MANIPULATED VIDEO: Pfizer CEO plans to reduce the world’s population by half

At a glance

• Claim: Pfizer chief executive officer Albert Bourla said during the World Economic Forum 2022 that he planned to reduce the world’s population by 50% by 2023.
• Rating: MANIPULATED VIDEO
• The facts: The video is edited. In the original video, Bourla talks about how Pfizer’s plan to only consider manufacturing cost in selling medicines will reduce by half the population of people who can’t afford medicines by the year 2023.
• Why we fact-checked this: The claim is being shared by multiple social media accounts both on Facebook and TikTok.

Complete details

A video clip of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla saying that he plans to reduce the world’s population by half by 2023 is circulating on the internet and is being shared and posted on social media by multiple Facebook and TikTok users.                             

In the video clip, Bourla can be heard saying, “By 2023, we reduce the number of people in the world by 50%.” 

The video clip is manipulated. 

The video clip is from the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, in 2022. The video clip removed a phrase in Bourla’s original statement, thus changing its meaning. In the original video, Bourla talks about the goals of the pharmaceutical giant for the next five years that they planned back in January 2019. One of the plans is to make Pfizer medicines cheaper in poorer countries to make these more accessible. 

Pfizer’s chief executive said at the 2:50 timestamp, “By 2023, we will reduce the number of people in the world who cannot afford our medicines by 50%.”

Bourla said that Pfizer would sell the medicines to poorer countries at cost, meaning that the medicines would be priced based only on the factors needed to manufacture them.

“We exclude all the research money that it took to make the medicines, all the legal to make the contracts, or everything of the administrative cost,” the Pfizer CEO said.

Pfizer is a pharmaceutical company based in New York, United States of America. Pfizer is the creator of the COMIRNATY COVID-19 vaccine. – Lorenz Pasion/Rappler.com

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