By Josh Christenson | New York Post
National Institutes of Health scientists raked in more than $325 million in royalties from Chinese and Russian entities — as well as pharmaceutical companies — over more than a decade, according to a new report.
Former NIH director Dr. Francis Collins and former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci were among the thousands of government whitecoats who took the cash between September 2009 and October 2020, the taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks.com revealed on Wednesday.
Several of those royalties came from companies that in turn received federal contracts and grants, prompting concerns about conflicts of interest.
Collins, for instance, took licensing payments from at least four firms that have been awarded nearly $50 million from the US government since 2008.
“As the most recognized official at NIH, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the face of the third-party royalties controversy. But our investigation was about a lot more than any single scientist,” OpenTheBooks.com Founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski said in a statement.
“It was about allowing for scrutiny of these records for potential conflicts of interest, public health implications, and even national security implications for all of us. Every American should understand the stakes in play when public health guidance is released by the federal government.”
Fauci has said he donates all royalties to charity.
The NIH permits inventors to take up to $2,000 in their first collection from a licensee; up to 15% for royalties between $2,000 and $50,000; and up to 25% for royalties above $50,000.
“As the most recognized official at NIH, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the face of the third-party royalties controversy. But our investigation was about a lot more than any single scientist,” OpenTheBooks.com Founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski said in a statement.
They may not receive more than $150,000 annually from royalties.
Unredacted documents obtained by the group through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show at least 34 Chinese companies are licensing NIH technologies initially funded by US taxpayers.
Some of those licensing fees came from the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the Chinese government-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm, which produced a COVID-19 vaccine.
In 2016, the biological products company moved its headquarters next to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where risky “gain-of-function” research funded by the US government may have led to the outbreak of the pandemic.
The late Dr. Robert Chanock, the former head of the NIAID’s laboratory of infectious diseases, and Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, his successor, were just a few of the virologists on the take from the Wuhan-based company.
Pokrov Biologics Plant — a Russian animal vaccine producer reported to be a front for Soviet-era bioweapons research — also made several payments to two scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other third-party payments came from firms in at least 31 countries, including Belarus, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, India, Ireland, Singapore, Israel and the United Kingdom.
Royalties also came from US-based Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which has twice pleaded guilty to deceptive marketing tactics in selling the opioid OxyContin.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who recently referred Fauci to the Department of Justice for having allegedly lied to Congress about government funding of Chinese labs, recently asked the Senate to mandate royalty disclosures from federal employees — but was shot down in committee by Democrats and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
“Some employees of the federal government are receiving royalties paid out by companies, including pharmaceutical manufacturers, who often have business before the agencies that oversee them,” he said in a July Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. “Without this amendment, taxpayers, and Congress itself are left in the dark when trying to assess conflicts of interest.”
The year before, Fauci had declined to say in a Senate hearing what companies paid him third-party royalties.