A Pfizer board member took to Twitter to censor tweets arguing for natural immunity to vaccines

Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer board member and former head of the FDA, used his influence to pressure Twitter to flag a tweet that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines, the latest batch of “Twitter files” shows .

Documents leaked to controversial reporter Alex Berenson claim Dr. Scott Gottlieb leaned on the social media company to cover up a relatively benign post that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine and suggested that natural immunity was more effective.

The tweet – by a former government health official – was subsequently labeled “misleading”, though the immunity debate still divides scientists to this day.

The revelations are part of the Twitter files, a cache of internal documents and correspondence recently made public to a select number of journalists. Her goal is to highlight a number of censorship decisions Twitter made before it was taken over by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk.

dr Gottlieb referred Dr. Giroir’s relatively innocuous tweet was labeled “caustic” in an internal email to company management that did not appear to have been made aware of Gottlieb’s financial ties to Pfizer

The Twitter post was “caustic,” Gottlieb wrote, fearing it would “go viral and drive news coverage,” potentially jeopardizing Pfizer’s profits

dr Gottlieb is a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump and a member of Pfizer’s board of directors.

Documents show that Dr. Gottlieb emailed Todd O’Boyle, a top lobbyist at Twitter’s Washington office, on August 27, 2021, after seeing a tweet disparaging the Covid vaccines.

The tweet was sent by Dr. Brett Giroir, another government health official under the Trump administration, touting the superiority of natural immunity over vaccine-conferred immunity.

dr Gottlieb, who currently has about 550,000 Twitter followers, campaigned for the tweet to be flagged as misinformation.

dr Gottlieb said in the email the language could prove “corrosive” to the nationwide Covid vaccination campaign.

And while Twitter couldn’t conclusively prove that the tweet violated its misinformation policy, it still gave it a “misleading” label.

dr Gottlieb himself never asked for the tweet to be labeled as such, merely lamenting that the caustic message would act in a negative way to drive news coverage.

Mr. Berenson argued that Dr. Gottlieb to suppress the tweet raising doubts about the need for the vaccines was financial in nature. Saying that natural immunity from prior exposure to the virus is superior to that conferred by the vaccine, Dr. Brett Giroir jeopardized Pfizer’s sky-high profits.

dr Gottlieb’s financial ties to Pfizer were not mentioned in internal emails regarding the tweet.

He has been referred to as a “former FDA commissioner” by executives at the social media company, but not as a Pfizer shareholder who would be affected by the waning vaccine uptake.

Both Dr. Both Gottlieb and Mr. Berenson have huge Twitter megaphones – 553,000 followers and 455,000 followers, respectively

In his Substack post, Mr Berenson wrote: “By suggesting that some people may not need Covid vaccinations, the tweet could raise questions about the shooting. In addition to being a former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on Covid public policy, Gottlieb was also a senior board member at Pfizer, which relied on mRNA for nearly half of its $81 billion in 2021 sales. was instructed to inject. Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year.’

Alex Berenson, a former New York Times journalist and prolific novelist, has become one of Twitter’s most high-profile vaccine skeptics. One of his “hot takes” earned him a temporary ban from the platform last summer.

The tweet in question said, “It doesn’t stop the infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. At best, think of it as a therapist with a limited window of action and a terrible side effect profile that needs to be dosed BEFORE ILLNESS. And we want to commission it? Insanity.’