A pair of NIH researchers have been charged after allegedly trying to smuggle a deadly virus into an American airport. Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe were discovered at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with vials of mpox, chickenpox, and human DNA, and have been charged with conspiracy and giving federal law enforcement false statements, U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said. The pair, who work at the National Institutes of Health at Rocky Mountain Laboratory, in Hamilton, Montana, were stopped by Customs and Border Protection officers, who asked what was inside a black plastic case. The researchers said they contained diagnostics and testing equipment, but inspections by the FBI and CBP found 113 vials, 20 of which they tested and found that 17 contained deactivated mpox, also known as monkeypox. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said the men had landed in Detroit from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where an mpox outbreak is ongoing. Munster, 53, a Dutch citizen, and Kwe, 38, a citizen of Cameroon, work at NIH’s Virus Ecology Section on “emerging viral pathogens” and how they “cross the species barrier.” If found guilty, they could face five years in prison.
Read it at United States Attorney’s Office
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