Bayer's Confession: "95% Would Have Refused It"

On 24 October 2021, Stefan Oelrich stood on the stage of the World Health Summit in Berlin. Bayer AG board member, head of the pharmaceutical division. Right in front of him: Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen [1].

What Oelrich said is one of the most honest statements ever made by a pharma executive about the acceptance of mRNA products. Verbatim:

“Ultimately, the mRNA vaccines are an example for that cell and gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had surveyed two years ago in the public — ‘would you be willing to take a gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?’ — we probably would have had a 95 percent refusal rate.” [2]

Plain English: mRNA vaccines are an example of cell and gene therapy. Had we asked the public two years ago whether they would let themselves be injected with a gene or cell therapy — refusal would probably have been 95%.

What Oelrich said exactly

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The appearance took place at the opening event. In the official WHS recording, the passage is at around 1:29:03 [1]. Oelrich was speaking in a panel about innovation in the pharma industry and named mRNA as a prime example of the acceleration that gene and cell therapies were now experiencing.

His sentence was not a slip. It was a well-placed observation about the perception shift: what would have counted as gene therapy before the pandemic was, from 2020 onwards, introduced as a “vaccine” — and accepted.

Oelrich closed his point with the words that the pandemic had opened many people’s eyes to innovation in a way that had previously “perhaps not been possible” [1].

The reactions: Fact-checkers contradicting the corporate PR

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After the recording spread in alternative media, German and international “fact-check” platforms went into action. FactCheck.org and Lead Stories argued in 2022 that Oelrich had been “taken out of context” — he had not claimed that mRNA is gene therapy [3] [4].

That is a remarkable position, because Bayer itself stated in an official answer to fact-checkers: mRNA is “not gene therapy in the general understanding” [3]. With that, Bayer contradicts its own board member.

Pharmaceutically and from a regulatory perspective, the question has long been answered:

• The EU Regulation 1394/2007 defines Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs), to which gene therapeutics belong.
• mRNA active ingredients were formally approved as “biological medicinal products” and not as gene therapeutics — a regulatory categorisation, not a scientific one.
• Functionally, mRNA introduces genetic information into the body’s own cells, which then produce a foreign protein. That corresponds to the scientific definition of gene therapy in the FDA glossary [5].

The fact-check consensus was therefore not a scientific clarification but a semantic defence of the approval category.

Why this statement remains important in 2026

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Three points make Oelrich’s confession permanently relevant:

1. The acceptance question has been decided — through pressure. Oelrich admits what the risk communication of the pandemic phase obscured: an honestly communicated gene or cell therapy would not have reached an acceptance threshold. The population’s consent was not “informed consent” but crisis compliance.

2. The corporate logic is laid bare. Oelrich did not speak in a back room with lobbyists, but on the largest global health stage, in front of Spahn, Tedros, von der Leyen. Nobody contradicted. It was consensus.

3. The “fact-checks” discredit themselves. When FactCheck.org claims that the Bayer board member meant something other than what the Bayer board member literally said, that is no longer fact-checking. It is opinion management.

What remains to be done in 2026

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The Bundestag’s Enquete Commission on the reckoning with corona policy [6] should treat Oelrich’s statement as a mandatory document. Specifically:

• Hearing of Stefan Oelrich as an expert witness
• Demand for the internal risk assessments of BioNTech, Moderna, and Pfizer on the acceptance forecast before market launch
• Investigation of which federal agencies had prior knowledge of the classification question

When a pharma executive publicly admits that the population would have rejected the product under normal circumstances, that is no longer a “conspiracy theory”. It is self-disclosure.

And self-disclosure by a corporation about its own customers is the most reliable source you can get.

Sources

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1. World Health Summit 2021, Berlin, 24–26 October 2021 — Opening Ceremony video, from approx. 1:29:03
2. Original quote Stefan Oelrich, documented inter alia at The Epoch Times
3. FactCheck.org: “Website Peddles Old, Debunked Falsehood About COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines” (June 2022)
4. Lead Stories: “Bayer Top Exec Did NOT Admit COVID-19 Vaccine Is Gene Therapy” (June 2022)
5. FDA: Cellular & Gene Therapy Products — Glossary
6. German Bundestag: Enquete Commission Reckoning with the Corona Pandemic