The Next Pandemic Starts Here
Why the charges against an NIH virologist expose the failure of gain-of-function research.
Federal prosecutors have charged senior NIH virologist Vincent Munster (originally from the Netherlands) and his junior colleague Claude Kwe (Cameroon) with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the United States and with making false statements to federal authorities. According to the criminal complaint, the two scientists returned from the Republic of Congo in January carrying a large black case that they allegedly told Customs and Border Protection officers contained diagnostic and testing equipment. Federal investigators later discovered 113 vials packed inside Styrofoam coolers inside the case. Of the first twenty vials tested by the FBI, seventeen reportedly contained deactivated mpox virus, one contained chickenpox virus, and two contained human DNA. Both men worked at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, one of the federal government’s premier Biosafety Level 4 facilities, where researchers study some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens. If convicted, they face up to five years in prison.
On its face, this sounds like a story about improperly transported laboratory specimens and a customs declaration.
It isn’t.
The real story is that one of the federal government’s most prominent virus hunters now finds himself at the center of a criminal investigation while Congress continues to uncover evidence that the scientists responsible for overseeing dangerous pathogen research learned almost nothing from COVID.
To understand why this case matters, you first have to understand who Vincent Munster is.
Munster is not a minor scientist. He serves as Chief of the Virus Ecology Section at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, one of the federal government’s premier high-containment research facilities. His career has been built around the collection, study, and characterization of emerging viruses. During the COVID era, he became one of the most visible federal researchers studying SARS-CoV-2 transmission, animal susceptibility, pathogenesis, and outbreak dynamics.
In short, Munster is not on the periphery of the biodefense establishment. He sits near its center. One USG insider I spoke to in preparing this story, who has been investigating Munster and federal GOF research for years, called him “one of the worst members of the gain of function mafia.”
And that is where the story becomes much larger.
In April 2024, Senator Rand Paul released documents showing that Munster’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory was listed as a participant in EcoHealth Alliance’s infamous DEFUSE proposal. That proposal brought together Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Ralph Baric’s laboratory at the University of North Carolina, and other collaborators to pursue research involving bat coronaviruses and pandemic prediction.
The significance of DEFUSE is not that it was funded.
It wasn’t.
The significance is that it revealed what some of the world’s most influential pandemic-preparedness scientists wanted to do before COVID ever appeared.
According to documents later released through congressional investigations, EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal brought together a network of researchers that included the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Ralph Baric’s laboratory at the University of North Carolina, and collaborators connected to NIAID’s virus-hunting enterprise. The proposal contemplated experiments involving novel bat coronaviruses, manipulation of spike proteins, and insertion of furin cleavage sites.
DARPA reviewed the proposal and rejected it. That should have been the end of the story.
Instead, it became a glimpse behind the curtain.
One of the most revealing documents to emerge from the COVID origins controversy was a memorandum prepared by Major Joseph Murphy, a Marine officer assigned to DARPA. Murphy documented that DARPA had reviewed and rejected the DEFUSE proposal because of concerns regarding gain-of-function research and biosafety risks. Whether every aspect of Murphy’s analysis ultimately proves correct is less important than the central fact: a federal defense agency looked at the proposal and saw danger. According to Murphy, DARPA’s concern was that the proposal crossed into gain-of-function territory and posed unacceptable biosafety risks.
That should have been a flashing red warning light.
Instead, many of the same institutions, many of the same researchers, and many of the same scientific objectives were then funded and remained embedded within the NIH-funded virus-hunting network overseen by Anthony Fauci’s NIAID. My USG insider source told me that Munster was a key EcoHealth Alliance collaborator.
That is the part of the story Washington would rather forget.
The American people were repeatedly told that dangerous coronavirus research was tightly controlled and carefully supervised. Yet Fauci’s NIAID continued funding EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn supported coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Basically, the very same research program the DARPA rejected because this gain-of-function research was deemed too dangerous. Congressional investigations later documented reporting failures, delayed disclosures, inadequate oversight, and repeated efforts to obscure exactly what research was being conducted and who was responsible for monitoring it.
The issue is that one branch of the federal government looked at this research direction and saw danger, while another branch funded and encouraged the same research ecosystem.
That ecosystem included EcoHealth Alliance. It included the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It included the collection and characterization of novel bat coronaviruses. It included experiments designed to understand how those viruses might infect human beings. And it included many of the same scientists who lied when they assured the public that concerns about biosafety and laboratory accidents were unfounded.
Then the engineered SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan.
The research ecosystem funded and protected by NIAID was far riskier than the American people were led to believe. It led to a mass casualty event, as the world had never known before.
COVID should have triggered a wholesale reassessment of the entire enterprise.
Instead, the opposite happened.
The institutions involved closed ranks. Questions were dismissed. Definitions changed. Records disappeared. Congressional investigators spent years uncovering reporting violations, withheld information, missing communications, and repeated failures of oversight. The public was repeatedly assured that safeguards were working even as evidence accumulated that the system was far less transparent and far less accountable than advertised.
The history of EcoHealth Alliance should have ended the debate.
For years, EcoHealth received federal funding to support overseas coronavirus research, including work conducted through the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Congressional investigations documented repeated reporting failures and oversight deficiencies. The organization became the conduit through which American taxpayer dollars flowed into coronavirus research in Wuhan, while federal officials repeatedly reassured the public that everything was under control, that gain-of-function work was no longer done, and hid their risky research from the general public.
Instead of transparency, the public got stonewalling. Instead of accountability, it got censorship. Instead of humility, it got lectures.
Yet even after COVID, the machine kept running.
While Congress was investigating EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan-related research, lawmakers simultaneously uncovered another controversy inside NIAID itself.
This time the focus was on Dr. Bernard (Bernie) Moss, one of the world’s most prominent poxvirus researchers.
House investigators revealed that NIAID had approved or considered experiments involving the transfer of genes between different clades of mpox virus. Congressional investigators, including Senator Rand Paul and members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, raised concerns that the proposed work could combine characteristics of more virulent and more transmissible strains. These experiments crossed into gain-of-function territory and represented exactly the type of research that Americans had been assured was subject to strict controls.
Again, the response was familiar.
Officials argued the work was safe. Officials argued the work was necessary. Officials argued the critics simply did not understand the science.
We have heard this before.
What makes the Munster case so significant is not that it involves mpox.
It demonstrates how little had changed under the Biden administration.
The same federal agencies remain committed to overseas pathogen collection. The same laboratories continue pursuing increasingly sophisticated experiments on dangerous viruses. The same experts who assured the public that everything was under control before COVID remain responsible for deciding what risks are acceptable today.
That is the real significance of the Munster case.
Vincent Munster is not merely a scientist facing criminal charges. He represents the continuity of a system that never truly changed after COVID. He sits within the same virus-hunting culture, the same pandemic preparedness mindset, and the same scientific establishment that insisted that dangerous pathogens must be collected, transported, manipulated, and studied to “protect humanity.”
The problem is not Bernard Moss. The problem is not Vincent Munster. The problem is not Peter Daszak. The problem is not even Anthony Fauci.
The problem is the worldview that produced all of them.
It is the belief that collecting more pathogens, manipulating more pathogens, sequencing more pathogens, and experimenting with more pathogens will somehow make society safer. It is the belief that scientists should be trusted to regulate themselves. It is the belief that public skepticism represents ignorance rather than wisdom born from experience.
That worldview gave us EcoHealth Alliance. It gave us the Wuhan collaborations. It gave us DEFUSE. It gave us COVID. It gave us years of congressional investigations revealing missing records, withheld information, reporting violations, and institutional obstruction. It gave us the mpox gain-of-function controversy. And now the government is finally responding. There are criminal charges involving one of the federal government’s leading virus hunters.
To be clear, Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
But that is not the point.
The issue is trust.
The entire gain-of-function enterprise depends on trust. The public does not have access to the laboratories. Citizens cannot inspect the facilities. Taxpayers do not sit on the review committees. Americans are asked to trust that the experts are following the rules.
After Wuhan, after EcoHealth Alliance, after DEFUSE, after the mpox gain-of-function controversy, and now after the allegations against Munster and Kwe, that trust has been squandered.
The burden of proof has shifted.
It is no longer the responsibility of citizens to prove that gain-of-function research and overseas pathogen collection programs are dangerous.
It was the responsibility of NIAID, NIH, and the biodefense establishment to prove that these activities are necessary, transparent, enforceable, and safe. They failed.
The federal government should permanently prohibit taxpayer funding for gain-of-function research, whether conducted domestically or outsourced overseas. International pathogen collection programs that place Americans at risk should be terminated. Independent oversight must replace institutional self-policing. Every grant, every collaboration, and every pathogen enhancement experiment should be publicly disclosed.
The lesson of the past decade is painfully clear.
That philosophy has now produced the worst pandemic in a century, years of congressional investigations, the collapse of public trust in public health institutions, and now criminal charges involving one of its own practitioners.
The issue is no longer whether the system failed.
The issue is whether the people who built it will continue to run it.
For the first time since COVID, there are signs that the answer may be no.
According to a statement provided by NIH to Malone News, agency leadership was notified of the Detroit airport incident in January 2026 and immediately activated emergency protocols. NIH secured the relevant laboratory spaces, restricted access, conducted a comprehensive audit and inventory of biological materials, verified compliance with biosafety requirements, and took personnel actions. The agency further stated that it took all necessary steps to ensure there was no risk to staff or the surrounding community.
That response stands in sharp contrast to what Americans witnessed during the COVID era.
For years, critics of gain-of-function research, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Wuhan collaborations encountered resistance, delay, denial, and institutional self-protection. Questions were treated as threats. Oversight was treated as an inconvenience. The public was expected to trust that the experts would police themselves.
The Munster case suggests that era may finally be ending.
Whether by necessity or by choice, NIH leadership is now doing something that should have happened years ago: treating biosafety failures as oversight failures rather than public-relations problems.
The significance of the Munster case is therefore larger than one scientist, one laboratory, or one shipment of undeclared samples.
It marks a turning point.
The scientific establishment that built the virus-hunting enterprise is being forced to answer questions it long avoided. The assumptions that justified gain-of-function research are being challenged. The institutions that once operated with minimal public scrutiny are facing unprecedented oversight.
Whether this becomes a genuine reform movement remains to be seen.
But for the first time since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, there is evidence that the people now running NIH understand what their predecessors refused to acknowledge:
Trust is not granted by credentials.
It is earned through transparency, accountability, respect for rules and boundaries, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.
The virus hunters have had their chance.
Now comes the reckoning.
“In January 2026, NIH leadership were made aware of the incident at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport involving NIH staff members. Upon notification, NIH leadership immediately activated established agency protocols to safeguard related laboratory facilities, research materials, and biological samples. These actions included securing relevant laboratory spaces, restricting access to affected areas, and conducting a comprehensive audit and inventory assessment to verify that all materials were appropriately accounted for, documented, and maintained in accordance with all relevant biosafety policies, requirements, and procedures. NIH also took appropriate personnel actions and took all relevant steps to confirm that there was no risk at any time to the staff or public in or around the RML facility.
This matter is currently under investigation, and NIH is cooperating fully with law enforcement and appropriate authorities. Because this is an ongoing investigation and personnel matter, we are limited in what additional information we can provide at this time.
NIH is committed to maintaining the highest standards of biosafety, biosecurity, and stewardship of research materials. NIH leadership continues to prioritize biosafety across the agency and to promote a strong culture of accountability, compliance, and responsible scientific research throughout the biomedical research enterprise.”
-NIH statement to Malone News
References
Primary Sources
U.S. Department of Justice. Feds Charge Foreign Nationals Working at National Institutes of Health with Smuggling Monkeypox into the United States.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/feds-charge-foreign-nationals-working-national-institutes-health-smuggling-monkeypoxMajor Joseph Murphy Memorandum to the DARPA Inspector General regarding EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal and SARS-CoV-2 origins (2021).
https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/2mVob3c1aDd8CNvVnyei6n/95af7dbfd2958d4c2b8494048b4889b5/JAG_Docs_pt1_Og_WATERMARK_OVER_Redacted.pdfNIH Intramural Research Program. Vincent J. Munster, PhD.
https://irp.nih.gov/pi/vincent-munsterNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Vincent J. Munster, PhD.
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vincent-j-munster-phd
Congressional Investigations and Government Reports
Senator Rand Paul. Letter to NIH Regarding DEFUSE Proposal and Federal Agency Knowledge of Risky Coronavirus Research (April 9, 2024).
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024.04.09_SRP-letter-to-NIH.pdfSenator Rand Paul. Press Release: Dr. Paul Sends Letters to Fifteen Federal Agencies After Discovering Their Knowledge of Risky DEFUSE Project.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/reps/dr-paul-sends-letters-to-fifteen-federal-agencies-after-discovering-their-knowledge-of-risky-defuse-project/U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Interim Staff Report on NIH Misconduct and Inadequate Oversight Involving Taxpayer-Funded Risky Mpox Research.
https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/e-and-c-republicans-release-interim-staff-report-on-nih-misconduct-and-inadequate-oversight-involving-taxpayer-funded-risky-mpxv-research-that-jeopardizes-public-health-securityU.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SSCP-FINAL-REPORT.pdfU.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. Mpox Memo Report.
https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/Mpox_Memo_Rpt_correction_18e95e3204.pdf
Scientific and Background Sources
Munster VJ, Yinda CK, et al. Mpox outbreak investigations and genomic surveillance studies in the Republic of Congo.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39426387/Yinda CK, Munster VJ, et al. Introduction of Clade Ib Mpox Virus into the Republic of the Congo.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2504089CDC. Environmental Stability of Monkeypox Virus.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/29/10/23-0824_articleNIH Catalyst. An Old Virus Gets New Attention: Bernard Moss and Mpox Research.
https://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/30/6/an-old-virus-gets-new-attentionVanity Fair. The Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy
Recommended Additional Reading
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen Research Oversight.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105455White House. Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research (Executive Order).
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-of-biological-research/NIH Notice. Framework for Oversight of Certain Categories of Life Sciences Research.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-127.html
The penalty isn’t high enough for those who break the rules regarding gain of function. Make it life in prison and it may stop these mad scientists. I sure would love to be queen for a day. Off with their heads!
Thank you so much for this outstanding review.
As a member of the impacted public, I am cheered that hubris has led to current review and potential action.
I still have question that US gof studies will reliably lead to pathogens that will correspond to those that will be developing naturally or in adversaries labs.
Developing a pathogen and coming up with a vaccine that will prevent it from infecting populations no doubt can be stimulating and potentially financially rewarding.
Within a moral and responsible nation, imo that doesn't make this all right or tolerable.
Perhaps one of the valuable insights that have developed from all this is - we the people can not trust and leave the course of events to experts or the managent classes.
Effective, trustworthy oversight has become vital! Thank you so much for taking on the role you are playing in seeing that needed change will happen!