Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb complained to Twitter about censoring posts that raised questions about the COVID-19 vaccine.
QUICK FACTS:
- New Twitter Files reveal Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb pressured Twitter into censoring posts regarding the COVID vaccine and its efficiency.
- In August 2021, Gottlieb complained to Twitter after Dr. Brett Giroir, a board member at the biopharmaceutical company Altesa Biosciences, claimed that natural immunity offered greater protection than the shot.
- Soon after it was flagged by Gottlieb, the social media platform censored the tweet.
- “It’s now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There’s no science justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection. @CDCDirector @POTUS must follow the science. If no previous infection? Get vaccinated!” Giroir tweeted at the time.
- Twitter’s Public Policy senior manager Todd O’Boyle reviewed the complaint from Gottlieb, failing to mention that the Dr. was on the Pfizer board, merely referring to him as “the former FDA commissioner.”
- Although Twitter’s Strategic Response team ruled the tweet wasn’t in violation, it still placed a “misleading” tag under the post, hiding it from the social media’s algorithm.
- Gottlieb also flagged an article by journalist and vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, who was later suspended on Twitter.
- The Pfizer board member subsequently complained that he had been exposed for lobbying, saying his communications with Twitter led to “more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences.”
PFIZER BOARD MEMBER DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB ON “CORROSIVE” COVID-19 VACCINE TWEETS:
“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive. Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage,” Gottlieb said.
BACKGROUND:
- According to documents released earlier this week, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acknowledged deviating from its usual process for approving vaccines in relation to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
- In June 2021, Christopher Joneckis, the FDA’s associate director for review management, wrote a memo authorizing the release of a Biologics License Application (BLA) number for the vaccine, despite the fact that regulators were still considering whether to approve the BLA.
- In the memo, Joneckis explained that this deviation from the normal process was made “to facilitate product labeling and distribution and is consistent with other Center practices to facilitate vaccine delivery during the declared Public Health Emergency.”
- In October 2022, consultants funded by Pfizer reportedly connected with a nonprofit named Unity Consortium that assists doctors to push parents into getting the COVID vaccine for their kids.
- Unity Consortium, co-founded by Judy Klein who is known to be a pharmaceutical industry veteran, even lobbied medical professionals to advise their patients to do the same.
- Klein also works as a healthcare consultant through inKlein Consulting, a company that has contracts with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, as the company website indicates.
