Read the Label! It’s BioNTech’s Vaccine, Not Pfizer’s

As Covid-19 vaccine passports and mandates gradually fade into the past, now is a time of reckoning, and for the overwhelming majority of the opponents of the Covid-19 measures there is no question who, above all, should be made to pay: namely, Pfizer, the manufacturer of the eponymous vaccine that became the standard go-to Covid-19 vaccine throughout the West.

Or, in other words, #PfizerLiedPeopleDied, as the famous Twitter hashtag puts it.

But the problem with this is that Pfizer is not in fact the manufacturer of the drug in question. Yes, it is to various degrees responsible for the physical process of manufacturing it for many (though not all) markets. But it always manufactures it on behalf of another company, which as a matter of legal fact is the actual (owner and) manufacturer: namely, the German company BioNTech.

How do I know this? Well, because it says so right on the carton label! See below.

“Manufactured by.” “Manufactured for.” What could be clearer? Pfizer is a BioNTech contractor. 

A more recent product label using the “Comirnaty” trade name dispenses with “by” and “for” and the Pfizer address altogether and, while politely still including the Pfizer logo, simply indicates BioNTech as manufacturer.

This is in keeping with the practice of the World Health Organization and regulators the world over, which likewise identify BioNTech, not Pfizer, as the manufacturer of the “Pfizer-BioNTech” vaccine. 

See here, for instance, from the MHRA’s “Information for UK recipients on Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine”.

Here from Health Canada.

Here from the FDA.

And here, finally, from the World Health Organization. (EUL stands for “Emergency Use Listing.”)

(Interestingly, the EU represents an exception in this regard; the regulatory documents identify both companies as “manufacturers,” but always highlight BioNTech’s status as Marketing Authorization Holder. EU labels, like the labels reproduced above, either specify that the drug is manufactured “by” Pfizer “for” BioNTech or simply list BioNTech as manufacturer.)

This primacy of BioNTech in the manufacturing of the drug also applied, not surprisingly, in the authorization process. The sponsor of and “responsible party” for the clinical trial that has been the target of so much suspicion and criticism was BioNTech, not Pfizer. The clinical trial entry merely lists Pfizer as “collaborator.” 

Pfizer ran the trial, but it did so on BioNTech’s behalf: as a contractor, just as in the case of the manufacturing process. 

And when all was said and done, as I already noted a year and a half ago, it was BioNTech, not Pfizer, that received full approval from the FDA for what is, after all, its drug. The top of the biologics license application is shown below. The applicant is BioNTech, Pfizer merely served as the German company’s US agent. 

So, why are the justly famous FOIA’ed “Pfizer Documents” from the authorization process even called “Pfizer documents?” Even when they are on Pfizer letterhead or are stamped “Pfizer confidential,” Pfizer’s role in the process was always the subordinate one of contractor or agent – and many indeed are on BioNTech letterhead and/or are stamped “confidential – property of BioNTech.” They ought to be known as the “BioNTech Documents.” 

And why does the likewise justly famous whistleblower suit charging Pfizer with fraud not even name the trial sponsor (and “responsible party”!) on whose behalf the alleged fraud was committed as co-defendant?

Whether or not it is the intention, the effect of the incessant raging against Pfizer is to hide what is in plain sight: namely, that it is BioNTech’s product and that it is BioNTech, not Pfizer, that has been the main corporate beneficiary of the creation by government fiat of a massive Covid-19 vaccine market.

And were this to be recognized, i.e. quite simply seen, it would invariably raise questions in turn about all the other conspicuous German connections to the Covid-19 pandemic and the pandemic response: from the involvement of German researchers in virus research in none other than Wuhan, China, to the lightning fast development by Germany’s leading virologist Christian Drosten of the notoriously hypersensitive PCR protocol that ensured that the Covid-19 outbreak would obtain “pandemic” status, to the overwhelmingly predominant German funding of the WHO’s Covid-19 response budget.