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RFK Jr.'S HHS Orders Lab Studying Deadly Infectious Diseases to Stop Research
- naikrovek 1y ago[dead]
- timewizard 1y agoThe article title appears to be pure rage bait. Which from wired is not a surprise. That it actually induces rage on Hacker News is always a surprise to me.
- willcipriano 1y ago[flagged]
- astrodust 1y agoWhat in the actual hell is that site? Are we really moving into the stupidest timeline at mach 10? That page title is utterly absurd.
- cratermoon 1y agohttps://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/white-house-replaces-covid-gov-website-with-lab-leak-theory/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/white-house-replaces-covid...
- nitwit005 1y agoIf you assume all that is true, the people you'd want to fire would be in China.
- willcipriano 1y agoThe Wuhan Institute of Virology and it's gain of function work that made coronaviruses more infectious was funded by the NIH.
- bigyabai 1y agoSo... why exactly are we attacking NIH employees for the mistakes made by people living in Wuhan? A sufficiently nefarious interpretation of events might even implicate China regardless of how much America pays them. It already happened in Russia with Biopreparat during the Cold War, no reason it wouldn't happen again.
- willcipriano 1y agoThe Chinese can impose their own consequences, I'm not opposed to it. However, this is serious stuff, if accountability must be off the table we aren't ready as a civilization to mess with it. NIH did this under a "enhanced oversight" regime, the overseers need to be removed to start.
- bigyabai 1y agoThe Chinese will not punish Wuhan workers any more than Russia punished Sverdlovsk anthrax workers. And since you're not going to stop virology research by halting American capital, you're proposing a net-zero solution for America and a propaganda victory for the CCP. How can you assert that Covid v2 would be "stopped" by withholding American capital? Coronavirus isn't American IP, and even if it was, you won't use that to force accountability.
- jasonephraim 1y agoThe banner on that page immediately turned on my bullshit-o-meter. If you needed further proof: "There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19."
- nl 1y agoThe header image ("Lab <Image of Trump walking> Leak") makes it look like they are implying Trump leaked from a lab.
- CamperBob2 1y agoWhat part of "I love the poorly educated!" didn't make sense to you? (All of it? Well, yeah, can't argue with that.)
- duxup 1y agoI don’t think it’s entirely ideological. I suspect this is a form of government capture. Do you want the government to do anything, good, bad whatever? You gotta pay your bribe and the folks doing it will likely be cronies.
- giraffe_lady 1y agoI sincerely believe RFK's viewpoint is just straightforward old fashioned eugenics. He believes in "making america healthy" in that sense that if you die of something that's proof you weren't healthy.
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 1y agoCan you share why you believe that? I've seen him talk mainly about man made things (food dies, fast food, etc) so wouldn't have gotten to eugenics.
- op00to 1y agoHis statements on Autism?
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 1y agoWhich statements? As I see it he's talked about looking for environmental causes. This seems the opposite of genetic. Or do you see a different perspective?
- op00to 1y agoBased on your post history, it seems like you’re a bad faith poster. Even so, let’s assume you want to learn to overcome your clear lack of knowledge about this RFK Jr.’s statements on autism go beyond a generic interest in environmental causes. He has repeatedly promoted the thoroughly debunked theory that vaccines, especially those containing thimerosal, cause autism. This began with his 2005 Rolling Stone/Salon article Deadly Immunity, which was retracted due to factual inaccuracies. The CDC, WHO, and countless peer reviewed studies have confirmed no link between vaccines and autism. He also made a widely criticized comment during a January 2024 town hall, saying: “Kids with autism are never going to write a symphony, they’re never going to win the 100-yard dash at the Olympics, they’re never going to pay taxes.” (Source: People Magazine, April 2024) That kind of blanket characterization isn’t just false, it’s dehumanizing. Plenty of autistic individuals work, pay taxes, and thrive. I’d say a sizable minority of posters on HN are somewhere on the spectrum. His statements on autism are part of a pattern: RFK Jr. has pushed for a national autism registry and appointed controversial figures like David Geier, who has faced sanctions for unethical autism “treatments” and also pushed vaccine-autism claims. So it’s not just a different research focus, it’s a history of promoting discredited and harmful views while stigmatizing autistic people.
- pixl97 1y ago>What the hell are they thinking? Maybe you're not from the US, or maybe you are haven't been paying attention, but during the entire election the party that won told us this is exactly what they were going to do.
- sapphicsnail 1y agoI don't think most people realized they'd be gutting all medical/health research. It's also incredibly unpopular even among the right.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoThe most obvious explanation is that this was what Trump promised to RFK in order to get him to drop out of the race and endorse him. Anyone voting for Trump should have known it would mean RFK in power.
- sapphicsnail 1y agoI'm not too surprised but I can see how someone who gets most of their news from conservative or even main stream sources would be surprised at how far the Trump administration is going.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoI hope they remember this for local elections, and if we get another federal election
- giraffe_lady 1y ago> It's also incredibly unpopular even among the right. Where are you getting that impression? Sincerely curious, it seems to me most either don't offer an opinion or are in favor. Even in this comment section (or any other similar one on HN recently) you see people more or less saying this is a correct response to some covid conspiracy theory they're into. I would love for the right to turn on trump but I frankly haven't been seeing it, over this or any other issue.
- 1y ago
- tejohnso 1y agoAccording to the article: This decision follows identification and documentation of personnel issues involving contract staff that compromised the facility’s safety culture, prompting this research pause.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- snkzxbs 1y ago[flagged]
- sieabahlpark 1y ago[dead]
- bikenaga 1y agoSomeone submitted this link, but it got flagged for some reason: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-is-rooted-in-a-disbelief-in-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine... The author of the article, Beth Mole, has a PhD in microbiology and her writing is generally detailed and pretty good. I hope he doesn't really not believe in germ theory, but if that's the case, it explains a lot of the decisions he's making.
- timewizard 1y agoInterestingly China just recently called out Fort Detrick and it's research goals specifically in their COVID-19 origins response white paper over this previous incident: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick-biohazard.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick... Now from this article: > In an emailed statement provided to WIRED, Bradley Moss, communication director for the office of research services at NIH, confirmed the halt in research activity. “NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick. This decision follows identification and documentation of personnel issues involving contract staff that compromised the facility’s safety culture, prompting this research pause. During the stand-down, no research will be conducted, and access will be limited to essential personnel only, to safeguard the facility and its resources. So it's not clear that this is the result of HHS ordering NIH to do anything specific or that it will be permanent or related to planned job cuts in the future. This article seems to conflate two separate stories into one confused narrative.
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 1y ago"was told to stop all experimental work" - the word 'experimental' makes me wonder if the title may be hyperbolic. I don't infer from this story (article didn't feel right) that they will no longer be studying infectious diseases. Does anyone have more information on what the experimental work actually is? Or how it relates to the body of work carried out by NIAID.
- derbOac 1y ago“NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick. This decision follows identification and documentation of personnel issues involving contract staff that compromised the facility’s safety culture, prompting this research pause. During the stand-down, no research will be conducted, and access will be limited to essential personnel only, to safeguard the facility and its resources.” Moss did not elaborate on the nature of the personnel issues..." I'd be more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if their MO wasn't to make unspecified and/or undefended accusations about persons, as a way to avoid being accountable for their agenda.
- maxerickson 1y agoIt is our good fortune that we are not restricted to the headline. In an emailed statement provided to WIRED, Bradley Moss, communication director for the office of research services at NIH, confirmed the halt in research activity. “NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick.
- Calavar 1y agoResearch can broadly be divided into three categories: 1. Experimental research: Form a hypothesis. Create datapoints by some process: could be mixing chemicals in test tubes, giving patients enrolled in a study a medication, pointing a telescope at the sky, or going out to the Amazon to count bugs. Use those datapoints to confirm or refute the hypothesis. 2. Retrospective research: Form a hypothesis. Use data that already exists and is archived somewhere to confirm or refute the hypothesis. 3. Descriptive research: No hypothesis. Look at existing data and/or published research and comment on trends or the patterns that exist therein. "Experimental" covers everything and anything you would do in a wet lab. You don't need a wet lab to do research of types 2 or 3 - you can do that in an office or at home. That said, I don't believe we have any confirmation that they used the word experimental in the actual order.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neilv 1y agoIt's not clear to me that this story falls into the category of corrupt/insane/petty that a lot of recent actions seem to. I don't know about this particular lab, but when someone was trying to build a BSL-4 in a dense urban neighborhood of Boston, there were a lot of protests, including by medical workers and scientists. It seemed there's a history of BSL-4 incidents, and the facilities aren't as secure as the salespeople claim. So, it's conceivable that the stand-down is warranted. If so, a different question is whether safety is the goal, or it's merely a convenient pretext for some other goal.
- OutOfHere 1y agohttps://archive.ph/Ei6vN https://archive.ph/Ei6vN