The National Institutes of Health operates under a peculiar immunity from public scrutiny. Its facilities handle some of the world’s deadliest pathogens while operating behind walls of bureaucratic silence, and when things go catastrophically wrong, the default response is not disclosure but damage control. The latest revelations about Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, prove the point with damning clarity.
According to the White Coat Waste Project, the NIH quietly admitted in February that a deadly pathogen was “released, lost, or stolen” from the high-security facility. That unspecified declaration deserves scrutiny.
What pathogen? How long was it missing? Where was it when it went unaccounted for? These are not academic niceties. They are the questions that separate legitimate research oversight from institutional concealment.