Tag: nih

Dr Anthony Fauci’s department hid plans to create mutant monkeypox virus that ‘could’ve started pandemic,’ bombshell Congress report finds

Dr Anthony Fauci‘s former department ‘deceived’ Congress over its plans to create a Frankenstein monkeypox virus that had pandemic potential, a new report says.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) submitted plans to create a more transmissible and more lethal strain of Mpox in 2015, when Dr Fauci was still in charge of the agency.

The plans only received widespread attention in late 2022 – amid concerns that Covid may have been borne out of similar experiments using US government grant money in China.

The blueprint to create a mutant Mpox virus raised major concerns among experts and led to an investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released the results from its year-and-a-half probe this week.

The report said the HHS, NIAID and NIH repeatedly ‘obstructed and misled the committee’ about whether the risky experiments had been approved and conducted, describing their cooperation with the probe as ‘unacceptable and potentially criminal.’

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Rand Paul Rips Fauci Testimony: NIH ‘More Secretive than the CIA’

In an appearance on The Hill’s “Rising” on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Monday.

Paul addressed Fauci’s responses, suggesting they contradicted known facts about how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — the agency Fauci led for 38 years — and its parent agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“NIH is actually more secretive than the CIA, and that’s alarming and disturbing and really should not be tolerated,” Paul told co-hosts Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray.

Paul addressed Fauci’s efforts to distance himself from his longtime aide David Morens, who in emails boasted that he could evade Freedom of Information Act requests by deleting any potential “smoking guns.”

Paul criticized gain-of-function research, which he said occurred under Fauci’s leadership of NIAID, and called for it to be banned. He also suggested COVID-19 emerged from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in late 2019.

Paul’s interview came on the heels of revelations that the NIAID received $690 million of $710 million in NIH royalty income between 2022 and 2023.

It also came days after the release of the transcripts of Fauci’s two-day closed-door House interview in January and a House memorandum with key takeaways from that interview.

Paul has long been a critic of Fauci. In October 2021, he claimed Fauci was “spreading mistruths.” In August 2023, he said Fauci committed perjury and called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation. In October 2023, he accused Fauci of leading the “great COVID cover-up.”

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NIH scientists made $710M in royalties from drug makers — a fact they tried to hide

During the pandemic, the American people started to feel that Big Government was very cozy with Big Pharma.

Now we know just how close they were.

New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists.

Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists.

Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions.

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NIH-Funded Scientists Develop mRNA Bird Flu Vaccine ‘to Prevent Human Infections’

Federally funded researchers have developed an experimental mRNA H5N1 bird flu vaccine that they said is “highly effective” in preventing severe illness and death in infected lab animals.

According to a University of Pennsylvania press release, the vaccine “could potentially help manage the outbreak of the H5N1 virus currently circulating in birds and cattle in the United States, and prevent human infections with the virus.”

The news comes as the U.S. and European nations consider vaccinating workers deemed as at risk for contracting bird flu.

The researchers — who on May 23 published their results in Nature Communications — reported their mRNA lipid nanoparticle vaccine elicited “strong” T cell and antibody responses in female mice infected with H5N1.

They also said their vaccine produced an immune response in male ferrets and prevented death.

U.S. News and World Report and other media outlets reported on the study, which was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Robert Malone — an early pioneer of mRNA vaccines technology and an outspoken critic of U.S. federal biomedical corruption during the COVID-19 pandemic — called the news coverage of the study “investor hype” and “fear porn.”

“There’s no evidence of human-to-human transmission of H5N1,” Malone told The Defender.

Malone said the researchers would need to show that there’s a “reasonable facsimile” between ferrets and humans to claim the vaccine can prevent severe illness and death in humans.

The likelihood of people getting H5N1 is very small, Malone said. “The thing is, it doesn’t readily infect humans.”

Only those who are immunocompromised or who slaughtered an infected waterfowl might be at risk of transmission, he said, so H5N1 is being “used to instill fear” in the public to generate federal funding for H5N1 vaccine research.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of evidence that the lead researchers have clear conflicts of interest, Malone said. “They absolutely stand to profit” from their experimental bird flu vaccine.

Scott Hensley, Ph.D. and Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D. at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania — who led the research — are listed as co-inventors on patents for mRNA vaccine technologies.

They’ll likely receive royalties payments, Malone said. “It’s similar to how [Dr. Anthony] Fauci gets money from his royalties.”

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NIH adviser David Morens can’t recall if he deleted COVID records, laughs off Fauci FOIA evasions

A top adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted records critical to uncovering the origins of COVID-19 — and used a “secret back channel” to help Dr. Anthony Fauci and a federal grantee that funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, evade transparency.

NIH senior adviser Dr. David Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to dodge records requests, according to emails revealed in a memo by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which The Post obtained Wednesday.

“[I] learned from our foia [sic] lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d [sic] but before the search starts,” Morens wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail [sic].”

“I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail [sic],” he emphasized again in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, whose organization was suspended this month from receiving federal funds for the next three years and who was himself proposed for debarment on Wednesday.

In the most shocking exchange, on May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 “[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in an April 21, 2021, email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

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NIH Official Finally Admits American Taxpayers Funded Gain-of-Function Virus Experiments in Wuhan, China

The House Select Subcommittee looking at the origins of the covid pandemic certainly has been busy.

We recently reported on the grilling EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak received. His group was responsible for partnering with Chinese bat virus researchers, and one of those coronaviruses may be the one responsible for the pandemic and the resulting destructive public health policies to contain it. During his testimony in front of the committee, Daszak indicated the intelligence community was aware of the coronavirus experiments carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology years before the pandemic.

Subsequently, all federal funding to Ecohealth Alliance was cut off.

Now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak has admitted to the subcommittee that Americans taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the institute in the months and years leading up to the pandemic.

“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”

“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”

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NIH official finally admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan — after years of denials

It’s about time!

At long last, National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress Thursday that US taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in the months and years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”

“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”

The response comes after more than four years of evasions from federal public health officials — including Tabak himself and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci — about the controversial research practice that modifies viruses to make them more infectious.

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NIH Refuses To Release Details Of COVID-19 Vaccine Royalty Agreement

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to release additional information about an agreement it reached over a COVID-19 vaccine that has earned it at least $400 million.

The NIH declined to provide any materials in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Epoch Times.

“The NIH withholds the entirety of the records as they are protected from release,” Gorka Garcia-Malene, an NIH officer, told The Epoch Times in a letter.

She cited an exemption outlined in the act that allows government agencies to partially or fully withhold information.

“In this case, exemption 3 incorporates 35 U.S.C. 209 (f), which reads in relevant part, ‘No Federal agency shall grant any license under a patent or patent application on a federally owned invention unless the person requesting the license has supplied the agency with a plan for development or marketing of the invention, except that any such plan shall be treated by the Federal agency as commercial and financial information obtained from a person and privileged and confidential and not subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5,’” Ms. Garcia-Malene wrote.

“Exemption 4 protects from disclosure trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential,” she added.

In February 2023, Moderna announced that it had paid $400 million to the NIH and would make additional payments in the future as part of a licensing agreement for spike proteins used in the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the contract, which confirmed the payment but redacted details of the future payments.

The Epoch Times then lodged a new request, seeking more details about the future payments, which are said to be based on how many COVID-19 vaccines are sold.

Ms. Garcia-Malene was responding to the new request.

James Love, director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International, said the information should be made public.

“The NIH put out several press statements about the royalty dispute with Moderna, and they should not now claim it is some secret confidential information. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, the public interest in transparency is large too,” Mr. Love told The Epoch Times in an email.

“There are a lot of NIH officials who resent transparency,” he added.

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How the National Institutes of Health became a den of cronyism

For too long, the bureaucrats at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been lining their pockets through clandestine agreements with big corporations, getting cozy with the very entities they are tasked with overseeing.  

In an era where trust in our public institutions is alarmingly low, this isn’t just a minor oversight; it’s an outright epidemic of corruption. Shockingly, over 55,000 royalty payments have been overlooked in the past decade alone. Each undisclosed royalty payment is a potential conflict of interest, undermining the credibility of our institutions and eroding the trust of the American people.  

The explosive revelations by Open the Books in 2022 shed light on this den of cronyism. It was uncovered that more than 2,400 NIH scientists pocketed a whopping $325 million in royalty payments in the last decade, with an average of $135,000 per person. Yet, the details of these sweetheart deals remain hidden in the shadows with vital information redacted from public view.  

Despite attempts to bring these details to light, the NIH refuses to disclose essential information, including the amounts of individual payments and the identities of the payers. 

In June 2022, my Republican colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and I sent a letter to NIH, demanding information about these royalty payments. But NIH is stonewalling, claiming they are above disclosing such details. It’s this kind of arrogance that fuels distrust and raises legitimate concerns about whose interests our government agencies are truly serving. 

When I directly challenged Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on royalties paid by vaccine manufacturers to members of the vaccine approval committees, Fauci argued the law protected scientists from revealing their royalties. The implications of these undisclosed payments extend far beyond simple bureaucratic secrecy. They cast a long shadow over the impartiality of our regulatory processes.  

Moderna’s royalty payments to the NIH, Dartmouth and Scripps Universities in the amount of $400 million will make it challenging for NIH scientists to treat Moderna objectively.  

The NIH’s potential profit from future royalties on Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is the icing on this conflict-of-interest cake, raising grave concerns about the integrity of our regulatory processes. This is not merely about financial transparency; it is about ensuring public health decisions are made in the American people’s best interest, untainted by the prospect of financial gain. 

The lack of transparency surrounding these payments is downright alarming. Americans deserve to know who is paying whom, how much and for what. The current ordeal of accessing public inspection reports — jumping through bureaucratic hoops, facing delays and obfuscation — is an insult to the American people and a hotbed for corruption. 

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Rand Paul’s Bill Would Require NIH Scientists To Disclose Royalties They Receive From Drug Companies

Over the past decade, scientists working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have earned an estimated $400 million in royalties from third-party companies for medical treatments and innovations they’ve helped produce. The NIH often provides grants to these same companies and produces research on their products. Despite that, the agency has resisted disclosing how much its scientists are getting paid and by whom.

A bill moving its way through Congress would change that.

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed the Royalty Transparency Act of 2024 by a 12–0 vote.

The legislation would require that royalties received by federal government employees be included in their financial disclosures and that those disclosures be made available online for the general public to view.

“This is just basic 101 of conflict of interest. We’re letting the billions of dollars that change hands over at NIH and between NIH and Big Pharma to be completely unscrutinized,” says Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), the author of the legislation. “This is probably the first reform bill that actually has a chance to correct some of the things that are rotten in the system.”

The NIH’s lack of transparency about the royalties paid to its scientists has been a source of controversy for decades.

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