USA: On Friday, US pharmaceutical company Pfizer admitted that in order to test its antiviral drug, it "engineered" a treatment-resistant Covid-19 variant.
The admission helps support earlier claims made by a company executive who told a reporter working undercover that Pfizer was purposefully "mutating" the virus to "develop new vaccines."
Pfizer claimed in a statement on its website that it "does not engage in directed development research," seeking to enhance the virus's ability to infect people and to select only the most 'desirable' characteristics of the virus to reproduce. processes are mentioned.
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The pharmaceutical behemoth claimed it mutated the coronavirus to test its antiviral drug Paxlovid, and it combined the spike protein of the new coronavirus variant with the original strain to test its vaccines.
According to Business, "in a small number of cases ... such viruses can be engineered to enable assessment of antiviral activity in cells."
The business said the work was done in a secure lab. It further stated that the aim of the research is to develop "resistant strains of the virus", referring to a technique known as "benefit of work" research.
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Two days before Pfizer's announcement, an executive working in the company's mRNA division named Jordan Trishton Walker told an undercover reporter that the company was "searching" for ways to "mute" itself so that we could use new vaccines. Can be made, can be developed in advance. According to Walker, the scientists were looking at giving the monkeys the virus so that they "kept infecting each other."
According to what he had heard, the scientists at Pfizer were optimizing it, but they were moving slowly because everyone was very cautious.
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They obviously don't want to speed it up too much. Since it is clear that you do not want to advertise that you are researching possible future mutations, I assume they are also trying to do this as an exploratory thing.