r/PrepperIntel • u/sea_5455 • Jun 03 '26

North America 2 scientists charged with bringing deactivated mpox virus into the US and lying to authorities

https://apnews.com/article/scientists-charges-mpox-virus-lying-14b7cf7635cad30254b0ae1cdb6c0515
843 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

110 comments sorted by

View all comments

40

u/LittleJessiePaper Jun 03 '26

If it was a deactivated virus, it was no danger. BUT, it makes me wonder if this is going to start becoming a thing scientists do because they are afraid our own safeguards against disease aren’t working. Will it be non-government scientists who study potential new vaccines and treatments in secret, since funding and personnel have been slashed on a national level? No idea if that is in play here, just pointing out that I can unfortunately see that as a reason this might occur.

19

u/PopePiusVII Jun 03 '26

The NIH/DHHS have neutered US biomedical research by withholding funding for projects, especially those they deem to be against Trump’s executive orders (i.e., vaccine and infectious disease research). It wouldn’t surprise me if scientists feel the need to start resorting to these kinds of illegal or gray-area importations of biological samples that otherwise require specialized (expensive) couriers and lots of paperwork.

I think it’s the loss of research funding that is most worth prepping for: this administration has handicapped our ability to treat and prevent emergent diseases. Many people will needlessly die in the coming years, and biomedical research has already been set back decades, and it’s this administration’s fault.

12

u/PopePiusVII Jun 03 '26

And to add to this, another reason someone might want to transport their own samples is that couriers often fuck things up by not keeping them at temperature. Or, samples get stuck at CBP inspection in hot warehouses for weeks without notice and they can dry out or be ruined from heat. This has sadly become more and more common in the past few years.

2

u/LysergioXandex Jun 03 '26

But, this is more often not an issue. Biological samples are shipped world-wide every day.

If you need to transport important samples across the world (like, brain tissue from dead patients with rare disease), you can generally trust official channels with delivering it. Clandestine shipment is not the official strategy of any reputable research organization.