A woman identified as the senior director of worldwide research, development and medical communications for Pfizer ran away from a reporter when confronted about an email she allegedly sent confirming fetal tissue lines were used in the testing of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine.
“Why did you send emails telling Pfizer employees not to report that you guys were using fetal cell lining, miss?” Project Veritas’ James Lalino asked Vanessa Gelman in a video posted Thursday on social media.
“What else are you hiding from the public today?” he further questioned. “Miss, what else are you hiding from the public? The public needs to know.”
Gelman did not respond, instead sprinting away into a nearby house.
Pfizer whistleblower Melissa Strickler gave multiple email chains to Project Veritas that she told the group’s leader, James O’Keefe, she obtained from a company server.
In one email, Gelman allegedly told Pfizer employees that the company did not want to discuss the use of fetal cells in the testing of the vaccine.
“From the perspective of corporate affairs, we want to avoid having the information on fetal cells floating out there,” she wrote in February.
She went on to say 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.”
“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,” Gelman said.
The Pfizer executive emphasized keeping the use of fetal cells quiet in another email thread as well.
“We have been trying as much as possible to not mention the fetal cell lines. … One or more cell lines with an origin that can be traced back to human fetal tissue has been used in laboratory tests associated with the vaccine program,” Gelman wrote, according to Project Veritas.
Strickler, who told O’Keefe she worked at Pfizer for about 10 years, including the last five as a quality auditor, speculated the reason the company does not want the information disseminated is that it could create grounds for claiming a religious exemption from taking the vaccine.
“They don’t want to stir up a mess,” she said.
“They don’t want to have to deal with people who are upset, because I think 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 it.”
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
Strickler explained to O’Keefe that coming forward was not a political issue for her.
“It shouldn’t be political, but they’re making it political,” she said. “The media and the government’s making it political, but this isn’t about Republican, Democrat or liberal or conservative. This is informed consent on injecting something inside of you from a company that’s called it [an] experimental vaccine.”
Strickler added that she felt the information needed to come out.
“It needs to be seen by the people because they’re trying to get this to kids, and if they’re being this deceptive about it, I don’t feel comfortable being silent while they’re trying to get it to babies who can’t talk,” she said.
The Associated Press reported that some on Twitter falsely interpreted the Project Veritas story to mean the Pfizer vaccine contains aborted fetal cells, which is not what Gelman’s email stated. She wrote the vaccines were tested using cell lines originally derived from aborted fetuses.
UCLA Health published on its website that none of the vaccines in use contains aborted fetal cells.
“However, Johnson & Johnson did use fetal cell lines — not fetal tissue — when developing and producing their vaccine, while Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines to test their vaccines and make sure that they work,” the organization said.
“Fetal cell lines are grown in a laboratory and were started with cells from elective abortions that occurred several decades ago in the 1970s-80s. They are now thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue. None of the COVID-19 vaccines use fetal cells derived from recent abortions.”