Pfizer denied it conducts gain-of-function research on COVID-19 in a long-awaited but indirect response to a bombshell Project Veritas hidden camera sting that captured a company official describing either proposed or ongoing experiments by the pharmaceutical firm.

“Allegations have recently been made related to gain of function and directed evolution research at Pfizer and the company would like to set the record straight,” the company’s statement began. “In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.”

The company statement, released late Friday, did not mention the Project Veritas video, which was posted Wednesday evening and has received over 20 million views despite being banned from YouTube. In that video, a man identified as Jordon Walker, Pfizer’s director of research and development, strategic operations – mRNA scientific planner, divulges that the company has considered mutating COVID-19 through “directed evolution” in monkeys to develop new vaccines.

Almost 20,000,000 views 👀 pic.twitter.com/xaRvlD5qTo

— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) January 28, 2023

In a subsequent video, Walker is confronted by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and claims he lied on the video to impress his date. In a disturbing meltdown, Walker seizes a tablet from O’Keefe and smashes it.

In the original video, Walker’s claim the company has at least considered mutating the virus in order to manufacture vaccines is just one of several disturbing assertions. He also implies federal regulators don’t enforce laws on Pfizer in hopes of landing jobs there and that the company expects COVID to be a “cash cow” for years to come.

When Walker described to the undercover Project Veritas reporter the process of mutating the virus by infecting monkeys, the reporter opines that it sounds like gain-of-function research, in which viruses are manipulated to become more dangerous. Gain-of-function research, possibly funded in part by a grant from the U.S.  National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is suspected by some experts in the alleged creation of COVID-19 inside a lab in Wuhan, China. Walker insists the research he is describing is “directed evolution” research and not gain-of-function.

Pfizer’s statement goes on to describe the research it acknowledges conducting.

“Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern,” the Pfizer statement read. “This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required.”

Pfizer said the research usually involves only computer simulations, but added that, “in a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.”

Critics accused Pfizer of dissembling and said that what the company acknowledged in its statement is effectively gain-of-function research.

1) Pfizer lawyers did not throw their Director of R&D Operations and Scientific Planning under the bus. 2) there is no denial of what he said. 3) No denial that he is Pfizer staff. 4) Swapping new spike sequences into original Wuhan-1 is technically gain of function research.

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) January 28, 2023

“Swapping new spike sequences into original Wuhan-1 is technically gain of function research,” tweeted Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the mRNA technology used to deliver Pfizer’s COVID vaccine but has since warned that it is unsafe and ineffective.

The following is the opening satirical monologue from “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

Many of you are deeply concerned about the political ramifications of M&M’s, if you’re fat and toothless and have literally not one other thing to think about. As you know, the Mars Candy Company decided to change the look of its advertisement spokes-candies to mollify woke sensibilities after receiving a petition signed by as many as one person, who said that, while he was not usually offended because he had a hard outer shell, he was soft on the inside and the old spokes-candies were so insensitive, they made him feel like he was melting, although not in your hand, only in your mouth. What he was doing in your mouth, I don’t want to know.

In the good old days, when men were men and women were small chocolate globules with an occasional peanut inside, M&M’s were represented in advertisements by lovable anthropomorphic M&M’s who made us smile and chuckle right up until the moment we devoured them, giving us the forbidden thrill of cannibalism along with cavities and a mid-section that looked like an inner tube. Then, the Mars Candy Company started changing the look of the M&M characters to give them — and I cannot emphasize enough that I am not making this quote up but reading it word for word off the press announcement — they wanted to give the talking candies [quote] “more nuanced personalities to underscore the importance of self-expression and power of community through storytelling.” [unquote] 

This was widely recognized as the greatest marketing decision since the historic introduction of New Coke on April 23, 1985 between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 10:17 a.m. when the brand was discontinued because it was the worst marketing decision until the change in the M&M spokes-candies.

The M&M change included making the female green M&M less sexy and more feminist by shortening her legs and replacing her high heels with sneakers, thus destroying the sexual fantasies of 12-year-old boys with deeply disturbed sexual fantasies. Mars also released a new lavender female M&M which they said represented “acceptance,” because she was trans and identified as a Reese’s piece. This went along with a picture they had tweeted showing the brown M&M, also a female, holding hands with the green female M&M with a caption suggesting they were lesbian lovers, thereby restoring the sick fantasies of all the 12-year-old fetishists who were into lesbian love scenes between pieces of chocolate. As a result of the lesbian M&M affair, Catholic priests have banned the candies from taking communion, except for Pope Francis who says all M&M’s are welcome, especially when he gets the munchies after grooving on reefer.

In any case, the M&M changes eventually came under attack from both the right and the left. On his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson said he was absolutely appalled that there could be a news day so incredibly slow he would wind up talking about M&M’s. Feminists meanwhile wanted to know why a feminist M&M couldn’t be sexy and so they had to have it explained to them.

The resulting furor kept the nation riveted to its television sets watching something else entirely, so Mars finally decided to get rid of the M&M spokes-candies altogether by driving them out into the woods, letting them out of the truck for a cigarette break, and then mowing them down with a machine gun. Although maybe that was a scene from the Great Escape, I’m not sure. In any case, the slaughtered M&M’s have now been replaced by actress Maya Rudolph which has ended the controversy because Right and Left can all agree she’s overrated as an actress and should probably just be, like, a spokeswoman for the idiots who make M&M’s.

Now, of course, I wouldn’t be telling this ridiculous story about how wokeism ruins every single thing that ever gave anyone anywhere any fun whatsoever and replaces spontaneous pleasures of even the smallest type with joyless virtue signaling that does jack-diddley-squat to lessen the divisions amongst us but only exacerbates the thoroughly reasonable annoyance we feel with having supercilious moral posturing shoved down our throats like a fistful of M&M’s except without the calories and the tooth-rotting sugar … 

Now I can’t remember where that sentence was going. Oh yeah, I wouldn’t be telling this story if it didn’t have a serious moral. No, wait, yes I would. In fact, I just did. Forget I said anything.

Andrew Klavan is the host of The Andrew Klavan Show at The Daily Wire. A popular political satirist and Hollywood screenwriter, Klavan is also an award-winning novelist. His newest novel is A Strange Habit of Mind, book two in the Cameron Winter Mystery series.

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.