Amid concerns over U.S. government Covid-19 contracts and transparency, Moderna (MRNA) has failed to comply with disclosure requirements and publicly report development costs of a vaccine that is being funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
Federal law requires the company to report the total cost of the project, and the amount and percentage share of costs provided by the federal government. So far, though, Moderna has not disclosed such details of its contract (see page 43) with BARDA, which has awarded the company up to $955 million to develop a vaccine based on its mRNA technology that would be jointly invented by the National Institutes of Health.
“Transparency is critical. It is in the public interest for U.S. taxpayers to have an understanding of what portion of the cost of developing the vaccine was shouldered by the public,” wrote Public Citizen and Knowledge Ecology International, in a letter late last week to BARDA requesting that the agency demand Moderna fulfill its disclosure requirements.
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