Guest Post by Alex Berenson
PART 1: 60 seconds of science! From the company that brought you the Covid mRNA vaccines… and is almost proud of them
Hey, didya see that Super Bowl?
The more things change… and I don’t mean the Chiefs winning again.
When I covered Big Pharma for the New York Times during the aughts, the two most important companies I wrote about were Merck and Pfizer.
Merck had problems, including its push of the risky painkiller Vioxx. But it had introduced the first statin and made other big breakthroughs. It was the industry’s scientific leader.
Pfizer was second-rate, scientifically.
But from its Manhattan headquarters, it excelled at marketing. Its army of famously hot sales reps spread baksheesh in doctor’s offices, from lunches to trips to ski towns – where physicians could learn about up-to-date treatments, of course. The seminars were scheduled not to cut into peak ski time.
Pfizer’s favorite medicines were me-too drugs. Let another company take the risks. Pfizer would find, or buy, a similar compound, and use marketing to pull ahead. So it did with Lipitor, a statin that became the world’s top selling drug for almost a decade.
Pfizer’s efforts at actual scientific discoveries were more problematic.
In 1996, it tested an antibiotic called Trovan during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria. Eleven children died. The Washington Post later published an investigation about the trial that began, “By the time word of the little girl’s death reached the United States, her name had been replaced by numerals: No. 6587-0069.”
Around the same time, John le Carre wrote a novel called “The Constant Gardner,” about an evil drug company that killed African kids in an unethical trial. Le Carre insisted his book wasn’t based on Trovan. Kinda. His afterword read: “In these dog days when lawyers rule the universe, I have to persist with these disclaimers…”
No matter, Pfizer later settled a suit over Trovan for $75 million, or about two days of peak Lipitor sales. (Full disclosure: I am suing Pfizer’s chairman Dr. Albert Bourla and board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb in Berenson v Biden for their roles in the 2021 conspiracy to violate my First Amendment rights and force Twitter to ban me.)
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Pfizer had a few other, umm, legal issues too, back in the day.
The New York Times, May 14, 2004:
Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $430 million to resolve criminal and civil charges that it paid doctors to prescribe its epilepsy drug, Neurontin, to patients with ailments that the drug was not federally approved to treat.
Bloomberg News, April 3, 2007:
Pfizer Inc. agreed to pay $34.7 million in fines to settle Justice Department allegations that it improperly promoted the human growth hormone product Genotropin.
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And of course the big one, the granddaddy of ‘em all (though not the last),
The Wall Street Journal, Sep. 2, 2009:
Pfizer Makes History With $2.3B Fraud Settlement
…the deal represents the largest health-care fraud settlement in [Dept. of Justice] history.
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Yay! Who doesn’t like setting records?
So we come to Sunday night.
Super Bowl 58 had been a snooze – fumbles, punts, more fumbles, it reminded me of nothing so much as a Jets game – but it was just getting good.
Then it went to commercial: a library… a portrait of Isaac Newton… an anatomy textbook…
Huh, I thought. This is weird –
Hey, wait, isn’t that a portrait of Karl Christian Friedrich “Charles” Pfizer – 19th century German-born chemist, founder of the company that bears his name?
So a Pfizer ad?
Followed by lots more scientists. Including Einstein! And Galileo! And… Katalin Kariko, the University of Pennsylvania scientist who helped make mRNA Covid jabs possible, by figuring out how to modify mRNA so it could be injected and used to hijack our cellular machiner. (Doesn’t necessarily sound like a good idea when I put it that way, huh? A cool idea, but not a good idea.)
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(A still from the Super Bowl ad. The words at the bottom are from the Queen song “Don’t Stop Me Now,” the track on the ad. Didn’t anyone see the irony?)
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Then, after 50 seconds of science-y science set to Freddie Mercury, the ad makes a quick and awkward pivot to a girl in a hospital bed, with the strange phrase “LetsOutdocancer.com” slapped across the screen.
The ad ends as the girl walks out of the hospital. Exactly what role Pfizer or its medicines played in her cure is left to the viewer’s imagination. This isn’t about products, people! This is about feels. And science. And how science makes us feel!
Super Bowl spots this year cost a cool $7 million for 30 seconds (arguably a bargain, given that the biggest audience since the moon landing watched Sunday’s game). This ad ran a full minute, so $14 million. Plus production and licensing costs.
And, again, the ad doesn’t mention any specific products, except penicillin, which is not exactly a big Pfizer product these days. The reference to Katalin Kariko flicks at the Covid jabs. But I would guess only 5 to 10 percent of Americans have any idea who she is. Including her is a way to mention the mRNAs without talking about them.
So what was Pfizer doing? Why blow $14 million-plus on what is essentially a generic corporate image campaign? Where’s the return on investment?
I have thoughts.
(First of two parts)
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If it says pfizer on the label, you’ll be on the coroner’s table.
Should be turned into a jingle LPL
With Pfizer in the kitchen?
Few will be left bitchin’
Written on a coffin:
“Pfizer Inside”
The combined IQ of the average Super Bowel viewer would not only NOT “get” this ad,
but remembering anything about it in the hazy White Claw stupor is impossible.
The fact that mass murdering Pfizer spent $14,000,000 for nothing makes me very happy.
If it says pfizer on the label,
you’ll be on the coroner’s table.leave it on the table.FIFY, no charge!
But don’t flush it down-that may kill the sewer rats.
See democrats………….Pfizer cares deeply and completely about you and your “family”.
Its time to do your duty for SCIENCE !
Get that life-giving………….no…………life-affirming good shit into your bodies.
Continue boosting !
The ads are not for our consumption; to place Pfizer in our minds when needing some medication.
They are for media control. By dishing out $ millions if not $billions, they gain control of what can be reported by the big media companies like ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and FOX. It’s essentially “hush money”. Has there been one news segment about anyone dying from the jabs? Hell NO!
I believe I learned that from being a TBP reader/supporter.
They make so much money poisoning people that they think they can buy their way out of anything. They’re not wrong, at least for now.
Pfizer spelled backwards is…….Rezifp. go look it up. The father of lies and the agents who do his bidding. Share far and wide. Put the full amour of God on..
Yep … It’s always them, Boo Boo …
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Resheph
So, if it ain’t the coons it the joos.
It is always someone else.
“literacy” is prussian for POSIWID +/- 2σ. no matter how one spells it.
Pfizer blinded me by science. OOPS! That was Thomas Dolby.
“Pfizer, blinded me, with sfience.”
Pfizer blinded me, with lie-ence.
Better?
The Hatfields (of dreams) made me do it! They hornswoggled me with love!
Borla is a jewish veterinarian. How appropriate
Whose vaccine for pigs is used to chemically castrate mammals.
Deny the jab/avoid the slab!
Berenson is praising Merck for statins? Is he not aware that statins cause more harm than benefit? They aren’t deadly as quickly as the clotshot, but cause harm and some deaths over extended use.
First I heard of it!
Statins bad?
Better get another booster of the clot shot
Statins are claimed to attack muscle tissue with long term use.
He is a Jew. What do you think? My own doctor is always trying to push them on me. She is a Pentecostal which is almost as bad as a Jew.
She is a Pentecostal which is almost as bad as a Jew.
Dang bro! LMAO. Isn’t Paula White of the pentecostal flavor? Yes she is and she personally saved Donald Trump. He first caught wind of her mid 90ish on TV and may have sent Paula $1000 so as to be “saved”. Priceless!
ROI?!
WHAT, with the DOD on your side?
Who friggin needs an ROI?!