouldn’t have done them.
As Pfizer noted, their experiments were required by the FDA and other regulators. The company drew us to the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization Letter for Paxlovid and two other industry guidance documents, which define the experiments that antiviral drug brands are expected to conduct. Perlman said he agreed with the company’s interpretation.
“Antiviral drugs want to be evaluated for their potential to generate antiviral-resistant mutants. The strategies are to spread the viruses in the presence of the antiviral drug and then identify potentially resistant mutants through sequencing,” Gallagher said.
“If there are multiple mutations that occur in reaction to the selective pressures of the antiviral drug, then you’ll want to know which of the mutations confer drug resistance and which don’t. To find out, viruses are modified to involve a single person (or subset) of the mutations, with the changed viruses then tested for antiviral drug resistance,” he continued, adding that those tests “are popular antiviral tests and suitable for drug development. “
The debate over function gain is partly semantic. As we have written, gain of function is an umbrella term that can describe many absolutely innocent virology experiments in which a virus acquires a new function. But the kind that is debatable is the small subset of potentially dicy experiments that give pathogens a new service that can be destructive if released from a lab. Typically, this has meant experiments in which there is a moderate expectation of making a pathogen more transmissible or more virulent humans.
Under this classic definition, Gallagher said experiments described through Pfizer would not be classified as a utility gain. .
Perlman also said that achieving antiviral resistance is necessarily the same as gaining function.
“If I take a penicillin-sensitive bacterium and now make it resistant to penicillin by some kind of selection, but at the same time the bacteria can no longer grow in humans, is that a gain in function?” he asked, in an analogy with bacteria. “I would say a loss of function. “
Schinazi, however, said Pfizer’s experiments with Paxlovid resembled gain-of-function studies. And Starr said the biggest fear is that, whatever their name, some experiments have dangers that stand in the way of their benefits. And in theory, a virus resistant to sure drugs can be destructive if they escape.
But that doesn’t mean Pfizer did anything inappropriate. As we said, experiments are industry standard.
Many labs, Schinaz said, “as well as industry are conducting in vitro (cell-based) studies to be more informed about mutants and whether their new drug or analogues will be effective. “
If Pfizer did not use the National Institutes of Health investment, it would not be subject to a federal review of its experiments under existing regulations, he said, but the experiments would still be conducted in a Biosafety Level 3, or BSL-3, laboratory after internal approval. BSL-3 laboratories require more education and protective equipment and have specialized ventilation systems that prevent their personnel from being exposed to pathogens they can simply inhale.
A federal advisory committee released draft rules on Jan. 20 proposing to expand the definition of gain-of-office studies and some exemptions, but the adjustments have yet to be finalized or implemented.
“To me, it’s pretty funny,” Perlman said of the fear of Pfizer’s experiments. “All the mutations have already given the impression that they are going to happen. a lot of viruses around that everything is going to happen naturally anyway,” he added, referring to Paxlovid.
Saranac Hale Spencer contributed to this story.
Editor’s Note: SciCheck articles correcting fitness misinformation are made imaginable by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Foundation has no control over the editorial decisions of FactCheck. org, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. .
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