The House Judiciary Committee is seeking information based on a former Pfizer scientist’s reported claims that he was part of efforts to “deliberately slow down” testing of the drugmaker’s COVID-19 vaccine until after the 2020 presidential election.
The panel says it wants information from the scientist, Philip Dormitzer, and Pfizer after it learned the scientist allegedly asked at a later job in 2024 to be relocated to Canada out of fears that he’d face an investigation about his part in the release of the vaccine, reports The Wall Street Journal Thursday.
The committee in one letter asked Pfizer for documents on its testing of the vaccine and sent Dormitzer a letter seeking similar documentation and a request for an interview by May 29. It did not compel the scientist at this time to appear, but if he declines, the panel has the authority to subpoena him.
Dormitzer has since claimed that his comments at GSK, where he went to work in 2021, were misinterpreted, and he has denied that he or anyone at Pfizer had tried to delay a COVID vaccine.
House Republicans are using the GSK information as leverage for their investigation into whether officials at Pfizer, one of the nation’s top drugmakers, used its testing process to influence the 2020 election.
Federal prosecutors in New York last year launched an investigation into the vaccines’ timing after GSK reported Dormitzer’s alleged comments.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked GSK last month for information about the allegations, citing a Wall Street Journal report about the federal probe.
According to GSK, a British drugmaker, Dormitzer allegedly said that three of Pfizer’s most senior people in research and development were “involved in a decision to deliberately slow down clinical testing so that it would not be complete prior to the results of the presidential election that year.”
The employees also reported to the House panel that Dormitzer was “visibly upset” while asking to be moved to Canada and that he’d told a human resources official that the timing of the COVID vaccine’s release “wasn’t a coincidence.”
Pfizer spokeswoman Amy Rose said the company got the House committee’s letter and would “respond directly.”
She added that the development process for the vaccine was “driven by science and guided by the U.S. FDA back in 2020” and that “theories to the contrary are simply untrue and being manufactured.”
Joe Biden, while running against then-President Donald Trump, focused much of his campaign on how Trump had handled the pandemic.
The development process for the vaccine was public, with Pfizer and eight other drugmakers, including GSX, signing a pledge that they would not seek government approval of their products until the shots that were in development were proven to be safe and effective.
The Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness and safety were reviewed by outside independent experts. The company filmed and broadcast the moment executives learned the results, releasing the information on Nov. 8, one day after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election. The polls closed for the election on Nov. 3.
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