THE MALONE INSTITUTE

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Who are Drs. John Mascola, Barney Graham and Kizzmekia Corbett?

And what do they have to do with the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine?


Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.

Walter Scott, Marmion


I am constantly amazed by the self-styled social media “independent journalists” who obsessively attack me for the sin of being a mass murderer due to the role which they claim I played in creating the modified-mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. George Webb, Jane Ruby, Paul Alexander, “Sage Hana”, the list goes on and on. But they never mention those that actually did develop the specific products. Rather strange.

Which clearly demonstrates that their years of obsessive hate are not actually about those who developed the products, but rather for some reason it is specifically targeted at me. All appear to be getting compensated in some way for actively promoting hate, although in most cases it is not clear who is paying them to do this. In at least one case, the source of compensation for promoting hate is well documented.

In the case of Paul Alexander, in my opinion it is clear that his support for these activities comes from Foster Colson’s “The Wellness Company” TWC ads are often displayed on Alexander’s attack posts. Alexander never promoted anti-Malone hate until hired by Wellness, and his accusations have followed the hate narratives promoted by Wellness CEO Foster Colson in his 2022 Christmas letter.


With little effort you will see who owns these other medical freedom companies and organizations. They are owned by their donors and funded with dark money, or were created by big pharma, or led by billionaire crypto pedophiles. Their motives always lead to the same places every single time: Fame, Money and Power. …

In my search to find those who cared and made a difference, all I found was disappointment at what really was happening: Donor money being spent on personal extravagances. “Alliances” and “Summits” formed with little more than an interest in gaining email addresses to monetize  though advertising. I’ve personally witnessed other well known, caring doctors being threatened and bullied into supporting organzations with suspect motives. I personally have been threatened and others I know are being sued by “freedom fighters” who claim they want to fight medical tyranny. These organizations will come and go, and the frauds will eventually self-implode.


If you have been involved in the history here, it is easy to draw the parallels between Coulson’s attack on the physicians that I have been honored to work with over the last three years (International COVID Summit, Global COVID Summit, Physicians Health Alliance) and much of the promoted hate. The false claim of “Billionaire crypto pedophiles” appears to refer to Mr. Brock Pierce, a criticism which I first heard coming from Wellness CSO Dr. Peter McCullough.

For those who have been following the other haters’ narratives, note the parallels between Coulson’s language and the strategies used by members of this group to defame, character assassinate, and delegitimize others including myself.


“Too many clamor for attention and repeat the same meaningless talking points over and over. Hosting twitter parties to pat each other on the back, or lavish fundraisers with no more purpose for their donor money than garner more press and host even more donor parties designed to just give their friends cushy jobs. But the question I have is what you all should have: What are any of them ACTUALLY doing to fix a broken system? How are ANY of them bettering our lives, or creating meaningful change? It’s one thing to stand on the roof tops and shout about a problem we all know exists, but what then?  What about solutions?”


The back story to this has been perversely fascinating to observe play out over time, as I watched Coulson swoop in and hire physicians who had been working effectively in a loose knit cooperative alliance and thereby divide and destroy the group cohesion which once existed.

Early on, I was offered a lucrative contract with TWC, as were many of my colleagues including Dr. Ryan Cole. I turned them down (as did Ryan once he did his diligence), as I was engaged with the others in trying to set up a medical communications company to compete with MedPage and the others who are controlled by Pharma money, and I have no expertise in either the nutritional supplement business nor in telemedicine.

Colson did succeed in wooing other physician leaders within our group who were desperate for money, and succeeded in destroying the embryonic medical communications company which we had been trying to create. Promises of great wealth, equity, monthly salary and status were made by TWC based on the enormous profit which Colson had captured while financially backing the deceased Dr. Zev Zelenko COVID supplement (Z-stack) marketing push.

Recently, despite recommendations from Wellness’ CSO to just go along, two of the original physicians hired from our group by Colson objected to the business practices of The Wellness Company, and were terminated for speaking out. Both have received significant shareholdings in the firm, but they have returned to interact with our original groups, apologized, and shared some of what they had observed while serving as employees.

In a bizarre unanticipated twist, out of the blue an anonymous substack author (“BODHISATTVAS BETTY”) apparently with no affiliation to our original physicians’ group has begun investigating the background and funding of “The Wellness Company”, and seems to suggest that the firm is actually yet another CIA cutout organization. Her initial essays can be found here and here.

Now others are chiming in, and provoking strong reactions from Wellness’ Legal.

And round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. The Rabbit hole seems quite deep and twisty. And the Wellness Company is legally quite aggressive, in my opinion and that of many others.

So, who actually did engineer the Moderna vaccine? And why haven’t these self-styled social media “journalists” covered that story?

Well, that narrative seems to have devolved into yet another catfight, with lawsuits disputing this question being exchanged between Moderna and the NIH/NIAID. What is not in dispute is that Moderna had paid a “catch up payment” to NIH for $400M US Dollars, apparently a downpayment for what are anticipated to be ongoing additional payments.

Moderna has stated that the agreement also required royalty payments representing low single-digit percentages of future Covid-19 vaccine sales. Moderna received $18.4B in COVID vaccine sales during 2022, and projects at least $5B in 2023. 1% of that would be $234 million US Dollars, so since the “catch up payment” was for 400M$, we can assume that the royalty rate is more than 2% on sales. In my experience, these sorts of NIH exclusive outlicensing deal terms tend to run in the 4-6% rate, which would put the anticipated revenue to NIH for 2022-2023 in the range of a bit under 1B$ to 1.4B$.

Who gets to share in the goodies from this haul?

According to widespread press coverage, the actual “inventor” organization for the Moderna vaccine is the NIH/NIAID Vaccine Research Center (VRC). Until his recent departure, NIAID’s Anthony Fauci had executive oversight of the VRC, akin to serving as chairman of the Board of Directors. He may or may not have been one of the beneficiaries. But other former federally employed VRC employees certainly are.

Named for lifelong vaccine and childhood immunization advocates former Arkansas Senator and First Lady Dale and Betty Bumpers, the VRC was basically created to develop an AIDS vaccine. Initially under the advisory leadership of Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, the VRC was structured as a public entity modeled after Vical, the La Jolla firm once touted by Wired magazine (itself with strong CIA/Mockingbird ties) as the next Microsoft. Under the “leadership” of Dr. Phil Felgner, Vijay Samant and others, Vical focused on DNA vaccines, never pursued mRNA vaccine development, ran through well over a billion US Dollars in investor capital, the patents expired, and Vical merged with another firm when its market cap dropped below cash on hand. Along the way, Vijay and Vical functionally pioneered the “pump and dump” vaccine developer business model of exploiting shelf offerings to dump shares each time a wave of new infectious disease fearporn was promoted by the mockingbird press, and then doing a reverse stock split once the hype died down. Vical leadership rode that strategy for decades.

Vical was the little tiny startup which I joined (I believe I was employee #10) after leaving the Salk Institute Molecular Virology lab of Dr. Inder Verma in 1989, and which sponsored me (total of about $40K including salary) to set up a skunkworks, bring over my reagents and protocols, and carry on with my PhD research focused on mRNA delivery and related applications such as antisense RNA, mRNA vaccines, and ribozymes. The original business plan for Vical involved development of liposomal HIV antivirals (the Vi- part of the name) and calcitonin analogs (the -cal part). Nothing to do with polynucleotide delivery (DNA or RNA) or vaccines prior to my joining. At the time that the VRC was created, Drs. Gary and Elizabeth Nabel had become key advisors and leaders at Vical. Gary was trained by David Baltimore, who tapped Gary to lead the newly formed VRC, while Elizabeth was given a plum appointment at the NIH as part of the recruitment package. Gary failed to deliver on promises of an AIDS vaccine. Both have since left NIH.

Following Dr. Gary Nabel’s departure, one of his deputies (Dr. John Mascola) was appointed to fill his shoes. And still, despite basically unlimited funding, Fauci and Mascola failed to deliver on multiple congressional promises to develop safe and effective infectious disease vaccines for influenza, West Nile Virus, Zika, Ebola, and many others. In all of these efforts, Mascola functioned as the administrative lead and director, but the operational (bench) leader for vaccine development was assistant director Dr. Barney Graham. Until recently, Graham focused on developing adenovirus vectored gene therapy-based vaccines and DNA vaccines. Fauci repeatedly deployed a version of the Vical pump and dump model, but with Congress as the target rather than Wall Street.

And then along came the novel coronavirus agenda, which the NIAID and VRC seems to have had remarkable foreshadowing of. Dr. Graham had long mentored a young PhD vaccinologist, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD, and guided her through her training at the commuter campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (BS Biological Sciences and Sociology), and then her 2014 PhD at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC) in Microbiology and Immunology. UNC is the academic home of Ralph Steven Baric of EcoHealth Alliance fame), with whom Dr. Corbett has extensive co-authored publications concerning engineering and testing of an engineered SARS-CoV-2 spike protein incorporating previously published stabilizing proline point mutations used in prior SARS and MERS coronavirus vaccine development efforts.

On the basis of this history, consistent with the terms of the 1980 Bayh-Dole act, it is reasonable to infer that Drs. Mascola, Graham, and Corbett are all receiving a substantial fraction of the Moderna royalty payments to NIH/NIAID and will probably continue to do so for as long as that royalty stream continues. All have now left government employment. Mascola left the VRC in 2022 and is now employed as Chief Scientific Officer at ModeX Therapeutics. Graham left VRC in 2021 and now serves as Professor of Medicine and Microbiology, Biochemistry, & Immunology and Senior Advisor for Global Health Equity at Morehouse School of Medicine (a private medical school) in Atlanta. Corbett also left the VRC in 2021 and now serves as Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Below is the official approved narrative relating to the development of the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine at the VRC. Note that many of the statements in this 2021 narrative are now known to be either highly questionable or falsehoods. It also adds new elements to the timeline which many have been assembling.

Conducted groundbreaking research that led to the development of highly effective vaccines in record time that are protecting hundreds of millions of people from contracting the deadly coronavirus that swept across the globe in 2020 and 2021.

Even before the first U.S. death from the coronavirus, Drs. Barney Graham and Kizzmekia Corbett at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center were in a race against the clock. 

On a Saturday morning in early January 2020, Chinese scientists posted the gene sequence of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 virus online so that other researchers could understand the mysterious, deadly illness that in short order would spread across the globe. By the end of the weekend, Graham and Corbett, aided by years of foundational work, were able to use the genetic information to design the basic structure for the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines. 

This innovation would turn out to be one of the monumental achievements of modern medicine. 

“Their names will be in the history books,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a 2020 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal recipient. “All the (COVID-19) vaccines that are doing really well are totally dependent on their work.” 

Just days after Graham and Corbett supplied the critical information, collaborators at the biotech company Moderna were able to manufacture the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The first human trials began just 65 days later. It was, by far, the fastest vaccine development process in history. 

“Kizzmekia and Barney have made contributions to human health that few others could claim,” said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins. 

Breaking every speed record for developing a safe and effective vaccine was only possible because of years of work. In 2013, while studying a respiratory syncytial virus, a troubling and sometimes fatal childhood ailment, Graham and his collaborators discovered that a few key mutations to the protein analogous to the spike that sits on the surface of the coronavirus could make them useful for a vaccine. Graham realized that this discovery could unlock a new vaccine design, especially if paired with a rapid manufacturing approach. 

Partnering with Moderna, Graham initially planned to use the prototype vaccine for Nipah—a contagious and deadly paramyxovirus transmitted by bats in South and Southeast Asia—as the demonstration project. But when the pandemic began, the decision was quickly made to use COVID-19 for the proof of concept. “We wanted to show the world how fast we could go,” Graham said. 

Graham and Corbett’s design ended up forming the backbone of many COVID-19 vaccines in use today, including those made by Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. Pfizer’s vaccine, developed separately, relies on a nearly identical design. 

Graham, deputy director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, and Corbett, who leads the coronavirus research team in Graham’s Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory, made versions of a spike protein based on prior work from other coronaviruses. Two specific amino acid substitutions were used to stabilize the protein that sits on the surface of the COVID-19 virus and gives it its distinctive, crown-like appearance, hence the name “coronavirus.” 

Their modifications have proven critical. In order to provoke an effective immune response, a vaccine needs to deliver these proteins in their initial active shape, rather than their inactive shape, after interacting with a cell. Graham and Corbett’s mutations met that goal. Jason McClellan’s lab, then at Dartmouth College and now at the University of Texas at Austin, and Andrew Ward’s group at the Scripps Research Institute, also played key roles. 

“They could see right away that when the protein was made with their mutations, it looked the way it should,” said Dr. John Mascola, director of the Vaccine Research Center. “When made in the lab without those mutations, it tended to fall apart.” 

This modified spike protein can be delivered either by messenger RNA technology, as Moderna’s vaccine does, or by more traditional means.  

Corbett, who had previously interned with Graham, returned to NIH after completing her doctoral degree to study coronaviruses, which had been responsible for the troubling outbreaks of SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012. She took up the mantle, focusing on coronavirus biology, especially spike structure, antibodies and vaccine development. 

“I think Barney and Kizzmekia, having seen what happened with SARS, and what happened with MERS, were pretty convinced that we had not seen the last coronavirus,” Collins said. “They wanted to be prepared for that, and that was quite prescient on their part.” 

“It’s the culmination of Barney’s life’s work and a validation of his vision of pandemic preparedness,” said Mascola. 

Thanks to encouraging data from animal studies and the first human clinical trials, Corbett and Graham had early confidence their vaccine would work. But it wasn’t until Pfizer showed 95% efficacy in its late-stage trial results in November, just ahead of Moderna’s own announcement a week later, that the pair knew just how effective their vaccine design would be. 

“It was the first time in 10 months where I was actually able to breathe,” Corbett recalled. “I shed every tear I had wanted to shed over the last year.” 

For both, the results were beyond their wildest expectations. “Getting 95% is kind of rare in vaccines. I was expecting 70% and hoping for 80%,” Graham said. 

“This moment has transformed virology and vaccinology in a way that no one will be able to ignore,” Corbett said.

Here is a link to the 2021 Time “Heroes of the Year” coverage.


Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5)


In Conclusion

There are at least a few things which can be concluded from the facts summarized above.

First, that the constant stream of weaponized hate and accusations concerning my having played a key role in the development of the SARS-CoV-2 modified-mRNA “vaccines” has no basis in fact. I had no role in developing these or any other FDA, Health Canada, EMA (etc.) market authorized COVID-19 products. That is a false narrative, part of a larger years-long campaign to defame, character assassinate and delegitimize me by a variety of self-styled “truth tellers” and “independent journalists”. For some reason.

Second, there are strong indications that these actors are sponsored by others to push hate and “bad jacketing” tactics.

Third, that at least one of those actors is the corporation “The Wellness Company”, which some are asserting may be a CIA cutout organization designed to fragment and destroy what had previously been a loose but fairly cohesive alliance of physicians and scientists acting cooperatively to question and refute the approved COVIDcrisis narrative pushed by governments, corporate mockingbird media, pharma, and the new censorship-industrial complex.

Fourth, those that actually engineered the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine are well known, have received multiple awards, have been widely hailed in corporate media, and have apparently received massive financial benefits from their work consequent to Moderna royalty payments. But they are never mentioned by these same self-styled “truth tellers” and “independent journalists”.

And why do you think that is?