January 31, 2023
This weekend, Forbes.com published a clumsy attempt to discredit the self-declared and first hand source – Jordon Trishton-Walker – who was caught on a Project Veritas hidden camera boasting about Pfizer’s active, dangerous mutation of the COVID-19 virus.
What Forbes doesn’t tell you is its author Dr. Bruce Y. Lee’s proximity to Pfizer, Inc. itself.
Dr. Lee’s argument against the veracity of the Veritas video boils down to this paragraph:
“…a Google search didn’t really reveal any legitimate source that could verify the person’s name and title. Similarly, a search on LinkedIn doesn’t reveal any such verifiable profiles either, just some accounts trying to spread his name… Of note, a search for “Triston” without the “h” did return an Urban Dictionary entry that described “Triston” as “a very hot and cute boy who always wants to disagree. Who has the softest hair in the entire world.” So if you are looking for someone hot, disagreeable, and really soft-haired, there is that.”
Dr. Lee would have known, if he had bothered to check, that search results related to Walker, especially on LinkedIn, were purged just moments after the Veritas video dropped:
But the argument that because this person doesn’t have easily Google-able results associated with their name, or that Urban Dictionary has a funny entry about it, is not an argument against Veritas, nor its claims. So why is Dr. Lee really pursuing this attempt to discredit James O’Keefe and his outfit? Well, to understand that we have to get into Dr. Lee’s own difficult online profile.
Lee, currently listed as “a systems modeler, computational, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital health expert, professor, writer, and journalist,” per his employer’s website at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health.
What you won’t easily find on Google, Forbes, nor on Urban Dictionary, is Dr. Lee’s long-standing affiliations with Big Pharma and indeed the corporate goliath his Forbes article appears to defend: Pfizer, Inc. For that you have to go into the bowels of medical journals, press releases, and grant proposals. But don’t worry, youdon’t actually have to do it. I did it for you.
Off the bat Dr. Lee appears to be wildly compromised out of being able to write an article like this for Forbes. He has co-authored papers which not only have directly benefited firms like Pfizer and Moderna, but in fact which implicate himin the rushed roll-out of vaccines which are now being linked to myocarditis, strokes, and other injuries in tens of thousands of people. Britain even recently began paying out around $140,000 to those affected.
As recently as June 2022, Lee was listed as an author on a study which featured a listed competing interest from one of his co-authors, which read: “JSW is a co-founder of Avail Bio and is paid expert work from Pfizer and Sanofi.”
Indeed Lee’s own employer, CUNY, announced they had received $17,000,000 for their Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, a million of which came directly from the Pfizer Foundation and which caused the school to name a room the “Pfizer Foundation Room” in return. Lee has even used his Forbes column to promote the Pfizer-backed Cold Spring Harbor Lab’s work.
But perhaps the most galling example of Lee’s unethical behavior is this proposalfrom just shy of a decade ago, wherein Lee and his team whip out their begging bowl in search of a six figure grant from, you guessed it, Pfizer.
Evidence for the vaccine study in Mozambique exists here, here, here, and here, in case Lee and his team want to take a few notes from Trishton-Walker and start covering their online tracks. But don’t worry, I’ve backed it all up.
I’ve even made it easier to read, since contrary to Dr. Lee’s claims about Google.com: that website is not the be all and end all of journalistic research.
Indeed, Pfizer themselves have the Lee-led vaccine study listed on their list of “funded initiatives”. The site also lists the study as still “In Progress.” Pfizer’s own PDF demonstrating the link is available here.
Critics will say, “Oh, come on now. It’s just a few hundred thousand dollars here. A few million there. This happens all the time in pharmaceutical research and medicine. It’s not a big deal.”
This normalization is precisely why it’s a big deal.
People like Dr. Bruce Y. Lee can take to major publications and smear the opponents of their funders both with impunity and public ignorance of the matter, while their publications do nothing to highlight the very real conflicts of interest arising.
This is malfeasance and corruption in both industries: science and media. And it is directly linked to Pfizer’s whopping advertising budget, which makes it one of the largest spenders on public relations and marketing in the entire world.
I have enquired with Forbes as to whether Pfizer has recently advertised with them. They haven’t yet responded. But it wouldn’t be the first time the publication finds itself at the nexus of Big Pharma interests and dubious editorial decisions.
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