Tag: nih

Former NIH Head Secretly Helped With Paper Dismissing Theory COVID-19 Came From Lab

Then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledged that he secretly assisted with a paper stating the virus that causes COVID-19 “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” according to a newly released missive.

“This is work that Tony, Jeremy, Larry, and I helped with, but are appropriately not mentioned explicitly in the paper,” Collins said in the March 6, 2020, email to NIH officials, which was released by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on June 11.

Tony refers to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through late 2022. Jeremy refers to Jeremy Farrar, at the time the director of the Wellcome Trust. Larry refers to Dr. Lawrence Tabak, an NIH official.

Collins noted the conclusion that stated, “The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered.” SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The first COVID-19 cases appeared in Wuhan, China, in 2019, near a laboratory that was conducting enhanced experiments on coronaviruses funded by the NIH.

Collins was responding to an email from Kristian Andersen, one of the authors of the paper, which was titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Andersen and other scientists said in the paper, published on March 17, 2020, in Nature Medicine, that they analyzed data and concluded that it came from nature.

To date, no natural source has been identified for the virus. The Trump administration maintains the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

The paper did not mention any contributions from Collins, Fauci, Tabak, or Farrar, who made at least one critical change to the document, according to emails released by lawmakers in 2023. It thanked American virologist Michael Farzan “for discussions” and the Wellcome Trust “for support.” Nature did not return a request for comment by the time of publication. Collins did not respond to a request for comment.

Collins told lawmakers in 2024 that his role “was for information, not for me to edit,” that he never edited or suggested edits to the paper, and that, to his knowledge, neither did Fauci or Farrar. He also said he is not a virology expert.

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China’s Biological Warfare Threat to the United States

On June 2, 2026, the Department of Justice charged two NIH researchers, Vincent Munster, 53, a Dutch national and Chief of the Virus Ecology Section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, 38, a Cameroonian research fellow, with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox virus into the United States and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

While Munster is Dutch and Kwe Cameroonian, neither is a Chinese national. However, the case’s connection to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) biological threat framework is well documented.

Sen. Rand Paul’s April 2024 letters revealed that Munster was a named partner in the DEFUSE proposal. The EcoHealth Alliance-DARPA grant application proposed engineering chimeric bat coronaviruses and listed the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as a partner. Paul said the disclosure “appears to contradict” Dr. Fauci’s prior testimony that the NIH was unaware of the proposal.

The WIV operates under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a State Council institution. A House Foreign Affairs Committee report found that local CCP leaders, including Director General Wang Yanyi and BSL-4 laboratory manager Yuan Zhiming, directly oversaw the WIV and its highest-containment laboratory.

The State Department further determined that the WIV has conducted classified research for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since at least 2017. Cables obtained by U.S. Right to Know cited the existence of “PLA shadow labs at WIV.”

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence also linked the WIV to the Fifth Institute of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), which is part of China’s acknowledged biological weapons program. The committee concluded that SARS-CoV-2 may have links to that program.

This case is the latest in a documented series of biological-smuggling incidents involving China-linked research networks operating in the United States. Most of these cases have been intercepted at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Several examples are detailed in the section below.

China’s asymmetric warfare toolkit includes numerous vectors designed to pressure the United States, including biological warfare. These components work together as part of a broader strategy.

For example, the cyber component, led by Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, has been confirmed to have penetrated U.S. power grids, water systems, and telecommunications networks.

On the economic and demographic front, Chinese chemical manufacturers supply fentanyl precursors that flow through Mexican cartels into American communities.

The State Department has assessed that China operated an offensive biological warfare program from the early 1950s until at least the late 1980s. During that period, China weaponized ricin, botulinum toxins, and the causative agents of anthrax, cholera, plague, and tularemia.

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Viral Influencer: How Bill Gates’ Billions Shape US Medical Research

Bill Gates has long been one of the most admired people in the world, especially since he stepped down from his role running Microsoft to devote himself and much of his fortune to philanthropy. That reputation has been tarnished recently, however, by revelations of the billionaire’s close relation with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and exposes on his own fraught relationships with women.

On the eve of Gates’ private testimony with Congress scheduled for tomorrow, a trove of federal whistleblower documents provided to RealClearInvestigations is renewing questions about how Gates money has bought what critics complain is an untoward influence on government health policy. For almost a quarter of a century, his main vehicle of power, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), allowing Gates to shape the direction of the country’s health strategy in ways that have benefitted his own priorities and pet causes while polishing his image as a benevolent global do-gooder.

At a time of growing concern about the power of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, Gates’ efforts stand out. Instead of lobbying federal agencies for specific policies, Gates leveraged his wealth to work inside the government, partnering with high-ranking NIH officials to steer taxpayer research funding and design scientific policies for several federal programs.

The cache of several dozen emails and documents, made public for the first time by an NIH whistleblower, reinforces previous reports detailing Gates’s extensive influence over U.S. biomedical research. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Kate Elder, a senior vaccines policy adviser for Doctors Without Borders, complained to Politico, “What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting the tremendous resources?”

Emails and internal plans, for example, show that the NIH – the world’s largest funder of biomedical research – gave the Gates Foundation first billing for the joint workshops and meeting held on federal property.

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2 NIH researchers charged with smuggling deactivated Mpox samples into U.S., lying to CBP

Two National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have been criminally charged with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the United States and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

A federal criminal complaint unsealed in Detroit reveals that Vincent Munster, the chief of the virus ecology section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and his colleague, Claude Kwe, were intercepted by authorities at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The scientists were stopped by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers following a flight from Paris, which concluded a 9-day research trip to the Republic of Congo — a region heavily impacted by an mpox outbreak that has been linked to over 2,000 deaths.

Mpox, formerly “monkeypox,” is an infectious viral disease causing flu-like symptoms and a painful rash. It spreads primarily through close, direct contact with an infected person’s lesions, bodily fluids or contaminated items like bedding.

According to court filings submitted by the FBI, Munster adamantly denied carrying any biological materials or samples when questioned by airport investigators. However, a physical inspection of their luggage uncovered more than 100 vials stored inside Styrofoam coolers.

Subsequent laboratory testing on a portion of the seized materials also confirmed that at least 17 of the first 20 vials tested positive for deactivated mpox virus. When pressed about the required federal permits and documentation for importing such materials, Munster allegedly told customs officers that the paperwork was on his laptop, adding, “but you don’t need them. I do this all the time.”

Federal prosecutors assert that these statements were materially false and that the researchers lacked the mandatory authorization to bring the pathogens into the country.

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University of Washington Confirms that NIH-Funded Muscular Dystrophy Experiments on Dogs Have Ended After White Coat Waste Investigation

The University of Washington has confirmed that the portion of its NIH-backed muscular dystrophy experiments on dogs has officially ended, following a major investigation and public pressure campaign by the government watchdog group White Coat Waste (WCW).

The experiments intentionally caused dogs to suffer from muscular dystrophy before killing many of them.

WCW first requested documents on the UW muscular dystrophy dog lab from both the NIH and the university in July and August of last year.

The organization finally received the first tranche of records, including graphic photos and videos, from UW in early April. WCW is still waiting for additional records from the university.

Once those initial documents arrived, WCW immediately released the explosive findings.

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Secret Trial of Pfizer RSV Vaccine Killed Two Infants in the 1960s — Their Families Just Sued the U.S. Government

The families of two Black infants who died during a 1960s experimental RSV vaccine trial have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S., alleging government researchers enrolled the babies in a dangerous medical experiment without their parents’ knowledge or consent, The New York Times reported.

The lawsuit, filed May 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other researchers, in 1965 and 1966, subjected dozens of infants — most or all of them from low-income Black families — to testing of Pfizer’s Lot 100 experimental vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Two infants, Victor Marcellus King and Ross Otto Hambrick, later died after developing vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (VAERD), a severe respiratory illness caused by the vaccine.

VAERD occurs when a vaccinated child who never had RSV is exposed to the virus and develops a more severe case of RSV than they would have if they hadn’t received the vaccine.

The suit was filed by Sharlette Hambrick and Darius King, acting as representatives of the estates of their deceased brothers. They allege federal researchers failed to obtain informed consent from the children’s parents, withheld critical information about prior vaccine failures, and continued the study despite mounting evidence that the vaccine was causing severe reactions in participants.

The complaint also alleges that the tissue samples from the babies who died were later used to develop the RSV vaccines and monoclonal antibody shots that have been approved in the last several years — providing a financial boon for drugmakers.

“Medical research in the United States has a long, troubled racial history,” the complaint states, comparing the alleged conduct to other notorious examples of unethical experimentation involving Black Americans, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks.

The infants’ families were unaware the babies had been subjected to the experiment until a reporter from Undark magazine contacted them while investigating the story in 2023.

The reporter found the babies’ names in a doctor’s government-issued laboratory notebook and other paperwork from the clinical trial, the Times reported.

Parents not told infants were being enrolled in trial for experimental vaccine

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Infected Lab Monkey Bites Government Employee in the US, GOP Senator Demands Investigation

In the seminal 2002 horror film “28 Days Later,” an apocalyptic zombie plague devastates the world — and it all began with a batch of sickly monkeys in a lab.

While zombies (likely) aren’t real, that hasn’t stopped at least one lawmaker from sounding the alarm about what just happened in sleepy Montana.

According to Politico, “a renowned federal research lab” in Big Sky Country saw a situation where an infected lab monkey bit an employee.

The incident occurred in November at a National Institutes of Health facility, and the culprit was a monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

Thankfully, the worker was promptly treated for the bite, and never picked up the lethal tick-borne illness. The employee was soon able to return to work.

While the story may have ultimately had a happy ending, the circumstances surrounding it require much deeper investigation, according to Montana Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy.

Sharing a post from Trump ally Laura Loomer, Sheehy revealed that he had sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services about the matter.

He included a straightforward — if not ominous — caption: “We don’t want Montana to be the next Wuhan. Montanans and Americans deserve answers over concerning reports out of Rocky Mountain Laboratories.”

Sheehy further elaborated on his concerns in the letter.

“Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) is a federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) research facility in Hamilton, Montana, that conducts studies on some of the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases,” Sheehy wrote. “The seriousness of the work conducted at RML means that even small lapses can carry real risks for the staff and surrounding community.”

Indeed, warnings about “real risks” carry quite a bit of weight, especially given that, per Loomer, the RML facility had been doing work with the Ebola virus.

Given the seriousness of Ebola, Sheehy’s letter to HHS included a four-pronged request.

First, Sheehy wanted a thorough investigation into the basics, including what happened, what pathogens are being used, and biosafety regulations.

Second, Sheehy also wanted a thorough analysis of RML’s safety procedures, and how they can be improved.

Third, Sheehy wanted HHS to dig deeper into RML’s “personnel management practices, including background checks, oversight, and clearance processes for staff.”

Finally, Sheehy wanted a further debrief on NIH’s protocols for employees who are under investigation for whatever reason, including what sort of facility access they have.

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Fauci Moved Kitten Experiments into NIH After Trump Shut Down USDA Lab, New White Coat Waste Investigation Reveals They’re Still Active

A shocking new investigation by White Coat Waste (WCW) has uncovered how Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) quietly shifted controversial kitten experimentation from a shuttered U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) lab into the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) own internal laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland, after President Donald Trump’s administration shut down the USDA’s infamous “kitten slaughterhouse” exposed by the watchdog organization in 2019.

The newly obtained records, obtained by WCW through Freedom of Information Act requests, show that in 2021, under Dr. Fauci, NIAID scientist Dr. Michael Grigg, a collaborator with the now-closed USDA lab, resurrected the kitten experimentation protocols inside NIH intramural laboratories, where they remain active through at least December 13, 2026.

For decades, the USDA’s Beltsville, Maryland, facility bred and killed cats for toxoplasmosis parasite experiments led by scientist Jitender Dubey.

WCW uncovered how Dubey’s lab bred thousands of kittens for painful and deadly taxpayer-funded testing.

Dubey and his staff traveled to China and other foreign countries to visit wet markets and purchase cat and dog meat, which would then be fed to kittens back at the USDA lab in gruesome cannibalism experiments.

WCW detailed the disturbing project in an exchange with Republican Rep. Eric Burlison during a House Oversight hearing last year and highlighted how Dubey was even inducted into the USDA Hall of Fame.

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Project ‘PROVIDENT’: NIAID Launched $70 Million Pandemic Program Targeting Hantaviruses Before Outbreak

A massive National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) pandemic-preparedness program focused in part on hantaviruses was already actively underway—and had just achieved unprecedented structural and vaccine-platform mapping of Andes hantavirus—before the highly publicized 2026 international Andes hantavirus outbreak ordeal emerged.

The federally funded initiative, called PROVIDENT (“Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats”), officially began in September 2024 and remains active through June 2029, according to NIH RePORTER documents.

The project is run by Dr. Kartik Chandran, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.

Importantly, the project is not a small short-term grant.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine announced in September 2024 that the consortium received a:

“five-year, $14 million per year grant”

That places the total projected funding for the program at roughly $70 million over its active lifespan.

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91% of Flu Vaccine Recipients Shed Chimeric Lab-Made Vaccine Virus, Raising Transmission Concerns: NIH-Funded Journal ‘Clinical Infectious Diseases’ Study

A newly published, U.S. government-funded, peer-reviewed study has confirmed that a live attenuated influenza vaccine caused detectable post-vaccination viral shedding in more than 91% of adult recipients, raising major questions about whether vaccinated individuals function as carriers and spreaders of vaccine-derived influenza pathogens after immunization.

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, claim that the purported virus inside the vaccine actively replicated inside recipients after administration and was subsequently shed from the nose in the overwhelming majority of participants.

Researchers from George Washington University evaluated 283 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who received the intranasal live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), FluMist, during the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 flu seasons.

The new paper explicitly states:

“LAIV replication begins within 24 hours and declines over the first week…”

Researchers further explained that the virus in the vaccine:

“replicates in the upper respiratory tract, mimicking a natural infection…”

In plain English, the vaccine virus reproduces inside recipients and is expelled back out through the nose afterward.

Researchers collected nasal swabs on day 1, days 2–4, and days 5–7 after vaccination and measured influenza A and B RNA using RT-PCR testing.

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