Most of the 77 Nobel Prize Winners Who Oppose Kennedy Have Ties to Big Pharma

By Louis Conte, Adam Garrie, and the staff of The Kennedy Beacon

According to The New York Times, 77 Nobel Prize winners have penned an open letter aimed at discouraging senators from confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the country’s next Director of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

As one voice, the laureates write: “In view of his record, placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of the DHHS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors.”

What the letter doesn’t tell you is how much its authors are deeply aligned with Big Pharma and how the letter itself is part of a larger, well-funded “playbook” designed to derail Kennedy’s nomination to lead HHS.

[The letter is reminiscent of a letter signed by 51 senior intelligence officials, in 2020, claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop, “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”]

While scientific inquiry can and should lead to substantive disagreements, the open letter reads more like a political smear tactic from the playbook – the time-tested method orchestrated by public relations gurus paid big money to discredit, embarrass and ultimately silence a critic of the status quo. [AV2024 recently produced a short documentary on how the playbook is used against public figures who refuse to compromise their principles.]

Even a cursory examination into the backgrounds of the people who signed the letter reveals striking conflicts of interest.

Take Roger Kornberg, for example. He stands out not only for his extensive ties to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries but also for his inflammatory rhetoric. Kornberg described RFK Jr. as a "witch doctor" engaging in "quackery" and claimed Kennedy's approach to public health would lead to "ravishing disease." Such comments reveal a level of hostility that goes beyond scientific critique, suggesting a bias tied to his professional and financial interests.

Kornberg has been and remains on boards of major pharmaceutical companies, including Cocrystal Pharma Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals, Tissue Dynamics and Pacific Biosciences. In these positions, he has worked on genetic sequencing studies and the development of a plethora of drugs, including drugs intended to treat COVID-19.

Kornberg’s positions underscore the broader issue of conflicts of interest among the Nobel laureates who signed the anti-Kennedy letter. His alignment with pharmaceutical ventures exemplifies the financial and professional motivations that undermine their credibility to oppose, in a transparent way, Kennedy’s nomination to lead HHS.

Many others on the list also have deep conflicts of interest, making it certain that the scientists

who signed the letter could find their funding streams in jeopardy if Kennedy is confirmed. Their letter to US Senators should be viewed in that context and in respect to their lack of ethical concerns about, for example, gain-of-function research.

Together, these men have published hundreds of articles. Few address the ongoing chronic disease epidemic in America. Many focus on DNA and RNA.

“Key signatory Drew Weissman, a central figure in mRNA vaccine development, has deep financial ties to Big Pharma,” writes Sayer Ji, a health freedom advocate, on his Substack. “His alignment with Fauci’s network underscores the effort to protect their monopoly on public health narratives, silencing dissent like RFK Jr. 's. The ‘fluoridation’ criticism (of Kennedy) is a smokescreen. The real issue is their refusal to engage with science exposing fluoride’s harms and their vested interest in suppressing RFK Jr.’s push for accountability and safety in health policy. This gaslighting tactic backfires as mass support grows for RFK Jr.’s leadership.”

Weissman’s association with NIH funding is crystal clear. So is that of the majority of the people who signed the anti-Kennedy letter.

In fact, only one of the more than 77 Nobel prize winners who signed the letter against Kennedy did not receive U.S. government funding — mostly through the NIH: Dr. John O’Keefe. His money came from UK-based Welcome Trust.

All the other members of the medicine group of Nobel Laureates are listed in a supplementary document, which includes the year they won the Nobel Prize and verification of their association and link to U.S. government funding.

David Baltimore is best known for the discovery of reverse transcriptase, an enzyme used by retroviruses to transcribe their RNA into DNA. In May 2021, Baltimore acknowledged that the Furin cleavage site on the virus was a “smoking gun,” indicating a laboratory origin of the virus. Baltimore later said that he regretted using the term “smoking gun” and walked back his statement which directly implied that Covid was the result of a lab leak.

Baltimore’s long-standing relationship with NIH funding is described here. He has been involved in the founding of several biotech/pharma companies including the gene therapy company Calimmune; the vaccine development company, Immune Design Corp; and s2A Molecular.

Sir Richard J. Roberts was awarded a Nobel Prize for the discovery of split genes. In 2016, Roberts and other Nobelists composed and signed a “Laureates Letter Supporting Precision Agriculture (GMOs).” Sir Roberts has advocated for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in general and Golden Rice. He has worked extensively in the New England Biolab and the Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island, New York) Biolab. Sir Richard is a member of the World Economic Forum. He has repeatedly received NIH funding.

Hamilton O. Smith is an American microbiologist and Nobel laureate. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978 for discovering type II restriction enzymes. Smith received federal grant money through the Department of Energy.

Gregg Leonard Semenza is a pediatrician and Professor of Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He serves as the director of the vascular program at the Institute for Cell Engineering. He is known for his discovery of HIF-1, which allows cancer cells to adapt to oxygen-poor environments. In 2019, with William Kaelin Jr. and Peter J. Ratcliffe, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability." However, Semenza has had thirteen research papers retracted due to falsified data.

In 2011 Semenza retracted from Biochemical Journal one paper coauthored with Naoki Mori (and other collaborators), and in 2022 he retracted four papers from PNAS according to Retraction Watch. As of 2022, concerns about the integrity of images in 52 articles coauthored by Semenza have been raised on PubPeer. In 2023, additional papers in PNAS and Oncogene were retracted. As of 2024, Semenza has had 13 of his research papers retracted due to data falsification via improper manipulation and/or duplication of images.

Kornberg, Weissman, Baltimore and Semenza are the tip of the Iceberg.

The men who signed the anti-Kennedy letter are a mixed lot with undeniable ties to Big Pharma. These Nobel Prize winners represent a cabal of scientists fearful that, with Kennedy at the helm of HHS, the government gravy train that for years had funded their research, could well grind to a halt.

That the Times might have said.