• by Les Luchter , December 16, 2025

"We are not going back to before Louis Pasteur times,” declared Pfizer CEO Andrew Bourla on a Tuesday morning analyst call, saying the pharma giant will continue its “long-term investment” in vaccines despite “the beliefs of HHS and all the institutions they are controlling, like the FDA and the CDC.”

Anti-vaccine comments from such government agencies, he stated, “don't have merit.” He called vaccines “the most cost-effective intervention to prevent illness,” remaining “an essential part of any healthcare system.”

Calling the current situation a mostly political-driven “anomaly” that “will correct itself, I hope pretty soon,” Bourla said the concerns of Pfizer and other pharma companies go beyond just vaccines. “What is worrisome is that science is replaced with political beliefs or sometimes obsession.”

Numerous medical associations, he noted, are “extremely, extremely upset” and keep issuing statements “contradicting recommendations from the CDC.”

The CDC, he reflected, “used to be the most reliable and credible organization in the world that everybody was looking up at. And right now we have, for the first time, the entire world -- that includes the World Health Organization and health authorities of other countries -- not doing what they are recommending.”

Pfizer’s own product lineup includes vaccines for RSV, pneumonia, meningitis -- and, of course, COVID.

The latter, combined with Pfizer’s COVID treatment Paxlovid, continue to see declining revenues but will still bring in about $6.5 billion in 2025, with an expected decline to about $5 billion in 2026.

Those figures were released as Pfizer reaffirmed its full-year 2025 guidance of total revenues at $62 billion, and issued 2026 guidance in the range of $59.5 billion to $62.5 billion.

While lambasting the Trump Administration’s health agencies during the Q&A portion of Tuesday’s analyst call, Bourla singled out Pfizer’s “landmark voluntary agreement with the U.S. government” as a significant 2025 achievement during his prepared remarks.

As a result of that deal, reached in late September, Bourla said that Pfizer “now has greater clarity on two critical fronts, pricing in the U.S.and tariffs. We addressed the call for lowering prescription drug costs and aligning prices with those in other developed countries. With our commitment to further invest in manufacturing in the U.S., we also have a three-year grace period from certain U.S. tariffs.” 

Also during the call, Bourla called the global obesity market the first time since Viagra’s introduction (in the late ‘90s) that there’s been such a “passion” by consumers to pay cash for medication not covered by their insurance.

He also pointed to Pfizer’s plans for obesity meds that can be taken orally. Not only will Pfizer’s recent $10 billion acquisition of obesity drug developer Metsera help in that regard, but Pfizer has its own oral GLP-1s in clinical trials. “We believe oral could become a significant market, [and] treat the masses, and we are going to have a very strong play in that,” he stated.