[Just The News] Feds confirm a researcher's potential exposure to "Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever through an accidental breach of personal protective equipment." NIH director under pressure from lawmakers to "stop this batty research."Two days before the Environmental Protection Agency was scheduled to further distinguish the Trump administration from its predecessor by phasing out animal testing over criticisms of pointless cruelty, biosafety risks and obfuscation, an anti-testing watchdog exposed another possible leak from a federal research lab on U.S. soil.
This one happened on the current administration's watch, however, months after local media reported National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya toured the Rocky Mountain Laboratories "to demonstrate NIH executive level commitment to RML" amid community fears it would get hit by Department of Government Efficiency cuts.
The watchdog group White Coat Waste Project (WCW) on Tuesday published the minutes from the NIH Institutional Biosafety Committee's Nov. 20, 2025 meeting at RML in Hamilton, Mont., which has a two-year-old "vivarium" that NIH said would expand study of "exotic species (such as bats)." The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases runs it.
Funded with $125 million in COVID relief money, RML's vivarium drew concern from Sens. Joni Ernst and Eric Schmitt before its completion.
The Iowa and Missouri Republicans asked then-NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli for more information about RML's "potentially risky research," since then-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci added a BSL-4 lab that can study "deadly pathogens with pandemic potential," and how Congress and the public will learn of RML's research with "select agents."
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NIH: 2026-01-05 INVESTIGATION: Stanford Earth Sciences Chair Collaborates with China's Nuclear Program​​
NIH: 2026-01-23 Feds Will No Longer Use Your Tax Dollars To Do Experiments On Aborted Babies' Bodies
NIH: 2026-01-15 US House REJECTS measure to take away staff funding from rogue Judge James BOASBERG, 163-257
NIH: 2026-01-05 INVESTIGATION: Stanford Earth Sciences Chair Collaborates with China's Nuclear Program​​
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