Newly released unredacted documents reveal third-party royalties paid to National Institutes of Health scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, before, during, and after the pandemic. These new findings raise more questions about Fauci’s statements to lawmakers during congressional hearings.
The transparency watchdog OpenTheBooks released more than 1,500 pages of records revealing that NIH leadership and thousands of scientists personally received royalty payments from companies licensing their inventions that were made with taxpayer money.
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NIH leadership, including Fauci, claimed while testifying before Congress that they could not release the names of the companies paying the NIH third-party royalties. OpenTheBooks filed a lawsuit with Judicial Watch on its Freedom of Information Act request to get the documents released from the NIH.
The new report from the watchdog showed payments between September 2009 and October 2020. Several of the royalty payments were from companies that received federal contracts and grants, which could be considered a conflict of interest. The NIH allows scientists to receive no more than $150,000 annually from royalties.
In Senate hearings in 2022, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) grilled Fauci on his NIH royalty payments, and he declined to answer questions. The immunologist deflected by suggesting that he “didn’t understand” what the senator was saying.
When Paul pressed Fauci about royalty payments in another Senate hearing, Fauci said he “didn’t know as a fact” about royalty payments.
Fauci pushed back, saying people who received royalties did not have to report the payments.
“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 founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski said.
He added, “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.”
Andrzejewski told Russell Brand in January that Fauci had a history of investing taxpayer dollars into his own inventions and then benefiting from the royalties.
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“In 2005, the Associated Press got an unredacted database, and they found that Fauci had burned down all the firewalls. He had received $45,000 of royalties for an AIDs therapeutic that he had invented,” he said.
In the documents released on Wednesday, Fauci received payments from three different companies: Santa Cruz Biotechnology, which creates medical research; Ancell Corporation, which specializes in immunology; and Chiron Corporation.
