Both during AIDS and during Covid-19, Fauci and company fought the use of inexpensive, repurposed drugs to help people’s immune systems fight off the threats. [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] argues that they were motivated by a desire to bring pharmaceutical products to market—both antivirals and vaccines—without facing cheap competition, as a portion of Big Pharma’s profits would make their way into the public health officials’ pockets.
Indeed, NBC News reports that NIH researchers have personally collected up to $150,000 a year in royalty payments for drugs they have helped develop at taxpayer expense. NBC says that in 2004 NIH researchers pocketed a total of $8.9 million. That’s in addition to their taxpayer-funded salaries. More recently, royalties from Covid vaccines appear to have been quite a boon to NIH, as in 2022 the agency’s overall royalties (not just the portion paid out to employees) skyrocketed to nine times what they were in the pre-Covid year of 2019.
Quoted in a brief book review by David Henderson, who doesn’t necessarily agree with everything Kennedy has to say on the subject.