Rubio wants Pfizer to answer ‘gain-of-function research’ charge

Cockburn absorbed a lengthy segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight along with his nightcap last night, that reported on an undercover Project Veritas video purporting to show a Pfizer executive admitting to all kinds of alarming practices. Namely that the company is considering carrying out the same type of experiments that caused the Covid pandemic.

The video shows Pfizer director of research and development, Jordon Trishton Walker, who evidently thought he was on a date with the Veritas reporter, talking freely about Pfizer’s operations. Walker explains, amid giggles, how the company is “exploring” mutating Covid variants themselves “so we could create — preemptively build new vaccines, right? If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine, no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating fucking viruses.”

“Mutating fucking viruses” is otherwise known as “gain-of-function research,” or, as Walker calls it, “directed evolution.” Gain-of-function is, according to Walker (and many theorists) how the Covid pandemic started in the first place.

“But you have to be like very controlled to make sure this virus that you mutate doesn’t create something that, like, you know, goes everywhere,” Walker says in the video. “Which I suspect is the way that the virus started in Wuhan. To be honest, like, it makes no sense that this virus just popped out of nowhere. It’s bullshit.”

Cockburn is heartened to see that several Republican lawmakers have wasted no time in demanding that Pfizer explain itself. Senator Marco Rubio is leading the charge with a letter to Pfizer’s CEO and president, Albert Bourla, in which the senator from Florida writes:

Whether it’s gain-of-function research, or selected structure mutations through directed evolution, as Mr. Walker claimed would occur, any effort to make a virus more transmittable and deadlier is careless and dangerous. Further, Mr. Walker stated that Pfizer is willing to engage in this dangerous research because Covid and its variants are “a cash cow” for the company and regulators will go easy on their efforts because a significant percentage of government officials aim to work for Pfizer and other biopharmaceutical companies and do not want to compromise their future job prospects.

Senator Rand Paul is also calling for relevant Senate committees to schedule hearings on Pfizer’s research ASAP.

Regardless of whether SARS-CoV-2 came from nature or a lab, its clear that lab-made super viruses pose great danger. We need to know how much of this research is happening & what dangers we face. I'm asking the relevant Senate committees 2 schedule hearings on this research ASAP.

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 4, 2021