Two government scientists at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories returned to the country in January with a large black plastic case that worried customs officials. Closer inspection revealed 113 undeclared microcentrifuge tubes in Styrofoam refrigerators, including 17 samples that later tested positive for mpox (also known as monkeypox) DNA at an FBI laboratory.
Now, federal prosecutors are charging these two NIH scientists, grant–victorious virologist Vincent Munster and postdoctoral researcher Claude Kwe, for “conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States” and lying about it to federal authorities. According to the criminal complaintMade public Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, Munster materially misled U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when he “told CBP officers that the case contained diagnostic and testing equipment.”
“These NIH experts apparently violated our laws by smuggling viral pathogens onto a crowded commercial airliner from an outbreak in the Republic of the Congo,” said U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. saying in a press release. “Let that sink in.”
However, at least one virologist who spoke to Science magazine noted that these mpox strains, which federal researchers acknowledge were inactivated, could have qualified for diagnostic use.
“Inactivated monkeypox viruses are commonly used as a control in diagnostic tests or to develop assays,” says virologist Angela Rasmussen, who studies host responses to emerging viruses at the University of Saskatchewan. said Science. In fact, Munster and his colleagues at the NIH in Montana published investigation on the technique in 2022.
Outbreak
Now known internationally as mpox in honor of the World Health Organization. The name was changed to destigmatize the disease.The virus has become a football culture war. Trump administration officials have Suddenly he called the disease monkeypox again.reviving a name that the WHO moved away from.
In the real world, the virus is known to cause flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle aches and swollen lymph nodes, in addition to its characteristic painful, lumpy rash, which can appear anywhere on the body. for him consensus However, according to the US government’s own public health officials, mpox “does NOT spread through the air or by casual contact as it would during travel.”
While Mpox can kill, it is rarely a death sentence, as only about 3.1% of cases becoming fatal. The highest recorded rates of mpox deaths are among immunocompromised HIV patients in Africa, incidentally, the continent where the two accused NIH scientists had just returned before being detained.
Kwe told investigators that he and Munster had flown to Detroit Metropolitan Airport “from Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo, where the couple was helping to study a strain of Mpox that is currently causing an outbreak,” according to the complaint.
‘Zero tolerance’
Regardless of Kwe and Munster’s intent, CBP Director of Field Operations Marty C. Raybon took an aggressive tone during their processing: “We have zero tolerance for anyone who attempts to exploit our investigative frameworks, circumvent our border control processes or mislead investigators,” Raybon said. “We will remain very vigilant to neutralize biological threats.”
The federal government leaned heavily on the international ties of both investigators in announcing the criminal proceedings on Tuesday, highlighting Munster’s citizenship in the Netherlands and Kwe’s citizenship in Cameroon.
Following her comments to Science, Rasmussen criticized the case more forcefully on social media: “The government is arresting government scientists for being foreigners and for studying infectious disease outbreaks when their own evidence shows they have not committed any crimes,” said the Canada-based virologist. saying in X.
Statements Munster made to Detroit airport officials, detailed as “materially false” in the complaint, appear to align with those of Rasmussen. assessment that the inactivated mpox were “actual diagnostic samples used as controls or for assay development.”
Munster had told CBP investigators in Detroit that the microcentrifuge tubes were part of a “RADI Mpox rapid kit from KH Medical,” which included an “assay.” Obviously, these statements will ultimately be judged in court. Him and Kwe face possible fines of up to $250,000 if convicted, in addition to the possible prison sentence.
