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Pfizer Responds to Covid Gain of Function Research Claims
- 2-718-281-828 4y ago„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.“ via https://nitter.net/Tim_Roehn/status/1619281947741806592#m https://nitter.net/Tim_Roehn/status/1619281947741806592#m so they practice gain of function. and i bet they don't do that in the us. wasn't there some interesting back and forth about ominous us led bio engineering labs in the ukraine? someone with a link to that senate hearing with rand paul iirc. </TFH>
- unlikelymordant 4y ago"It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products" - i think this bit of the paragraph you highlighted changes the meaning somewhat.
- tonetheman 4y agoExactly this. It is laughable that the conservatives/Republicans/Fascists of my country (US) are all against evil X. And they literally do not understand what evil X is. But they are indeed against it. It is hard to see what the end game of this nonsense. I am sure there is an ending part to it but so far it is just dummies saying gain of function over and over hoping it sticks.
- ren_engineer 4y agobig pharma definitely isn't known for handing large sums of money to regulators and outright creating many regulations to entrench themselves and creating a moat for startups. These multi-billion dollar multinational corporations having nothing but the publics best interest at heart and don't care about profit at all
- nhchris 4y agoIn addition to the fact that pharma tends to write their own regulations, as ren_engineer pointed out, it's ambiguous what "these studies" refers to. It could refer only to the "in vitro resistance selection experiments" mentioned, and not require gain-of-function engineering - a requirement I would find highly surprising.
- psychphysic 4y agoCan someone explain this it's probably not relevant but baffles me why it's never spoken about. Let's say you were tasked with making a virus like COVID-19. How would you go about it? I think the answers obvious you take a potential source virus like the coronaviruses in bats and expose humans. You could literally culture the virus and inject it into a human. Let's put on tinfoil hats, and say you could run this experiment in a prison. If you're careful you could introduce it at a bloc and culture the result if an infection seems to spread. After a few cycles you're likely to get something like COVID out the other end. This is the bioengineering we do for attenuated pathogen vaccines. So what exactly do they mean that it'd be impossible to bioengineer COVID?
- ethanbond 4y agoWho says it’d be impossible to bioengineer COVID? Never heard that claim.
- willcipriano 4y agoYou form a group, call it something like Eco Health Alliance, and the give financial stakes like offering to put names on any future patents to members of the NIH and FDA making it in their best personal interest to approve your "not gain of function", but really gain of function research in Wuhan China, then sit back the let the Chinese figure out the particulars. If it escapes the lab, just order the evidence deleted and have one of the members of the project write a paper that will be taken at face value, uncritically, that it's impossible that the virus came from a lab and use that paper as a justification for censorship of anyone on social media who says otherwise, you can also claim they are all racist.
- junofan 4y agoDon’t forget that you’re in China because EU and US regulations mandate an unaffiliated member of the public exercises active oversight of this research.
- machina_ex_deus 4y agoJust make sure you have the world media prepared with an appropriate wargame to simulate what would happen if an unrelated coronavirus would start spreading. Give it a boring name like event 201. Since it's all out in the open it's clearly not a conspiracy. Then have the world media present you as the Oracle of Delphi because you had such an accurate prediction.
- Digory 4y agoThis is responding to an undercover video by the activists at Project Veritas. They have released a video that appears to show a Pfizer director saying they are mutating new COVID lines for vaccine purposes.
- hnbad 4y agoFor context, this is Project Veritas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas > Project Veritas is an American far-right activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010. The group produces deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations, which use secret recordings in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Project Veritas also uses entrapment to generate bad publicity for its targets, and has propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations. Regardless of what you may think of the recordings themselves, the presentation and editing is often extremely misleading and credentials of the recorded individuals are often overstated to help create a narrative.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago[flagged]
- willcipriano 4y agoFor more context, they consistently win defamation lawsuits and the chorus of "this is out of context" folks never seem to be able to provide any. Look up "Project Veritas RETRACTO" on YouTube to find their ongoing series where mainstream journalists have been forced to retract statements made about Veritas hundreds of times due to them being inaccurate.
- robswc 4y agoSomething like this is always posted whenever Project Veritas comes up. I agree they're mostly finding things for outrage culture and are generally annoying... sometimes they uncover legitimately concerning things though. That said, here's an example of why I dislike this "argument." Joseph Bruno, Dean of Students, Francis W. Parker School: “So, I’ve been the Dean for four years. During Pride -- we do a Pride Week every year -- I had our LGBTQ+ Health Center come in [to the classroom]. They were passing around butt-plugs and dildos to my students -- talking about queer sex, using lube versus using spit.” The school's response: A school spokesperson said the dean was “filmed without his knowledge or permission while describing one example of our inclusive, LGBTQ+ affirming a comprehensive approach to sex education. Veritas deceptively edited the video with malicious intent.” [1] Notice, they say absolutely _nothing_ about whether they [2] pass around butt-plugs and dildos. If anything, their statement lends to the idea that they do in fact do that. I do not care if the Dean was "misled" or the video is "edited" unless that disproves what the Dean claimed. My bar isn't that high at all. -- [1] : https://www.wane.com/news/private-school-defends-dean-after-project-veritas-claims-sex-toys-shown-in-class-discussion/ https://www.wane.com/news/private-school-defends-dean-after-... [2] : edit, as some believe my original wording (do give out sex toys to kids) was disingenuous
- zug_zug 4y agoSo the way I read this statement, they explicitly say state "Pfizer has not conducted gain of function." Then they later admit, " 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." (I'm not exactly clear what that means, but it reads like they do gain-of-function to me. I've learned that when people are usually unclear on very important statements it's often the worse interpretation that's true, otherwise they'd have a reason to be clear). Then they quickly defend "It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world." So I'd take this to mean one of two things: 1) Gain of function research is required & happening everywhere and they just stopped telling everyone because it's so political so we now weasel-word around it; if you were technical you'd understand or 2) They are twisting words very hard in this press statement about what is "required"
- wux 4y agoEngineering the virus doesn’t mean making gain-of-function mutations. “Function” has a specific meaning and it’s not a synonym for “does anything.” Instead, in broad strokes, think of “function” as referring to biological activities that give the virus some advantage over its host. To make a simplistic analogy (necessarily imperfect but sufficient for these purposes), consider instead a computer virus. If an antivirus company patches the binary in order to make it easier to study its behavior (for example, in order to make it more debuggable), that’s “engineering” the virus but it’s not “gain-of-function.” If the company instead patches the virus so that it can take advantage of a new 0-day exploit and spread further, that’s “gain-of-function.” Whether gain-of-function research is capable of revealing new insight into transmissible diseases not obtainable elsewhere is a point of debate among biologists, but one can be well assured that a for-profit operation isn’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Engineering the virus on the other hand, or in other words making mutations in viral components, is basically a description of “doing basic molecular biology” and is non-optional. The sort of allegation that Pfizer is responding to is more or less the equivalent of someone recording an engineer calling themselves “hackers,” visiting “Hacker News,” then writing an exposé claiming that this proves Company X is in the business of computer crime. The activity mentioned in the Pfizer press release that skirts closest to “gain-of-function” is actually a bit you didn’t mention at all, where they’re required by regulatory bodies to determine how the virus might resist an antiviral. Unlike computer viruses, biological ones mutate under treatment pressure. The closest analogy for a computer virus might be if it phones home and downloads a new payload to modify its behavior when it detects the presence of some antivirus software. For obvious reasons, studying how a pandemic virus would mutate in response to approved drugs is both necessary and icky, hence why Pfizer discussed its biosecurity measures. The distinction they make (rightly) between this research and a “directed evolution” or “gain-of-function” experiment, is that they’re reading out an answer to the question “Does the virus mutate when we treat with this antiviral drug, and if so, how?”, not culturing viruses iteratively in the presence of drug until they obtain an optimized treatment-resistant virus.
- daxfohl 4y agoI fully expect this to be a guy spouting stories in the hopes of getting laid. But, it could all be true. The level of detail is pretty convincing, not something you'd make up on the spot. So I am actually happy some congress people are taking it on and would like to see a more bipartisan effort there. So, in the case this is real, now what? (I'd also think the next step would be to uncover more before going public and letting the investigated company purge everything, which makes me lean further towards assuming this is nothing but a publicity stunt).
- andreygrehov 4y agoWho does Pfizer respond to? These claims were made by their own exec, so, by Pfizer themselves. Does Pfizer respond to Pfizer? ^ obviously sarcasm, but my bullshit detector goes off every single time Pfizer does something.