Rand Paul Releases Records Alleging Years of NIH Biosafety Failures

By Amanda Head | Just The News

New documents released by Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., reveal that two National Institutes of Health scientists were charged with conspiring to smuggle monkeypox virus samples into the United States after returning from the Congo. The documents released by Congress revealed a decade of warnings and workarounds in the handling of dangerous pathogens. 

In January, NIH Rocky Mountain Laboratories virologists Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport from the Republic of the Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was active. 

On arrival, they declared that a large black case contained only “diagnostics and testing equipment.” Federal investigators later discovered 113 microcentrifuge tubes held in Styrofoam coolers inside. FBI testing of 20 tubes found 17 with deactivated monkeypox virus, one with chickenpox virus, and two with human DNA. 

As a result, on June 2, Munster and Kwe were charged with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox and making false statements. Senate investigators described the episode as symptomatic of a deeper culture in which biosafety shipping rules were often treated as flexible. The defendants were released on conditions to appear in Michigan for a hearing on June 24, and were required to surrender their passports, according to The Missoula Current News.

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