I had a wild daydream the other day. There I was, in a doctor’s office that strangely looked more like a Bond villain’s lair, seated across from an angry doctor who, coincidentally, looked more like a Bond villain. I suppose, then, that I was Mr. Bond in this particular dream. We proceeded to have a conversation:
Dr. No: “Mr. Bond, I must congratulate you on managing to avoid the needle thus far, but I’m afraid my patience has grown quite thin. Oddjob, please introduce Mr. Bond to my wonderous creation.”
Oddjob walks over to a table and looks over an array of syringes. A sly grin creeps over his face as he selects one and turns toward Mr. Bond. Just before the needle goes into Bond’s arm, a beautiful woman bursts into the lair and momentarily distracts Oddjob. Bond takes advantage of the distraction to knock him out cold. Then, the beautiful woman pulls out a very special electromagnetic pulse weapon that reroutes brain circuitry so that whoever is hit by it has to tell the truth. She promptly shoots Dr. No with the truth gun.
Mr. Bond: “Now, Dr. No, you are going to tell me the truth about your so-called vaccine. You’re going to give me….informed consent. Do you understand?”
Dr. No: “Yes.”
Mr. Bond: “Good. First I want you to tell me everything you know about the science behind your vaccine. I mean everything.”
Dr. No reluctantly proceeds to tell Mr. Bond all about the unknowns and risks involved with his gene therapy shot. He explains how the spike protein of coronavirus is toxic and pathogenic. He further explains how the immune system can respond to the spike protein in ways that induce dangerous autoimmune conditions and teach the body to tolerate infection by coronavirus.
Mr. Bond: “Well, that’s horrifying. Tell me about your company that makes these gene therapy shots.”
Dr. No: “You mean Novavax? You do realize that my company supplies only a tiny fraction of the gene therapy shots? It’s hardly significant in the grand scheme of things.”
Mr. Bond: “I don’t care. Tell me everything.”
Dr. No: “Ok…Novavax traces its roots back to the 1960s. A company called Damon Corporation, which was backed by the Rothschilds, quickly rose from nothing to dominate the clinical laboratory industry. The company practically had a monopoly on the analysis of human blood in the US. Then, in the 1980s Damon Corp. put its sights on animal health, in particular, chickens. It purchased Vineland Laboratories in New Jersey which gave it a monopoly on the global market for poultry vaccines. Vineland Laboratories was responsible for the exacerbation of Marek’s disease in chickens. Large scale vaccination of chickens led to a situation where 100% of unvaccinated chickens that became infected would die. Vaccination therefore became absolutely necessary to maintain chicken farming at-scale.
In the early 1980s, Damon Corp. sold off Vineland Laboratories to a small start-up called Immunogenetics. Immunogenetics developed a new vaccine delivery method that relied on lipid nanoparticles to carry antigens into chickens. It also used these lipid nanoparticles, called Novasomes, in a variety of cosmetic and skin care products used by humans. In 1987, Immunogenetics changed its name to IGI and created Novavax as a wholly-owned subsidiary.
In 1995, Novavax was spun-off from IGI. We had a great board of directors at that time which included a four star army general, a former secretary of the army and a mobster tied to a scandal involving a former US labor secretary. We were even able to bring Gerald Ford on as a senior advisor. We spent the first 5 years sort of operating in the shadows. We had to be seen by the public doing something worthwhile, so we focused on getting approval for our skin cream designed to deliver estrogen to menopausal women during that time. Our big move came in 1999 when we acquired the vaccines division of DynCorp. That’s when we shifted our focus to vaccines. We started developing vaccines using our Novasome technology and then later using virus-like particles. We started a joint venture with an Indian pharmaceutical company to deliver our vaccines into India. We received a ton of money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a RSV vaccine. Finally, we were able to score a great deal on a vaccine manufacturing facility in the Czech Republic during the covid pandemic. Immediately after that we received some very large contracts from DoD to produce covid vaccines.”
Mr. Bond: “I want to know more about exactly what you did with Vineland Laboratories. What kind of experiments did you perform on chickens around the world? I also want to know exactly what you did with human skin creams and cosmetics. Did you experiment on humans as well? Is that why you needed to control human blood analysis in the US? Were you trying to make sure that no one was looking for the things you were doing? Tell me what you were doing!”
Dr. No suddenly reaches into his vest and pulls out a small capsule. He places the capsule in his mouth and shortly thereafter begins to convulse and foam at the mouth. Within minutes he is dead.
Mr. Bond: “Pity. Someone must have told him it was safe and effective.”
Forgive my vivid imagination. I must say, though, that I believe imagination is vitally important in our efforts to unravel the truth. When we are faced with innumerable facts and even more innumerable ways in which those facts can be connected, we have to fall back on imagination to help us navigate the terrain. Sometimes it leads us down the wrong path. But, imagination is never wasted. It always has something to teach us.
I ask you to join me in imagining how the facts I am about to present might be connected.
[note: all of the information I will be presenting is conveniently summarized in a graphical timeline that can be found at the end of this article.]
Damon Corporation (1961-1980)
The Damon Corporation was founded in 1961 in Needham, MA by David I. Koswosky who was a recent graduate from MIT at the time. The initial name of the company was Damon Engineering. The company went public in 1967 and then changed its name to Damon Corp. in 1969.
I have been unable to locate much substantial information on Damon Corp. prior to 1969. All I know is that the company started out with a heavy focus on electronics with about 75% of their products ending up being used for defense or space applications. The famous (or infamous) electrical engineering professor Jerome Wiesner was a board member of the company from the start.
An article in the Boston Globe in 1967 marked the arrival of Damon Corp. as a serious company in the electronics business that was in the process of diversifying into the education field.1 Part of that expansion into education included the acquisition of Estes Industries, a company that produced model rocket engines and kits for hobbyists, in 1969. The article noted that the company had strong backing from the Rothschild family. Who knew the Rothschilds enjoyed building model rockets?
Within a year or two of the Boston Globe article, Damon Corp. would dramatically shift gears and begin focusing almost exclusively on acquiring every clinical laboratory it could get its hands on. By 1973, it completely dominated the blood analysis industry with a network of more than 800 hospitals, 11,000 physicians and 700 other clients spanning across the US and Mexico. This remarkable transformation of the company prompted the Boston Globe to ask its President, David I. Koswosky, “What’s a company like yours doing in a business like this?”.2 Except, they weren't asking why Damon Corp. had gone from an electronics and educational company to a sprawling behemoth with a monopoly on blood analysis, but rather, the other way around. That's a shame. Perhaps, Mr. Koswosky's response would have been more interesting than "But that's what we began with!".
Around the same time that Damon Corp. was sweeping up clinical laboratories it was also diversifying into animal health. The company acquired the Vineland Poultry Laboratories (VPL) headquartered in Vineland, NJ in 1970. VPL was started in 1914 by Dr. Arthur D. Goldhaft. The focus of the company was on veterinary care of farm animals until about 1920 when it received a license from the state of New Jersey to begin making animal vaccines. By 1933, VPL had produced some of the first live-virus vaccines for chickens and sales began increasing rapidly. Over the next 25 years, VPL’s business would expand to become global in scope with operations in the Virgin Islands, Mexico, Israel and England.3 By the time that it was acquired by Damon Corp., VPL had already essentially established a monopoly over the global poultry vaccine business.
Damon Corp. appointed John P. Gallo as vice-president responsible for managing its animal health division. Mr. Gallo would continue management of VPL and its related businesses until Novavax was spun-off as a public company.
Damon Corp. filed for patents in the late 1970s related to a microencapsulation technology that would allow for the slow delivery of drugs into the human body and the delivery of immunogenic substances into the blood without triggering an immune response. In theory, this technology could be used to introduce a pathogen (e.g. E. Coli) into the blood without being detected by the immune system. Of course, the cell would still be alive inside its encapsulated habitat and would therefore still be able to pollute the blood with endotoxins. That’s a rather nefarious example that I just made up. Damon Corp., for its part, only ever reported using it to encapsulate cells that could be used to produce a sustained source of insulin for diabetics.4
Immunogenetics/IGI (1980-1995)
In 1981, Damon Corp. created a new subsidiary called Damon Biotech that consolidated most of its R&D activities along with its animal health division. Then, in 1983, the animal health division was sold to a small, relatively unknown company called Immunogenetics. Among other things, the sale included Vineland laboratories and all of its global operations. John P. Gallo, who was mentioned in the previous section, became an employee of Immunogenetics and continued managing the vaccine business.
Immunogenetics was reportedly founded in Delaware in 1977 by Edward B. Hager. The problem is that there is no record of the company ever incorporating there if you search using the Delaware Secretary of State online database. Sure, you’ll see an entry for “Immunogenetics.com, Inc.” which was incorporated on 9/25/2019, but that’s it. Curiously, if you visit Immunogenetics.com you’ll likely find that it is no longer an active website. It appears to have been taken offline in the last few weeks, as I just visited it not long ago. At any rate, you can check out an archived version on the Wayback Machine if you want. I’m not sure if there is any connection at all to the scope of my article, but who knows.
Ok, let’s get back on track. As I mentioned, there is no record of Immunogenetics, Inc. according to the Delaware Secretary of State. However, I was able to pull up the incorporation certificate of Immunogenetics in Massachusetts which shows the original Delaware certificate:
So, what is going on here exactly? Dr. Edward Hager said that he founded Immunogenetics in 1977, yet the Delaware certificate above clearly shows a date of late 1981. Moreover, there is no record of this certificate in the Delaware database. I’m not sure what to make of it at the moment, but it does seem rather strange. Perhaps, an attempt has been made to obscure the date and parties involved with the Delaware incorporation so as to create a story of an independent startup that was doing its own thing for several years before its intersection with Damon Corp. Perhaps, when Damon Corp. created its Damon Biotech subsidiary in 1981 it also created Immunogenetics. It seems a strong possibility in my mind.
Before moving on, let’s talk a bit about Dr. Edward Hager. In 1958, it appears that he was a Captain in the Army medical corps.5 After his military service he worked as a surgeon and kidney specialist at Peter Bent Brigham hospital in Boston, MA where he was involved with some of the earliest kidney transplants ever performed. In 1969, Hager and his colleague Constantine L. Hampers founded National Medical Care, Inc. (NMC) which would grow to become the largest for-profit network of kidney dialysis centers in the country. NMC was purchased by W.R. Grace & Co. in 1984.6 Dr. Hager supposedly left NMC in 1977 to start Immunogenetics.
In 1980, Dr. Hager ran for US Senate in New Hampshire with the backing of Gordon J. Humphrey, a staunch Republican, who began serving in the US Senate in 1979.7 His opponents attacked him for being an out-of-stater relying on outside money to help him win.8 The strategy seemed to work because Hager lost the election.
During the campaign season in 1980, Dr. Hager was named as a co-conspirator in a lawsuit filed by a newspaper publisher in Manchester, NH named William Loeb. Mr. Loeb claimed that the revenue commissioner of New Hampshire unlawfully ruled that his legal residence was in Massachusetts, causing him to be charged $600,000 in back taxes. Although Dr. Hager was not named as a defendant in this suit, he and his friend Constantine Hampers were both named as co-conspirators. This suit may have been the result of some dirty games being played for the senate seat that Hager was seeking at the time.
With his hopes for a life in politics dashed, Hager immediately turned his attention to Immunogenetics. As mentioned above, Immunogenetics was incorporated in Delaware in 1981. It was also incorporated as a foreign corporation in New Hampshire in 1980 and in Massachusetts in 1982. The latter incorporation lists the board of directors as William R. Funk, Jr. (also the first president of the company), Edward Hager, Edward’s wife Jane, Henry A. Malkasian and David G. Pinosky, M.D. Apart from Edward Hager, Dr. Pinosky is the only notable board member. He was a clinical psychiatrist at the Jackson Memorial Hospital and a privately-owned treatment facility for mental illness called Human Resource Institute.9 It's not clear to me what his connection might have been to Edward Hager or Immunogenetics.
Business really started accelerating for Immunogenetics around 1985 as the company started to get heavily involved with using liposomes to deliver all kinds of drugs and vaccines to animals and humans. Two subsidiaries, called Molecular Packaging Systems (MPS) and Micro-Pak were created in 1987 to focus on the liposome business. Donald F.H. Wallach, a pioneer in liposome technology, was hired to be the president and chief scientific officer of the two subsidiaries10. He is named as inventor or co-inventor on several patents issued to Micro-Pak between 1987 and 1997. Wallach was also listed on a few patents granted to Micro-Vesicular Systems, which was another subsidiary of Immunogenetics that seemed to be focused more on the application of liposomes to vaccines and consumer products.
Basically, Immunogenetics went hog wild with liposomes. They even trademarked the name Novasomes to cover their marketing rights. They put liposomes in everything from cosmetics for humans to vaccines for chickens. That’s nice.
In mid-1987, Immunogenetics changed its name to IGI, Inc.11 I’ll refer to the company as IGI from here on out.
Also in 1987, IGI licensed its liposome encapsulation technology to Pfizer and entered into a joint venture with Coopers Animal Health Ltd. (owned by Wellcome Foundation and Imperial Chemical Industries PLC) to develop liposome-encapsulated vaccines for animals1213.
Finally, in that watershed year of 1987, IGI spawned Novavax, Inc. as a wholly-owned subsidiary.
Note that the above advertisement is from 1993 and there are a few other subsidiaries listed there that I have not yet mentioned. Those subsidiaries either don’t seem to be particularly relevant to the scope of this article or I could not find any information on them.
Lastly, before we move on I want to point out that in 1988 Edward Hager and his old friend Constantine Hampers were both charged with smuggling pelts of endangered animals into the US.14 Perhaps this was part of an unsettled grudge from Hager's senate campaign. At any rate, I was unable to determine what the outcome of this case was.
Novavax (1995-Present)
There were a few notable events between 1988 and 1995. First, in 1989 Damon Corp. was sold to Nomad Partners, L.P. and Damon Biotech was acquired by Abbott Laboratories.1516 Nomad Partners, L.P. was a partnership between American Magnetics Corp. and Ballantrae Partners, L.P. Also, in 1991 IGI created a subsidiary called Lipovax, Inc. It does not appear that anything substantial ever happened with this subsidiary because I cannot seem to find any information on it. Finally, in 1994, just before the Novavax spin-off, SmithKline announced that it had decided to exercise an option to continue developing Novasome technology for potential use in vaccines, presumably human vaccines.17
The Novavax spin-off was announced in January 1995 and in October of the same year the merger of Novavax, Lipovax and the Novavax Acquisition Subsidiary, Inc. was completed. Note that prior to this merger Novavax had already been merged with the previously mentioned MPS, Inc. in 1988. So, all of the intellectual property held by MPS related to liposome encapsulation was transferred to Novavax. Importantly, it should be noted that Vineland Laboratories remained with IGI. It was not transferred to Novavax.
The owners of IGI received one share of Novavax per share of IGI that was held at the time the spin-off was announced. The question that naturally comes to mind is who owned IGI? Unfortunately, I cannot find any SEC filings submitted by IGI, not even in the Proquest or Mergent databases. They have to be on microfilm somewhere, probably the Library of Congress. Sigh. The best we can do is take a look at the first available proxy statement from Novavax. Here’s the ownership of Novavax in May 1997:
We might be justified in assuming that the ownership shown above represented the ownership of IGI at the time of the spin-off, but that is not certain. Anyways, I suppose the most interesting fellow above is Mitchell J. Kelly. I couldn’t find any information on him but he was the first president and CEO of Novavax after Edward Hager stepped down in 1997. Alone, he held 18.5% of the outstanding shares of Novavax. But, he was also the owner of Anaconda Opportunity Fund, L.P. which owned another 18.5% of the company. Altogether, then, Mitchell J. Kelly controlled 37% of Novavax in 1997.
Now, we turn to one of the most significant indicators, in my opinion, that something strange was going on at IGI and then at Novavax. I cannot prove it yet, but I believe some or all of the Novavax board members you see above were IGI board members. So, who were these board members?
Wayne A. Downing [1996-1997] - four star army general with US Army Special Operations Command
Ronald H. Walker [1996-2004] - American executive; served in Nixon administration; senior partner at Korn/Ferry international
Ronald A. Schiavone18 [1996-1998] - Executive at Schiavone Construction indicted along with Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan for larceny and fraud relating to a government contract that relied on a fake minority-owned subcontract. Schiavone Construction purportedly had mob connections.19
John O. Marsh, Jr. [1996-2013] - Secretary of the US Army; Counselor to Gerald Ford; Representative of Virginia; he was likely the one who convinced Gerald Ford to act as a senior advisor to Novavax in 199620
J. Michael Lazarus [1996-2005] - Well-known nephrologist
There were a few other notable individuals who joined the Novavax board after its spin-off. They include:
Gary C. Evans [1998-Present] - Entrepreneur; CEO of Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.; CEO of GreenHunter Energy, Inc.
Michael A. McManus [1998-Present] - White House Communications Director for Ronald Reagan; deputy manager at Brown Brothers Harriman and Co.21
Rahul Singhvi [2005-2010] - CEO of National Resilience
Rajiv Modi [2010-Present] - Chairman and Executive Director of Cadila Pharmaceuticals (India)
In the early days of Novavax, not much really seemed to be going on. The company was mostly focused on getting FDA approval for its ESTROSORB and ANDROSORB products, which were topical creams (with Novasomes!) that transferred estrogen or testosterone through the skin.
In 1997 and 1998, Novavax received DoD contracts in the amounts of $4M and $1.6M. The strange thing about these contracts was that they were issued by the US Army Central Command in Qatar. That’s all the information I have on them, but I do wonder if General Downing may have used his influence to secure them.
The pivotal moment came in 1999 when the company acquired the Biomedical Services Laboratory Division from DynCorp, a major defense contractor. The deal included 12,000 square feet of laboratory space and a vaccine manufacturing facility located in Rockville, MD. Immediately after this acquisition, Novavax began receiving NIAID contracts for various vaccine development projects. Also, in 1999 Novavax signed a deal to license its Novasome technology for use in the FLUOGEN vaccine marketed by King Pharmaceuticals in Bristol, TN.22 Additional vaccine business came in 1999 when Novavax agreed to manufacture an experimental HPV vaccine to support tests being conducted by the National Cancer Institute.23
Interestingly, in 2005 Novavax received funding from NIAID for a three year research project titled “Development of Recombinant SARS VLP Vaccines”. The total funding was only about $1M. The description of this project in NIH Reporter is definitely the most detailed one I have yet to see for a SARS-CoV vaccine project.
Another interesting thing that occurred in 2005 was the one and only mention in Novavax’s annual reports of a drug delivery manufacturing facility in Pacific Grove, CA. Some of the drugs being investigated there included heavy opioids like Fentanyl as well as immunosuppressants. I have yet to find an instance where this facility was ever mentioned again.
The only other notable event in 2005 was the appointment of Rahul Singhvi as President and CEO of Novavax. Here’s a lovely photo of Mr. Singhvi celebrating the occasion, I suppose:
In 2007, Novavax signed a license agreement with Wyeth Holdings Corporation to obtain the rights to patent applications covering VLP technology.
In 2008, Novavax opened a brand new 5,000 square foot vaccine manufacturing facility at its Rockville, MD headquarters to provide high capacity production of pandemic flu vaccines. Importantly, the company also announced that they had developed a new production process for a SARS-CoV VLP vaccine. To my knowledge, Novavax was the only company talking openly about a SARS-CoV vaccine as late as 2008.
Around 2009 the company set its sights on India. It announced a joint venture with Cadila Pharmaceuticals named CPL Biologicals. The main focus of the joint venture was to build a new state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing facility in Dholka, India, which was completed in 2010. The facility was designed for an annual production capacity of 60 million doses of VLP influenza vaccine. As previously mentioned, Rajiv Modi was an executive at Cadila Pharmaceutical who joined the Novavax board right around the time that the joint venture was announced.
In 2011, Novavax received a massive $179M contract from the Office of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response for the development of a next-generation recombinant vaccine for pandemic flu. Right after the announcement of this contract, Novavax moved its headquarters from its Rockville, MD location to Gaithersburg, MD. The new facility was 74,000 square feet, which was about 7 times larger than the old facility.
In 2012, Novavax entered into a collaboration with PATH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a RSV vaccine for low-income countries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated a total of $45M directly to Novavax between 2016 and 2018 to fund this effort. Apparently, it was all for naught because the RSV vaccine developed by Novavax failed catastrophically in its Phase III trial.
In 2018, Novavax acquired Isconova in Sweden which included a 15,400 square foot GMP facility in Uppsala, Sweden. This acquisition was described as adding “proprietary nanoparticle matrix immune-modulating adjuvant technology” to Novavax’s vaccine platform.
Finally, in 2020 Novavax acquired a vaccine manufacturing facility in Bohumil, Czech Republic to use for production of the antigen used in its NVX-CoV2373 covid vaccine. I covered the details of this acquisition in my previous article:
Immediately after this acquisition, Novavax received $49M in contracts from DoD to produce covid vaccines.
Loose Ends
You might be wondering what happened to IGI after the Novavax spin-off. Well, it wasn’t that great. In fact, you might say that the company went down in flames. Although Edward Hager and John P. Gallo were brought onto the board of Novavax, within two years of the spin-off they were both gone. In fact, things got much worse for John P. Gallo. He was fired from IGI in 1997 and then promptly sued by his former employer for shipping poultry vaccines to global customers that had failed potency tests.24 A few months later, trading was briefly halted for IGI due to its failure to file a quarterly financial statement with the SEC. IGI was subjected to investigations from five, yes five, federal agencies over its issues with shipping bad vaccines and poor accounting practices. The SEC filed a suit against John P. Gallo in 2002, but it was dismissed. If you are interested in further details, I recommend you check out the fascinating Forbes article written on this issue.
IGI finally sold off Vineland Laboratories in 2000 to a German company called Lohmann & Co, AG.25 IGI shifted its focus to what it had left, which wasn't much - mainly some pharmaceutical and consumer skin products. In 2015, IGI changed its name to Teligent, which went on to declare bankruptcy in 2021.
I don’t think it’s coincidence that IGI began its downfall right after Novavax was spun-off. My opinion is that the owners of Novavax wanted to make a clean break so that IGI could be buried in the past.
Summary
We’ve traced a thread all the way from the Rothschilds to a company engaged with creating vaccines used to inoculate people all over the world. The meaningfulness of this thread is still unclear, but it IS a real thread, and it deserves further contemplation. Was the chicken farm just practice for the human farm?
The Boston Globe, 20 Aug 1967, Page B-7.
The Boston Globe, 17 Dec 1973, Page 30.
Vineland Times Journal, 17 Apr 1976, Page 1.
Arizona Republic, 28 Nov 1980, Page B2.
St. Louis Globe Democrat, 1 Jan 1958, Page 14A.
The Los Angeles Times, 07 Aug 1984, Page 29.
Valley News (West Lebanon, NH), 29 Jul 1980, Page 9.
Concord Monitor, 04 Sep 1980, Page 3.
The Miami Herald, 16 Jun 1972, Page 140.
The Daily Journal (Vineland, NJ), 14 May 1970, Page 26.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 May 1987, Page 2-G.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 Sep 1987, Page 2-E.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 31 Aug 1987, Page 6-C.
The Macon Telegraph, 30 Apr 1988, Page 3B.
The Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan 1989, Page 3.
The Boston Globe, 18 Oct 1989, Page 92.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 Dec 1994, Page C3.
Mount Vernon Argus (White Plains, NY), 03 Oct 1984, Page 16.
The Sacremento Bee (Sacremento, CA), 04 Jun 1982, Page 34.
The Baltimore Sun, 17 Oct 1996, Page 32.
The Reporter Dispatch (White Plains, NY), 13 Jun 1977, Page 12.
The Baltimore Sun, 23 Oct 1999, Page 48.
The Baltimore Sun, 16 Oct 1999, Page 41.
The Daily Journal (Vineland, NJ), 07 May 1998, Page 1.
The Daily Journal (Vineland, NJ), 03 Jun 2000, Page 1.
You might enjoy this: https://ghostfromthefuture.substack.com/p/sparsdemic-anyone
And I also wonder how you think the CHS, founded by among others Tara O'Toole (former Department of Energy; defended the DOE during hearing on Human Radiation Experiments)...? Especially since the CDC has a contract with them to also surveil Social Media... the contract number is in one of my other posts I think...
"Mr. Bond: “Pity. Someone must have told him it was safe and effective.”" Best line ever =;)