A new fun one making the rounds that might be real. Seems like this guy is maybe a Pfizer employee trying really hard to scrub his profile. And he’s sure talking about Pfizer doing something a lot like gain-of-function research (but of course corporate euphemistically calling it “directed evolution”).
Yeah, it’s fucking project veritas. But it sounds like the guy in the video knows what he’s talking about, and might have worked at Pfizer.
Very strange search results. Google has supposedly scrubbed him, and linkedin has taken the profile down. But there’s this article which lists him as an author and points to the now dead linked-in profile:
It’s so weird though, someone like this should have a presence all over the internet. Makes me wonder if he’s some kind of charlatan posing as a Pfizer R&D researcher. I checked archive.org just to make sure that article wasn’t tampered with. It still has the same link in 2020.
Real meaning pfizer doing gain of function research? Because the description of that video sure sounds like a guy just spitballing something you could do while drunk. Not sure why any of this matters at all.
Yeah who knows. It seems like Pfizer came up with branding for it already though - “directed evolution”. So my guess is either they did some of it or they at least talked about it a lot. Again assuming this isn’t a hoax.
The term “Directed Evolution” has it’s own Wikipedia page. The references section contains journal articles using that term that go back for decades. Now, maybe you could argue that scientists shouldn’t be doing this type of research, but it’s definitely not some wild new path that Pfizer alone is doing (which I’m assuming is the spin that Veritas is trying to put on it)
Ok that’s really good to know. He (or Pfizer) definitely borrowed the term for the virus world.
But wrt to viruses, it still sounds like BS corporate branding for gain-of-function. But maybe he just came up with the idea himself and was trying to pitch it internally or something (and impress the person he was talking to with it).
It definitely sounds like something that was just talked about but never done.
It sounds like a person who thinks about covid a lot has thought about various things you could do, not that they are doing them. At least per the summary of the video you’ve posted.
Is “gain of function” research even bad? I sort of figured because Rand Paul was hooting about it, it probably was a good/normal thing that I should like.
It’s dangerous and controversial if labs should even be allowed to do it.
I could be remembering this wrong, but I think Wuhan didn’t have the clearance level to do gain-of-function. But the conspiracists say they did it anyway.
Directed evolution, at least of enzymes and other biomolecules, is happening at the vast majority of R1 academic institutions, government labs, and biotech companies all over the world, and has been for decades. It’s a really old idea to randomly mutate a gene, grow up the mutated products in bacteria, yeast, or whatever organism, and then select for the ones that are better at achieving the thing you want them to do.
On in vitro biomolecules, it’s very, very good. It’s potentially dangerous on living viruses and other pathogens.
I work at a large financial company and Director is the level below AVP and above Manager. Its a mid level management role, they are not officers of the company and they can’t for example sign contracts. We have about 10,000 employees and 1,200 Directors.