Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) stripped “Mr. Anthony Fauci” of his professional title, as least for the duration of her questioning on the floor of the House, citing the explosive revelation in The New York Post that, “NIH scientists made $710M in royalties from drug makers — a fact they tried to hide.” The figure cited in the headline refers to royalties paid by pharmaceutical companies to the government agency and its scientists for patents they held on drugs or drug technologies utilized by the companies in developing the Covid vaccines and/or other drugs during the Covid pandemic years.

There is a clear distinction in the article, missing from the headlines, that these royalties were paid, “the agency and its scientists.” In other words, $710 million was not paid out to individual scientists in varying amounts based upon their patent claims. Rather, some portion of the money was paid to the government agency as a whole and some went to individual scientists.

Fauci has previously answered questions from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on this matter, refusing to disclose the full details of the royalty payments, but indicating his personal gain from such payments was nominal. While we don’t know that’s true, one suspects that if the details of the $710 million were fully disclosed, the lion’s share of the money was likely paid to the government and some small portion paid to individual scientists who developed the patents, with no one scientists becoming fabulously wealthy because of them.

But even with this most charitable assumption, there is still a massive problem here. The vaccines these companies developed were mandated by the government. There are plenty of arguments against such mandates without the royalty aspect, but knowing an agency like NIH had a financial incentive to recommend these vaccines for such a mandate is particularly egregious, even if most of the money wasn’t paid to private individuals employed by it.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?