“The need to satisfy FDA and NIH rules can also slow down important biomedical research, ultimately costing lives. In fall 2020, Moderna announced it was slowing enrollment in its clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine to ensure it had sufficient minority representation among study participants. As thousands of people worldwide were dying of COVID-19-related ailments, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel made the remarkable assertion that diversity in research subjects “matters more to [Moderna] than speed.”55 NIH director Francis Collins later revealed that Moderna was not acting autonomously but rather under his direction.56 He told Moderna that it needed to recruit more “people of color” (i.e., people other than non-Hispanic whites), before NIH would acknowledge the vaccine’s safety.”