The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is funding the laboratory creation of deadly, genetically engineered bird-flu viruses—even as its director, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, is named as an inventor on a U.S. government patent for a vaccine platform designed to counter those very pathogens.

In other words, the same federal agency making new bird-flu viruses is led by the man who helped invent—and could profit from—the vaccine meant to fight them.

Mainstream reports and federal documents confirm that Dr. Taubenberger could receive royalty payments if the vaccine platform proves successful.

Federal rules allow government inventors like Taubenberger to personally earn up to $150,000 a year in royalties from their patents.

This overlap between virus creation and vaccine ownership raises profound questions about conflicts of interest within America's pandemic-preparedness system.

The same official overseeing the creation of potentially pandemic-causing bird-flu viruses also stands to earn personal income from the patented vaccine technology designed to combat them—a built-in conflict of interest at the very heart of U.S. pandemic research.

How secure is a nation whose top infectious-disease officials are simultaneously funding the creation of potential pandemic pathogens and positioned to profit from the vaccines meant to stop them?

Who Is Jeffery Taubenberger?

NIAID Director Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger gained fame for leading the team that sequenced and reconstructed the 1918 "Spanish flu" genome—the deadliest pandemic in modern history.

Dr. Taubenberger's work on the Spanish flu virus involved the reconstruction and sequencing of one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

That project effectively resurrected an extinct virus under federal sponsorship, establishing Taubenberger as a pioneer of gain-of-function influenza research.

Bird flu belongs to the influenza family, meaning the very expertise Taubenberger developed by resurrecting the 1918 virus now underpins his agency's funding of new, lab-engineered avian-influenza strains with similarly pandemic-capable properties.