The following is an excerpt from The Vaccine Reaction.
A recently disclosed contract reveals that the U.S. government received millions of dollars in licensing fees from Moderna, Inc. The company paid the National Institutes of Health (NIH) $400 million to use NIH’s spike protein technology in Moderna’s Spikevax messenger RNA (mRNA) Covid-19 biologic.
The large payment was part of a royalty-bearing license agreement negotiated between Moderna and the NIH in December 2022.
The Epoch Times received a copy of the contract through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
While certain portions of the contract were redacted, including a clause stating that Moderna would pay “low single digit royalties” on future sales of the Covid shots, the document revealed that the NIH would receive royalties in late 2022, as well as annual royalties of an undisclosed amount.
NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID ) is to receive a “catch-up” non-refundable royalty in the amount of $400 million from Moderna for the use of its molecular technique.
The spike protein technology is jointly owned by the NIH and Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine, and both are named in the contract along with Moderna.
Moderna and the NIAID began working together on this technology in 2016 and previously published a study using the spike protein from MES-CoV, a similar virus to SARS-COV2, in 2017.
NIH and Moderna Spar over Patent Rights
There has been a lingering dispute between Moderna and the NIH over who developed the spike protein used in Moderna’s Spikevax shot.
Moderna attempted to file a principal patent on the entirety of the mRNA sequence fund in their vaccine by claiming its scientists developed the sequence. The NIH disputes their claim and argues that government scientists developed the technology and gave it to the vaccine maker.
Moderna’s CEO, Stéphane Bancel, testified before Congress on March 23 saying that his company developed the same spike protein that NIH developed but did not patent it due to disagreements with NIH.
One Hand Washes the Other with Public-Private Business Partnerships Between Government and Pharma
While there may be a dispute over who originally developed the spike protein for Spikevax, it is clear that NIH and Moderna worked together to develop and manufacture the product.
The symbiotic financial relationship between the government and the private company appears to exist in all steps of the Covid vaccine roll-out process. It started with $10 billion dollars of taxpayer funds going to Moderna to help create and test the novel biologic.
The government contracts with Moderna helped the vaccine manufacturer develop the Covid shots resulting in an almost $37 billion dollar windfall for the company with $5 billion in revenue projected for 2023 as the company plans on raising the price of the vaccine by 400% going forward.
The collaboration between NIH and Moderna in the development of Spikevax is another example of the lucrative public-private business partnership between the U.S. government and pharmaceutical companies.
Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), observed:
Perhaps the greatest change I have seen in vaccine regulation, policymaking and law over the past four decades has been the development of public-private business partnerships between Big Pharma and the government. That seismic change has affected how new vaccines are developed, licensed and regulated and is influencing what we see happening today.
Link to article here.
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