Executives at Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company responsible for one of the emergency vaccines approved for use against the COVID-19 virus, may have sought to downplay the use of aborted fetal cells in the development of that vaccine. The startling revelation came to light after Project Veritas released a video in which a Pfizer employee shared a string of company e-mails about the subject.
Melissa Strickler, a manufacturing auditor with the company, shared the e-mails with Project Vertitas founder and president James O’Keefe in a video released Wednesday night. The video is a part of Project Veritas’ ongoing series about the COVID-19 vaccines.
“If they’re being this deceptive about it, I don’t feel comfortable being silent,” Strickler said.
Pfizer has already claimed that no fetal cells are used in the manufacturing process, but aborted fetal tissue was used in the research and development stage of the vaccine — a fact that the company is trying to keep under wraps, probably due to possible to backlash from the pro-life community.
In a February 4 e-mail written by Vanessa Gelman, senior director for worldwide research, development, and medical communications for Pfizer, Gelman tells a colleague to steer clear of the subject if possible.
“We have been trying as much as possible not to mention the fetal cell lines,” Gelman wrote.
Gelman then shared company approved language for addressing the issue: “Human fetal cell lines are not used to produce our investigational vaccine, which consists of synthetic and enzymatically produced components.”
But there was a second sentence to that statement in which Gelman warned, “We have tried really hard not to share unless it’s strictly necessary and mission critical.”
That second sentence was: “One or more cell lines that can be traced back to human fetal tissue has been used in laboratory tests associated with the vaccine program.”
In a follow-up e-mail dated February 9, Gelman doubled down on the company’s intention to keep the knowledge of the use of fetal cells in the research and development of the vaccine hidden from the public.
“We want to avoid having the information on the fetal cells floating out there.” Gelman wrote.
“We believe that the risk of communicating this right now outweighs any potential benefit we could see, particularly with general members of the public who may take this information and use it in ways we may not want out there,” Gelman wrote. “We have not received any questions from policy makers or media on this issue in the last few weeks, so we want to avoid raising this if possible.”
“They don’t want to stir up a mess,” Strickler said. “They don’t want to deal with people who are upset because … people can use religious exemptions for it, and they don’t want that. I think they want nobody to have an excuse to not get [the vaccine].
“They’re sticking to a script,” Strickler said. “This verbiage is approved, so this is what we need to stick to. When, rather, they should be making it as clear and easy to understand for the population so that they can make informed decisions on this.”
It’s not a “secret” that Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson used aborted fetal cells during the research and development stage of their COVID-19 vaccines. That information has been out for a while now.
“Fetal cell lines — cells grown in a laboratory based on aborted fetal cells collected generations ago — were used in testing during research and development of the mRNA vaccines [Pfizer and Moderna], and during production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,” Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Nebraska, wrote in August.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute published a chart as early as December 2020, detailing that both Pfizer and Moderna (as well as AstraZeneca, Merck, and several others) used fetal tissue in their research and development for their COVID-19 vaccines.
So, what is Pfizer trying to accomplish by hiding its use of aborted fetal tissue in the development of their vaccine? Why are they hiding it?
Most likely it’s because the use of aborted fetal cells — no matter how minor it may have been in the production of the new vaccines — turns pro-life people off. As Strickler put it, “they want nobody to have an excuse to not get [the vaccine].”
