Two National Institutes of Health virologists have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to smuggle mpox samples into the United States, in a case that a dozen scientists interviewed by KFF Health News say has less to do with public danger than with the paperwork that governs how American laboratories study overseas outbreaks.
The samples were inactivated. The FBI's own testing confirmed it, and one of the charged researchers helped develop the inactivation technique. That detail sits at the center of why the prosecution has unsettled the infectious disease research community.
