NIH

Insider Reveals Hidden Payments Sent to Fauci and…

An approximate $350 million in hidden royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and several of its researchers, including the federal agency’s most recent former director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a not-for-profit federal government watch dog.

“We estimate that up to $350 million in royalties from third parties were paid to NIH scientists during the fiscal years between 2010 and 2020,” Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski told reporters in a telephone news conference on May 9.

“We draw that conclusion because, in the first five years, there has been $134 million that we have been able to quantify of top-line numbers that flowed from third-party payers, meaning pharmaceutical companies or other payers, to NIH scientists.”

The first 5 years, from 2010 to 2014, make up 40 percent of the overall amount, he stated.

“We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said.

“We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.”

Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s biggest public health agency. Fauci is the long-time head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in addition to being the primary medical advisor to Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci.

The leading 5 NIH workers determined in regards to the variety of royalty payments that they got while on the federal government payroll, according to a fact sheet published by Open the Books, include Robert Gallo, National Cancer Institute, 271 payments; Ira Pastan, National Cancer Institute, 250 payments; Mikulas Popovic, National Cancer Institute, 191 payments; Flossie Wong-Staal, National Cancer Institute, 190 payments; and Mangalasseril Sarngadharan, National Cancer Institute, 188 payments.

Just Pastan continues to be utilized by NIH, according to Open the Books.

“When an NIH employee makes a discovery in their official capacity, the NIH owns the rights to any resulting patent. These patents are then licensed for commercial use to companies that could use them to bring products to market,” the fact sheet reads.

“Employees are listed as inventors on the patents and receive a share of the royalties obtained through any licensing, or ‘technology transfer,’ of their inventions. Essentially, taxpayer money funding NIH research benefits researchers employed by NIH because they are listed as patent inventors and therefore receive royalty payments from licensees.”

An NIH spokesperson didn’t react by press time to a request for comment.

Andrzejewski informed reporters that the Associated Press reported extensively on the NIH royalty payments in 2005, which includes the particular information about who got just how much from which payers for what work, that the firm is rejecting to Open the Books in 2022.

“At that time, we knew there were 918 scientists, and each year, they were receiving approximately $9 million, on average with each scientist receiving $9,700. But today, the numbers are a lot larger with the United States still in a declared national health emergency. It’s quite obvious the stakes in health care are a lot larger,” Andrzejewski said.

He stated the files Open the Books is getting– 300 pages of line-by-line information– are “heavily redacted.”

“These are not the files the AP received in 2005 where everything was disclosed—the scientist’s name, the name of the third-party payer, the amount of the royalty paid by the payer to the scientist,” Andrzejewski said. “Today, NIH is producing a heavily redacted database; we don’t know the payment amount to the scientist, and we don’t know the name of the third-party payer, all of that is being redacted.”

If the release of the information would damage a company’s business benefit, Federal authorities are enabled to redact details from results to FOIA demands.

The concealed royalty payments are fundamental conflicts of interest, Andrzejewski stated.

“We believe there is an unholy conflict of interest inherent at NIH,” he said. “Consider the fact that each year, NIH doles out $32 billion in grants to approximately 56,000 grantees. Now we know that over an 11-year period, there is going to be approximately $350 million flowing the other way from third-party payers, many of which receive NIH grants, and those payments are flowing back to NIH scientists and leadership.”

Fauci and Lane informed AP that they concurred there was an appearance of a conflict of interest in getting the royalties, with Fauci stating that he contributed his royalties to charity. Lane didn’t do that, according to Andrzejewski.

The governing principles of monetary disclosure of this type in the past specified the royalty payments as earnings received from NIH, which suggested the receivers weren’t needed to note their payments on the type.

Andrzejewski stated NIH has actually declined to react to his demand for information on the disclosure problem.

“If they are not, none of these payments are receiving any scrutiny whatsoever and to the extent that a company making payments to either leadership or scientists, while also receiving grants … then that just on its face is a conflict of interest,” he said.

Open the Books is a Chicago-based not-for-profit federal government watch dog that utilizes the federal and state freedom of information laws to acquire and publish on the internet trillions of dollars in waste at all levels of the federal government.

The not-for-profit submitted a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) fit looking for paperwork of all payments by outdoors companies to NIH and/or previous and present NIH workers.

NIH decreased to react to the FOIA, so Open the Books is taking the company to court, suing it for noncompliance with the FOIA. Open the Books is represented in federal court in the event by another not-for-profit federal government guard dog, Judicial Watch.

H/T The Epoch Times

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