NIH employee leak to Wired Magazine triggers panic on Bluesky as researchers complain shut down to protect public safety will harm germ research.
The FBI launched an investigation last week into security violations at the NIH’s Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick following several dangerous incidents in which a contractor cut holes in an employee’s biocontainment suit designed to protect against infection from pathogens such as Ebola, according to interviews and documents viewed by The DisInformation Chronicle.
Violations of safety protocol at the research facility were uncovered by Jeffrey Taubenberger on his first day as Acting Director of the NIAID, the NIH Institute formerly run by Anthony Fauci. Fort Detrick houses multiple government germ labs, including the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. The Army’s lab was shut down in 2009 and again in 2019, both times due to safety concerns.
“Many issues have been known for months if not years and previous NIAID leadership did nothing about it,” explained an NIH official, detailing problems at the facility which was described as having a “poor culture of safety.”