Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times
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. Syringes of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination site in Los Angeles, on Feb. 16, 2021. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
Inquiries to NIH spokespersons received away messages. Another request for comment, sent to one of the addresses provided in the away messages, was not returned.
Poster Comment:
As reported by WaPo in 2020:
"Moderna, the Massachusetts biotech company leading the global race to develop a coronavirus vaccine, has failed to disclose government financial support in any of the 126 patents it has filed in its 10-year history, in apparent violation of federal law, according to a new report by activist researchers.
Moderna was founded in 2010 and has yet to win market approval of a drug. But its vaccine technology, which has been developed with a combination of U.S. taxpayer support and a large share of private investment, allowed it to be the first company to test its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in humans.
With a boost of nearly $1 billion in research and development money from the Trump administration, it has initiated Stage 3 clinical trials in tens of thousands of people and is sprinting toward seeking an emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration before the end of the year. It also has a contract to sell 100 million doses to the United States for another $1.5 billion. The key protein used in the vaccine was co-invented by the National Institutes of Health.
Before those developments this year, Moderna honed its messenger RNA technology on vaccines against other infectious diseases, including Zika and Chikungunya. That research was supported with grants of about $25 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), according to the report by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), a nonprofit group that advocates to protect taxpayer investments in patents.
Moderna has not listed that government support in any patents, despite a requirement in the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act that companies disclose in patent applications when they have received government help, KEI said. Moderna also has not disclosed government involvement in any of 154 pending patent applications, KEI’s report said."