On August 13, the UK government published a response to a freedom of information request in relation to the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) — the UK's equivalent of the FDA. It was in response to a question asking whether or not the agency had received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The answer was yes:

We do receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as other sources outside government such as WHO. This funding mainly supports work to strengthen regulatory systems in other countries…

The current level of grant funding received from the Gates Foundation amounts to approximately $3 million. This covers a number of projects and the funding is spread across 3-4 financial years. We are an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care.

The story didn't attract much attention at the time. In fact, not a single newspaper or broadcaster even bothered to cover it, perhaps because they didn't think there was much worth covering. After all, the Gates Foundation (GF) is a charitable organization — the biggest of its kind, with roughly $60 billion in assets — so what could be wrong if it's donating funds to an organization in charge of deciding which pharmaceutical products and medical devices reach the market and which don't? Well, quite a lot, actually.

Conflicts of Interest

The Gates Foundation's roughly $60 billion in assets include, among many other things, shares and other forms of investments in some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, whose products the MHRA has to regulate on a regular basis. Those companies include Sanofi, Merck, Eli Lilly and Company and Abbott Laboratories, all four of which have developed or are developing covid-19 treatments and/or vaccines that are yet to receive authorisation in the UK. They also include Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, which together have developed and marketed the most profitable — and arguably shortest-lasting — vaccine ever.