NIH, Officials Received $325 Million in Royalties From 3rd Parties Over 11 Years: Watchdog

Drug makers in 31 foreign countries, including China, Russia and Belarus, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to top officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 14, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Drug makers in 31 foreign countries, including China, Russia, and Belarus, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to top officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, former National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, and former National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director Dr. Douglas Lowy.

New information about the third-party royalty payments was made public on Aug. 9 by OpenTheBooks.com, the Illinois-based nonprofit government watchdog that sued NIH in federal court in 2022 after the agency refused to accommodate a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to disclose names of firms behind the royalties, patents involved, or individual payment amounts.