Adam Andrzejewski - ‘Taxpayers in the Dark’ as NIH Scientists Receive Millions in Royalties

May 16, 2022
Source: www.childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/nih-scientists-royalties-openthebooks-rfk-jr-podcast/

In an interview on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” Adam Andrzejewski, founder of OpenTheBooks.com, discussed how the group had to sue the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in order to discover that between 2010 and 2020, NIH scientists received more than $350 million in royalty payments from pharmaceutical companies.

Royalty payments from pharmaceutical companies and other third parties to National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists are skyrocketing, according to the nonprofit government watchdog organization OpenTheBooks.com.

OpenTheBooks on May 9 published its findings after forcing the NIH to disclose more than 22,100 royalty payments to its scientists.

Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks, discussed the news with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.”

Andrzejewski told Kennedy OpenTheBooks found that between fiscal years 2010 and 2020, more than $350 million in royalties were paid by third parties to the NIH and its scientists.

Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 royalty payments, but the NIH has yet to disclose the sum total of those payments.

“It is really almost dumbfounding that the people who are working there [at the NIH] are collecting royalties on the products that they’re supposed to be regulating,” said Kennedy. “The mercantile interests of scientists and public officials end up wagging the regulatory dog.”

By litigating against NIH, OpenTheBooks got the first real glimpse into what’s happening with these royalty payments from Big Pharma, Kennedy said.

“We know that every single year, NIH doles out $32 billion worth of grants, and there are 56,000 entities that receive a grant,” said Andrzejewski. “So tens of billions of dollars of grant-making is going one way.”

Thanks to his group’s investigation, he said, “Now we know that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of third-party royalties are going the other way.”

In January 2021, Andrzejewski wrote an article about Fauci in which he pointed out that Fauci is the highest-paid U.S. government employee. After the NIH complained, Forbes terminated Andrzejewski’s regular column.