Claim: Facebook post Says Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, George Soros and Jeffrey Epstein are connected with Moderna, Inc., and its efforts to create the coronavirus vaccine.
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Ciro de Quadros
text: Janeiro, Brazil, 1968. In 2003, de Quadros joined the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a non-profit organization honoring the legacy of Albert Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine. de Quadros is instrumental in the Institute's international immunization advocacy programs, where he works on issues such as the introduction of new vaccines, e.g. rotavirus, rubella, human papilloma virus, pneumococcal and others, and on issues related to the sustainability of national immunization programs. He is also on the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and the School of Medicine of the George Washington University. He died of pancreatic cancer

title: Moderna
text: programs. Moderna will fund and lead discovery and preclinical development. AstraZeneca will lead early clinical development. The companies will share late-stage development costs and co-commercialize products in US with 50:50 profit sharing. In January 2016, Moderna announced a new agreement with Merck to license a vaccine program for an undisclosed virus – mRNA 1566 and a group of related new vaccine candidates. In June 2016, Moderna entered into a new collaboration with Merck to develop mRNA-based personalized cancer vaccines to treat multiple types of cancer. Moderna received a $200 million upfront payment to lead R&D efforts through proof-of-concept and to

title: Moderna
text: well as a $50 million equity investment in Moderna. In May 2015, Moderna launched Elpidera, a venture focused exclusively on developing messenger RNA (mRNA) based medicines for the treatment of rare diseases. On October 22, 2015, Moderna launched its fourth venture, Caperna, focused on personalized cancer vaccines. In January 2016, Moderna announced the start of a Phase 1 clinical study in Europe for mRNA 1440 and filed an IND with the U.S. FDA for mRNA 1851. mRNA 1440 and mRNA 1851 are infectious disease vaccines. In January 2016, Moderna and AstraZeneca announced a new collaboration to develop two mRNA immuno-oncology

title: Richard Schlegel
text: on the E5, E6, and E7 proteins of the human papillomavirus. In 1988, Schlegel began working with A. Bennett Jenson, a member of the Georgetown University faculty. When Schlegel began working as an associate professor at Georgetown University in 1990, their work gained momentum. In 1995, they published a paper in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" that demonstrated that their vaccine could protect against a virus like that seen in cervical cancer. The main patent on the vaccine was granted in 2005, and the Food and Drug Administration approved it in June 2006. In 2003, Schlegel became

title: Trevor Neilson
text: the United Nations and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. In this role, Neilson was asked by Bobby Shriver, son of Sargent and Eunice Shriver and nephew of President John F. Kennedy if Bill Gates would support an idea that he and Bono, the Irish musician and activist had. Shriver and Bono wanted to create a version of the National Rifle Association for the poorest people in the world, specifically Africans who lived under a dollar a day and grappled with AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, famine and other problems. Shriver and Bono’s idea was to create a powerful political voice for these

title: Middle East respiratory syndrome
text: pneumonia and acute renal failure. After routine diagnostics failed to identify the causative agent, Zaki contacted Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for advice. Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki. Fouchier used a broad-spectrum "pan-coronavirus" real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses (such as OC43, 229R, NL63, and SARS-CoV), as well as for RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), a gene conserved in all coronaviruses known to infect humans. While the screens for known coronaviruses were all negative, the

title: Hilary Koprowski
text: the vaccine was being used on four continents. Albert Sabin's early work with attenuated-live-virus polio vaccine was developed from attenuated polio virus that Sabin had received from Koprowski. In addition to his work on the Polio vaccine, Koprowski (along with Stanley Plotkin and Tadeusz Wiktor) did significant work on an improved vaccine against rabies. The group developed the HCDV rabies vaccine in the 1960s at the Wistar Institute. It was licensed for use in the United States in 1980. Koprowski was President of Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories, Inc, and Head of the Center for Neurovirology at Thomas Jefferson University. In 2006

title: Leslie Collier
text: 1998 award in the advanced edited book category.<br>He was also joint editor of Developments in Antiviral Chemotherapy (1980).He was a co-author of Human Virology (1993). Leslie Collier Leslie Harold Collier (9 February 1921 – 14 March 2011) was a scientist responsible for developing a freeze-drying method to produce a more heat stable smallpox vaccine in the late 1940s. The development of his vaccine production method played a large role in enabling the World Health Organization to initiate its global smallpox eradication campaign in 1967. Collier was a co-editor of the eighth edition and editor-in-chief of the five-volume ninth edition of

title: George Siber
text: 2014 he co-founded Affinivax together with Richard Malley, Fan Zhang, Yingjie Lu, Steve Brugger, and Kamran Tavangar with seed funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and serves on the Board of Directors. Siber joined ClearPath Vaccine Company in 2012 and became its Chief Scientific Officer in 2013. Siber was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the International Vaccine Institute in Korea in 2014 and chairs the Board's Science Committee. Siber has served on numerous scientific advisory committees including Variation Biotechnologies in Cambridge (2008–09), Ligocyte Pharmaceuticals in Bozeman, Missouri (2008–12), Ancora Pharmaceuticals Medford, Massachusetts (2008–12), Prothena Biosciences (previously

title: Hilary Koprowski
text: he is chair of the department of radiation oncology at Christiana Hospital in Delaware. While at Lederle Laboratories, Koprowski created the world's first polio vaccine, based on an orally administered attenuated polio virus. In researching a potential polio vaccine, he had focused on live viruses that were attenuated (rendered non-virulent) rather than on killed viruses (the latter became the basis for the injected vaccine subsequently developed by Jonas Salk). Koprowski viewed the live vaccine as more powerful, since it entered the intestinal tract directly and could provide lifelong immunity, whereas the Salk vaccine required booster shots. Also, administering a vaccine

title: Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
text: results by Thomas Verstraeten which showed that thimerosal might increase children's risk of neurodevelopmental delays were flawed, and how these results were discussed at the 2000 Simpsonwood CDC conference. (p. 404) It received a positive review from David Oshinsky in the "New York Times". It also received a positive review in the "Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine", where Michael Fitzpatrick wrote that Allen "does not ignore the history of vaccine disasters. He includes the fiasco in the US military in 1942, when yellow fever vaccine contaminated with hepatitis B caused 100 deaths, and the mass vaccination against smallpox

title: SV40
text: of Oak Park, Illinois, gave some vials of 1955 Salk vaccine to researcher Michele Carbone. Ratner, the Health Commissioner of Oak Park at the time the Salk vaccine was introduced, had kept these vials of vaccine in a refrigerator for over forty years. Upon testing this vaccine, Carbone discovered that it contained not only the SV40 strain already known to have been in the Salk vaccine (containing two 72-bp enhancers) but also the same slow-growing SV40 strain currently found in some malignant tumors and lymphomas (containing one 72-bp enhancers). It is unknown how widespread the virus was among humans before

title: Leslie Lobel
text: With his co-investigator, Dr. Victoria Yavelsky, he hopes to create a "passive" vaccine which would offer protection immediately after being given. Born in Queens, New York, Lobel received his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, in chemistry, from Columbia College of Columbia University, followed by a Ph.D. in virology. He received an M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1988. He also did post-graduate work at M.I.T. in Boston. He states that he went into virology since the field was small. Later, his interest shifted to oncology and the study of human immune response to cancer. Lobel has been

title: Garo H. Armen
text: officer of Agenus Inc., formerly known as Antigenics Inc., a biotechnology company that discovered Oncophage, a personalized cancer vaccine recently approved in Russia for patients with earlier-stage kidney cancer and currently under review with the European Regulatory Agency. The clinical history of Oncophage was described in detail in a story in the "Wall Street Journal", August 2, 2007. In another interview with Business Week and CBS, Armen described how the idea of personalized medicine tailored to the patient led to his launching Antigenics with $250,000 of his own money, plus the backing of a few friends. He was initially stirred

title: Adel Mahmoud
text: United States and became a postdoctoral researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and eventually rose to chair the university's Department of Medicine in 1987. In 1988, Merck & Co. recruited Mahmoud as president of its vaccine division. During his tenure, Mahmoud oversaw the development of several vaccines important to public health, including the rotavirus vaccine and the HPV vaccine. The former prevents potentially fatal diarrhea for young children caused by rotavirus, while the latter (Gardasil) prevents several cancers, most importantly cervix cancer, caused by the human papillomavirus. His role was considered pivotal as he overcame significant doubt about

title: Gustav Gaudernack
text: potential of dendritic cells (DCs) and in 2005, Gaudernack’s group published results from a phase I/II clinical trial in prostate cancer patients using autologous DCs loaded with tumor mRNA as a vaccine. This study demonstrated that vaccination with autologous DCs transfected with mRNA derived from three prostate cancer cell lines was safe and an improved clinical outcome was significantly related to immune responses against the vaccine. Furthermore, Gaudernack and colleagues initiated a phase I/II clinical trial for treatment of malignant melanoma with autologous tumor-mRNA transfected DC vaccines. These data clearly demonstrated vaccine-specific immune responses with a broad specter of T

title: Albert Sabin
text: humanitarian benefit. Indeed, it was not clear to many that the vaccine was an American one, financed by U.S. dollars, as it was not widely available to ordinary Americans. Sabin also developed vaccines against other viral diseases, including encephalitis and dengue. In addition, he investigated possible links between viruses and some forms of cancer. In 1983, Sabin developed calcification of the cervical spine, which caused paralysis and intense pain. Sabin revealed in a television interview that the experience had made him decide to spend the rest of his life working on alleviating pain. This condition was successfully treated by surgery

title: Orin Levine
text: Foundation and the Accelerated Vaccine Introduction (AVI) Project, which is funded by the GAVI Alliance. The purpose of PERCH is to achieve a greater understanding of the causes of pneumonia around the world. Better pneumonia surveillance is critical to the global fight against this disease. The purpose of AVI is to accelerate access to life-saving pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines for children in the world's poorest countries. Levine is also involved in dengue vaccines, acting as the lead at Johns Hopkins in the institution's involvement in the Dengue Vaccine Initiative, a consortium created to accelerate development and subsequent use of dengue

title: Moderna
text: first expansion outside the U.S. At the beginning of January 2015, Moderna announced that it had raised $450 million in new funding and at this point had raised $950 million. On January 8, 2015, Moderna launched Valera, a venture focused exclusively on the advancement of vaccines and therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of viral, bacterial and parasitic infectious diseases. Also in January 2015, Moderna announced a license and collaboration agreement with Merck for the discovery and development of vaccines against viral diseases. Merck made an upfront cash payment to Moderna of $50 million to commercialize five product candidates, as

title: James L. Gulley
text: other strategies to enhance vaccine-mediated killing. He is also a Principal Investigator within the Medical Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute. He serves on many boards and committees including the NCI Prostate Cancer Task Force. He has authored over 125 scientific papers or book chapters, edited 3 books including the Bethesda Handbook of Clinical Oncology and has made numerous presentations at national and international meetings. Gulley serves as the Principal Investigator of PROSPECT - a global phase III clinical trial of a cancer vaccine, PSA-TRICOM, also known as Prostvac that was initiated in November 2011. This vaccine was developed