An executive with the drug firm previously said that the company was creating more potent strains of the virus in a laboratory
\nUS drugmaker Pfizer admitted on Friday that it \u201cengineered\u201d treatment-resistant variants of Covid-19 in order to test its antiviral medicine. The admission partially backs up earlier claims by an executive with the company who told an undercover reporter that Pfizer was deliberately\u00a0\u201cmutating\u201d\u00a0the virus to\u00a0\u201cpreemptively develop new vaccines.\u201d
\nIn a\u00a0statement\u00a0posted on its website, Pfizer said that it\u00a0\u201chas not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research,\u201d\u00a0referring to the practice of amplifying a virus\u2019 ability to infect humans and the process of selecting \u2018desirable\u2019 traits of a virus to reproduce, respectively.
\nHowever, the pharma giant said that it combined the spike proteins of new coronavirus variants with the original strain in order to test its vaccines, and that it created mutations of the virus to test Paxlovid, its antiviral drug.
\n\u201cIn a limited number of cases\u2026such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells,\u201d\u00a0the company said, adding that this work was carried out in a secure laboratory. The work also sought to create\u00a0\u201cresistant strains of the virus,\u201d\u00a0it added, describing a process commonly understood as being \u2018gain of function\u2019 research.
\nPfizer\u2019s statement came two days after Jordon Trishton Walker, an executive involved in the firm\u2019s mRNA division, told an undercover reporter that the company was\u00a0\u201cexploring\u201d\u00a0ways to\u00a0\u201cmutate [Covid] ourselves so we could create, preemptively develop, new vaccines.\u201d\u00a0Walker said that scientists were considering infecting monkeys with the virus, who would then\u00a0\u201ckeep infecting each other.\u201d
\n\u201cFrom what I\u2019ve heard, they [Pfizer scientists] are optimizing it, but they\u2019re going slow because everyone is very cautious,\u201d\u00a0he explained.\u00a0\u201cObviously they don\u2019t want to accelerate it too much. I think they are also just trying to do it as an exploratory thing because you obviously don\u2019t want to advertise that you are figuring out future mutations.\u201d
\nPfizer\u2019s statement makes no mention of the supposed plan to infect monkeys, instead explaining that any work on live viruses is carried out in vitro, meaning inside test tubes or other lab equipment.
\nWalker was told on camera that he was speaking to a journalist with Project Veritas, a conservative outlet known for its hidden-camera sting operations. After hearing this, Walker insisted that he was lying to impress his date, before\u00a0attempting\u00a0to steal an iPad from Project Veritas CEO James O\u2019Keefe.<\/p>\n