A report that is certain to raise questions about the integrity of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, which was run by Anthony Fauci before, during, and for a time, after the COVID pandemic, as well as the bank accounts of its scientists, has been released by Open the Books.
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That organization, which investigates and uncovers payoffs, payments and payouts that the government doesn’t necessarily want taxpayers to know about, has a new report revealing Big Pharma paid the federal government’s National Institutes of Health some $710 million during the COVID pandemic, some 175 times more than just a few years earlier.
And of that, Fauci’s NAIAD cashed checks for some $690 million, 97% of the total.
“It was an extreme cash haul at Fauci’s institute,” the report said.
Fauci, of course, was the health official acting as dictator during the pandemic from the bat-related virus that most likely emerged from a Chinese laboratory doing experiments on how to make bat viruses worse. Health officials now essentially have admitted that Fauci’s demands for experimental shots injured people, and his requirements for masks and social distancing were based on no scientific evidence.
Open the Books reported, “Between 2009-2021, OpenTheBooks.com, the organization I founded and lead, previously reported that $325 million was paid to all NIH institutes. Fauci’s NIAID received $23.9 million of that – or an average of $2 million per year.
“NIH and NAID wasted countless taxpayer dollars illegally resisting the requirement to tell taxpayers what was happening with their tax dollars. That’s because in the next two years – 2022 and 2023— Fauci’s institute collected the equivalent of 175 years in NIAID royalty payments. Nearly $690 million in just two years vs. $23.9 million over 12 years.
“We had to sue NIH twice in federal court over their royalty payment database with Judicial Watch, our legal partner, as counsel. It’s been a two-and-a-half-year battle to open the NIH books.”
Under the schemes put in place by the NIH, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies pay federal officials and scientists for their “inventions,” which in fact are funded by federal, taxpayer-funded labs.
Report author Adam Andrzejewski confirmed that while those payments had been running at the rate of a few million dollars a year, they exploded to some $350 million for NIAID during one year of the pandemic.
In 2022 and 2023, “Fauci’s institute collected the equivalent of 175 years in NIAID royalty payments. Nearly $690 million in just two years vs. $23.9 million over 12 years.”
The report said the top paying companies included Icopsavas, which made 147 payments, Glaxosmithkline which made 127 payments, Merck, Sharp & Dohme which made 122, Meso Scale which made 94 and Changchun with 86.
The report warned that Changchun is a Chinese state-owned vaccine company.
“Just this list raises all kinds of potential conflict-of-interest questions such as how much money did the Chinese state-owned vaccine developers pay NIH on third party royalties during a period when Fauci, NIH, and their colleagues did all they could to hammer down the Wuhan lab-leak theory?” the report questions.
“While it’s clear vaccine developers are licensing patents from the NIH, it is unclear if those patents are related to COVID-19 treatments.”
The report said five officials getting the most payments, although it is unknown whether that equates to the highest dollar figure since those are concealed, included four from Fauci’s NAIAD.
They are Dean Mewtcalfe, Cem Akin, Peter Kwong and Tongging Zhou. The fifth, Arnold Kirchsenbaum, holds a “position unknown.” The five together took in nearly 350 payments.
“Because we do not know the amounts paid in each transaction, we do not know if these scientists received the highest dollar figures—only that they received the most royalty payments. We assume that there is a correlation between the number of payments and the total amount received but cannot know for certain until payment totals are disclosed,” the report said.
Further, thousands more payments have been listed, but with the recipient redacted.
Open the Books reported, “In FY 2022 and FY 2023, when royalty payments to NIH scientists hit record highs, 936 payments were made to scientists with redacted names. Of those, 299 payments flowed to scientists affiliated with NIAID. We don’t know why their names are redacted or whether they have decision-making roles that shape policy and dictate how NIH spends its research time, or why NIH insists on covering up their identities. We do know all of this raises significant questions about conflicts-of-interest within the NIH royalty structure. Thus, we litigate to demand answers.”
The report cited one example raising many questions:
The federal government gave Moderna grants of nearly $10 billion from 2020-2022 to develop a Covid-19 vaccine and to deliver doses. From 2013-2017 the Department of Defense gave Moderna $60 million to develop its mRNA technology. Between 2018 and 2023, 44 scientists at NIH received royalty payments from Moderna and one of those scientists was John Mascola. John Mascola joined the NIH in 2000, and since 2013 directed the Vaccine Research Center, an office under Fauci’s NIAID. In other words, he was Fauci’s vaccine maker. During the pandemic, Mascola was charged with leading Operation Warp Speed, the government program focused on developing a COVID-19 vaccine. What the general public didn’t know, and NIH has spent tax dollars to fight tooth-and-nail not to disclose, is that Mascola had been receiving royalty payments from Moderna since 2018. So, Mascola was leading the very committee that would choose the vaccine… and Moderna had been paying Mascola royalties for his own inventions at NIAID since 2018.
The report said Mascola said he chose Moderna believing the odds of success.
