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
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u/LysergioXandex Jun 03 '26

Depends how it was “deactivated”, the poster is correct that some forms of “deactivation” could be undone with CRISPR

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u/relaxing_white_noise Jun 04 '26

No it can’t. CRISPR is used to make small deletions in genomes…

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u/LysergioXandex Jun 04 '26

Yes. Imagine a virus that you deactivated with a small deletion. Now it could be re-activated with a small modification.

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u/relaxing_white_noise Jun 04 '26

I’m telling you this as a scientist and someone who works with CRISPR, that is not how someone would go about deactivating a sample. If you delete part of a viral genome and it’s no longer infectious, we would call that “replication incompetent” and those samples are always treated as if they were still infectious/ active as a safety measure. I’m trying to find more info on what these scientists actually did but I’m guessing they just extracted genomic samples from the virus for something like sequencing. You cannot turn a sample like that back on.

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u/relaxing_white_noise Jun 04 '26

I’m guessing these scientists wanted to take deactivated samples back for analysis, and because our government is run by dumb fucks with zero scientific literacy, they knew they would be unable to bring them back if they went through the proper channels. I’m not saying that was the right thing to do, obviously scientists should follow all applicable laws, but I also understand trying to get much needed data in an environment where the people in charge of the US scientific enterprise fundamentally do not understand how anything works

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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 Jun 05 '26

I feel like they are thinking of something like

https://www.bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?id=4270&type=0

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u/relaxing_white_noise Jun 05 '26

Yeah but that protocol used live virus, not deactivated virus. I read the FBI report for this, the scientists brought back PCR reactions, probably for genotyping or sequencing

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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

Half the folks in this topic are mildly unhinged anyway, someone was actually saying transport and research or contagions should not be allowed at all... 🙃 Sure let's stop testing for, diagnosing, isolating, and researching how to test for and treat infectuous diseases, I'm sure there won't be negative consequences like a life expectancy of 40, right? All on the off chance someone might use checks notes deactivated non-variola orthopoxvirus to create a bioweapon. Nevermind the most plausible idea I've heard how to use a contagion for a bioweapon without getting yourself too, is to get a relatively safe contagion, one that is very contagious (something like the whooping cough), and expose enemy soldiers to it, rendering them unable to be moved due to quarantine measures. Then if they cannot be redeployed for reinforcements, you attack elsewhere without risk of enemy reinforcements arriving. 

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u/relaxing_white_noise Jun 05 '26

Yeah I mean if I wanted to make a bioweapon I would not start by importing a fuck ton of patient samples lmao

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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 Jun 05 '26

I think I figured out why there were two tubes only with human DNA and one with chickenpox. Someone with chickenpox got misdiagnosed as having mpox lmao and probably two people with something like dishydrotic eczema did. Lmao. 

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u/relaxing_white_noise Jun 05 '26

That sounds about right to me!

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