Two researchers from the National Institutes of Health have been charged in the United States in connection with the alleged smuggling of a virus, mpox, into the country. The case has drawn attention both for the unusual nature of the allegations and for the scientific questions it raises.
According to the charges, the pair face a count of conspiracy to smuggle the virus, along with a second charge of lying to Customs and Border Protection. Officials say the researchers stated that what they were carrying was diagnostic and that there were no biological samples involved.
That second charge is already contested. Some virologists who have worked with Dr Munster, one of the two researchers, say the material was in fact part of the diagnostic test kits, which would make the statement to border officials accurate. Whether the description amounted to a lie, or merely a technical distinction over what counts as a biological sample, is expected to be debated in court.
The alleged offence occurred as the researchers were returning from the Congo region in central Africa. The handling of such material is itself part of the technical argument, since samples of dangerous viruses are usually transported under strict conditions, often by a specially dedicated courier rather than simply carried on a plane.
Based on the charging documents, Vincent Munster appeared to be the more senior of the two researchers, though few further details about the working relationship between them have been made public at this stage.
The case lands at a sensitive moment. Since the COVID pandemic, there has been heightened suspicion around experiments and research involving dangerous viruses in laboratories, amid fears that such work could make a virus more infectious or deadlier and potentially spill out into the wider population.
On the virus itself, CDC data cited in the reporting shows that an mpox outbreak in the United States that began in 2022 led to 42 deaths and about 30,000 recorded cases. A separate and more recent mpox outbreak has been unfolding in parts of Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, driven by a different clade of the virus that tends to be more serious and deadlier than the strain behind the earlier US outbreak.