Hamilton, MontanaKFF Health News —
The Trump administration has stepped up arrests and public condemnation of federal scientists studying viruses as the world faces one of its worst Ebola epidemics.
In June, Vincent Munster, an infectious disease researcher at the National Institutes of Health, was charged with bringing biological specimens into the U.S. without proper documents. Weeks later, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) ordered Munster’s former boss Anthony Fauci to appear before a Senate committee, alleging that he’d lied to Congress about the covid-19 pandemic’s origins. This spring, the FBI detained a former aide to Fauci, and federal officials banned a virus researcher in North Carolina from receiving federal funding.
In each case, senior U.S. officials and members of Congress have leaned into unproven theories that arrogant scientists damaged rather than protected public health by recklessly experimenting with covid and other killer viruses, including in China.
Conservative groups and social influencers have amplified that view through a whirlwind of covid conspiracy theories, bioterrorism fearmongering, and anti-immigration sentiment. The recent charges stirred long-held mistrust of the high-security Rocky Mountain Laboratories, where Munster works, among residents of this blue-collar mountain town in Montana built on logging.
