‘It’s All Cronyism Going Forward’

And as The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, the pair are now set to be awarded up to $500 million for their in-house vaccine research. Memoli’s involvement in this latest award “is clearly someone taking advantage of the system,” one official told me. If Memoli and Taubenberger’s vaccine technology fails, without clear alternatives, the country may be especially vulnerable when the next big outbreak hits. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, does not appear to have sought out vaccine research to fund, though. One NIH official put it more bluntly: “It’s very clear it’s all cronyism going forward.”