According to an investigation by The Epoch Times, two key research executives at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) in charge of choosing grant recipients received 77 royalty payments from outside firms from 2010 to 2014.
The payments were part of thousands of royalty payments received by NIH officials and researchers over the past decade. The total dollar amount is believed to be around $350 million.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, received 23 payments.
His deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments, and NIH Director Francis Collins received 14, according to [your]News.
In testimony during congressional hearings last week, acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak stated that the payments are legal under federal law. He admitted that they did have the appearance of a conflict of interest.
During the testimony, Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar told Tabak, “Right now, I think the NIH has a credibility problem, and this only feeds into this, and I’m only just learning about this.”
“People in my district say, ‘Well, so-and-so has a financial interest,’ or they don’t like ivermectin because they aren’t benefitting from that royalty,” he said.
Tabak then disputed that claim by stating that the NIH does not endorse particular drugs or medicine while reiterating the oft-repeated line by Fauci and others that they are simply “following the science.”
After Moolenaar pointed out that the NIH consistently and repeatedly stated their approval of the Covid vaccines manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer, Tabak said that the NIH made those endorsements after clinical trials were conducted.
Tabak later insisted that various safeguards and “firewalls” were in place that prevent the abuse of those royalty payments or potential conflicts of interest. However, according to The Epoch Times, he did not choose to elaborate on the specifics during the hearing.
The potential conflict of interest comes from the fact that most of these royalty payments to NIH officials and researchers come from pharmaceutical companies.
An NIH researcher or official might skew data or endorse a new medicine due to receiving these funds, not because the product works.
The NIH gave out roughly $30 billion in grants last year to approximately 56,000 recipients.
As these pharmaceutical companies also receive grants from the NIH, receiving a royalty payment from a particular company might cause the NIH to choose that company for its next grant. Or the NIH could have accepted it as compensation for funding that had already been received.
Open The Books, a non-profit watchdog organization aimed at increasing transparency in government, has also been investigating the royalty payments.
As part of the investigation, they have sent out multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, many of which came back heavily redacted, with names and money amounts removed.
As a result, they have launched a federal lawsuit against the NIH, demanding to see the unredacted documents from the FOIA requests.
In a post by Open The Books Founder Adam Andrzejewski, he states that the NIH has become more secretive over the past few years. The organization no longer sees itself as being accountable to the American people.
The NIH has declined comment on the lawsuits, the Congressional testimony, and nearly every other aspect of this story.
