A Covid vaccine manufacturer has just paid $400 million to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), which was previously led by Dr. Anthony Fauci. NIAID granted clinical trial approvals to this company.
The industry watchdog organization Fierce Pharma revealed Moderna’s recent cash bonanza to the NIAID.
According to a new royalty-bearing license agreement between the parties, Moderna recently paid the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) a $400 million “catch-up payment,” the article noted.
“The payment is a component of a license deal signed late last year by Moderna and NIAID. According to the report, which was cited by Moderna Chief Financial Officer Jamie Mock, “Moderna is paying the U.S. government through the agreement to access ‘certain patent rights involving stabilizing prefusion coronavirus spike proteins’.”
According to Mock, Moderna has agreed to continue paying NIAID “low single-digit royalties” on COVID-19 vaccine sales.
This arrangement “does not bring Moderna out of the woods on the patent lawsuit front,” the report continues. Even after this agreement, the vaccine manufacturer is at odds with the American National Institutes of Health over where the vaccine’s main technology originated, according to The New York Times.
“The N.I.H. claimed that its scientists, some of whom had been working with Moderna for years, had assisted in creating that sequence. Over $10 billion in taxpayer money was also given to Moderna to develop, test, and supply the vaccine to the federal government, according to the Times. “The business has sold coronavirus vaccinations valued around $36 billion worldwide.”
“But even as the fight over the sequence attracted public attention, including suggestions from the N.I.H. that it might consider legal action, another standoff played out largely in private, this one concerning the chemical tweak that was the subject of the payments announced on Thursday,” the report added.
“That technique was integral to a number of coronavirus vaccines, including Moderna’s, scientists said,” the Times continued. “It entailed changing the mRNA code within the vaccines so that they would help people generate an immune response to the version of spike proteins present on the surface of the coronavirus before they fused with human cells.”
Moderna is also “facing patent suits from mRNA rivals Pfizer and BioNTech, plus a separate case from Arbutus and Roivant’s Genevant Sciences.” A case between Pfizer and Moderna is heading to trial in London next April, Reuters reported last week.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky last September grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top Covid doctor, over the nation’s public health organizations’ incestuous financial relationships with Big Pharma. Watch:
“Do any of the guidelines for vaccines from the government include previous infection as something to base your decision making on with vaccines?” Sen. Paul asked. “Do any of the guidelines involve previous infection? That’s why you’re ignoring previous infection, because it doesn’t involve any of the guidelines. And furthermore, we’ve been asking you, and you refuse to answer, whether anybody on the vaccine committees gets royalties from the pharmaceutical companies. I asked you last time and what was your response? We don’t have to tell you. Right? We’ve demanded them through Freedom of Information Act. And what have you said, ‘we’re not going to tell you.’
“But I tell you this,” Paul warned. “When we get in charge, we’re going to change the rules and you will have to divulge where you get your royalties from, from what companies. And if anybody in the committee has a conflict of interest, we’re going to learn about it. I promise you that.”
“Mr. Chair, can I, can I respond to that please?” Fauci asked. “Okay. There are two aspects for what you said, you keep saying, ‘you approve, you do this, you do that.; The committees that give the approval are FDA through their advisory committee. The committees that recommend are CDC through their advisory committee. And you keep saying, ‘I’m the one that’s approving a vaccine based on certain data.’ So I don’t really understand, with all due respect, Senator…”
“You are the one that said you would not reveal, you would not reveal what company gave you royalties or what company gave the other scientists royalties,” Paul said.
“They’re not my committees,” Fauci repeated. “They’re the VRBPAC committee for the FDA and the ACIP for the CDC. So I don’t have any idea what goes on…”
“They won’t reveal, as well as you won’t reveal,” Paul added, before being cut off.
Dr. Fauci made an obscene amount of money during the Covid pandemic. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s FY2021 financial disclosures from the National Institutes of Health that were surveyed by watchdog group OpentheBooks, the Fauci household’s net worth “now exceeds $12.6 million – up $5 million from 2019 through 2021.” That’s a 70% boon for the nation’s highest paid civil servant at a time when Americans have lost an average income of $4,200 a year under the Biden administration.
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Source: Becker News Rephrased By: InfoArmed