r/HermanCainAward • u/John3262005 • 9d ago
Meta / Other Russian Lab at Centre of Plague Scare Linked to Nearly $800K in US Research Funding Under RFK Jr.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-university-russian-institute-federal-funding-plague-scare-1824508A US university study run in partnership with a Russian institute tied to the laboratory at the centre of a suspected plague scare has drawn nearly $800,000 (around £588,600) in federal funding under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an animal-testing campaign group says.
The most recent payment, part of a National Institutes of Health grant, cleared in September 2026, the same month a technician at the Siberian lab was hospitalised. She died on 2 October.
The grant went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for research carried out with Russia's state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk. That institute has separately worked on plague research with the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, the state-run plague research institute where the current scare began, according to the records. The money went to the US university, not to either Russian institute.
The figures come from the White Coat Waste Project, a group that campaigns against taxpayer-funded animal testing. Federal spending records it obtained show the Illinois team received $389,943 (about £294,400) in July 2025 and a further $389,746 (about £294,200) in September 2026.
The research itself has nothing to do with plague. It studies social behaviour in foxes bred at a Siberian fur farm, work that drew the group's notice because the animals are killed and their brain tissue shipped to Illinois for analysis.
The foxes come from a long-running Siberian breeding programme and are put down by overdose before the tissue is sent to the United States, the group said.
Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk institute, was hospitalised on 29 September and died on 2 October. Local reporting, unconfirmed by Russian authorities, said she had broken a test tube holding live bacteria days earlier. Some accounts point to pneumonic plague, the most severe form of the disease, caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium and often fatal within days without treatment.
Russian officials reject the plague theory. The health regulator Rospotrebnadzor said Shipilova died of pneumonia of unknown cause and that its investigation found no incidents involving the handling of dangerous pathogens at the institute.
Testing of her contacts, covering about 60 percent of those identified, turned up two Covid-19 cases and two rhinovirus infections, but no plague, officials said. The institute's regional branch also dismissed reports of a stepped-up sanitary regime as fake. The hospital where she was treated was closed for quarantine, and roughly 200 contacts were placed under observation.
US officials are tracking the case. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the White House was 'watching and monitoring' the situation, and the State Department said it was following the case with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization, for its part, relayed the Russian account that the illness had first looked like a common respiratory viral infection and that no plague case had been recorded in Irkutsk, and said it was still waiting for confirmation of the pathogen that killed her.
The group argues the money should not have kept flowing. It points to White House guidance issued in 2022, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that called on agencies to 'wind down institutional, administrative, funding, and personnel relationships and research collaborations' with Russian government bodies. The Illinois grant has paid out twice since, most recently in September 2026, according to its figures.
Kennedy has not been shown to have personally approved the award, which the NIH issues as an agency within his department. The Daily Mail said it had asked the NIH and the department for comment.
For now, the cause of Shipilova's death remains officially unconfirmed, with Russian authorities and the WHO still waiting on final laboratory results.
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u/nkilian 9d ago
Every single person saying fauci was the devil because some conspiracy theory on him providing funding for gain of function right now
crickets
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u/TrixterBlue 8d ago
Fauci was the only person in that administration I trusted. And he was the only one with the balls to contradict Trump in public. Poor man is still paying for having integrity and he was what kept my family sane.
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u/Jay-Dee-British Schrödinger's Prayer warrior 9d ago
I knew it - he's for sure one of the four horsemen.
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u/VengenaceIsMyName Covid: Making tight statewide races bluer since 2021 🗽 8d ago
Pestilence! Fits the image like a glove.
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u/redditmodsRrussians rest in apple flavors 8d ago
RFK Jr is literally a barely sentient leather glove
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u/mrbobcyndaquil 9d ago
And you just came to that conclusion now?
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u/Jay-Dee-British Schrödinger's Prayer warrior 9d ago
No I suspected it before, even though I've never seen his horse, but now I 'know' :)
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u/GonzoTheGreat22 Calling All Prayer Warriors 8d ago
You haven’t? Shes pretty famous…
(Yes I’m calling Cheryl Hines a horse face. No I’m not sorry).
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u/adamiconography Team Pfizer 9d ago
Fauci should release a statement on this just to ignite the fire and cause MAGA to tailspin
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u/BethMD Two 🚢s & a 🚁 9d ago
a group that campaigns against taxpayer-funded animal testing.
You know what I'd campaign against? My tax dollars going to any Russian entity. SMDH
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u/tartymae Go Give One 9d ago
Same here. Because we know exactly where they will unleash that disease.
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u/Hexaoct 8d ago
They'll unleash the foxes on us?
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u/4tran13 8d ago
They were bred to be friendly, so more likely to drown in floof than to get bitten. Maybe both.
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u/bobbianrs880 Team Mix & Match 7d ago
My husband and I had a class with who I think the research funds went to. Her office is covered with fox trinkets and fox themed stuff, it’s a complete mismatch to how she comes off “professionally”.
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u/osmosisheart 8d ago
You get plague by just petting the cute little thing, man. Might be even more effective lol
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u/Badabingbadabing11 7d ago
This is a pneumonic plague not bubonic. It’s airborne.
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u/osmosisheart 7d ago
Surely both get transferred from getting too close?
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u/Badabingbadabing11 7d ago
No. Bubonic gets transferred from animal bites or from fleas. It’s blood borne, it is not air borne.
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u/PermissionSoggy891 8d ago
but then how will Putin grow his CP collection that he sometimes shares with Trump?
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u/FullFrontal687 9d ago
Don't worry. - Rand Paul is on the case! /s
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u/mangotrees777 Team Pfizer 8d ago
Soon as he's done fist fighting his neighbor over lawn clippings.
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u/AfterYam9164 9d ago
GAIN OF FUNCTION!!! GAIN OF FUNCTION!!! DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT MEANS BUT I'M MAGA AND MAD AS HELL AND IF SOMEBODY SAYS "FAUCI GAIN OF FUNCTION" THEN I SUDDNLY IM AN EXPERT AT SCIENCE EVEN THOUGH I DON'T BELIEVE THE EARTH IS OLDER THAN 6,000 YEARS
GAIN OF FUNCTIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!
(passes out due to lung capacity from multiple COVID infections)
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u/duxpdx 9d ago
Is RFK Jr. funding a Russian Lab using US tax payer money to develop bioweapons to be used to kill Americans?
Based on my “research” the answer appears to be: yes.
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u/JustASimpleManFett 8d ago
Somewhere his uncle, his dad, Nixon, and Reagan are all like "WTF?"
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u/Rulmeq 8d ago
I mean Nixon is probably looking at tr*mp and going "I could have just kept fucking lying about everything and gotten away with it!"
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u/JustASimpleManFett 8d ago
No, I mean Nixon didn't like the Russians.
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u/Rulmeq 8d ago
Yeah, it's just an aside, because he almost got impeached over his lies (before being allowed to resign)
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u/JustASimpleManFett 8d ago
That was then, this is now. Now Trump just makes sure everyone has to suck his mushroom, but they're starting to get sick of the taste.
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u/Otherwise-Green3067 8d ago
Ha… ha ha … ha ha ha
I fucking hate these people…. Every last fucking one of them. Fuck them.
They are still blaming Fauci for gain of function conspiracies when THIS is what they are doing …
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u/DoggoCentipede 8d ago
Eh. Aside from the fact it's in Russia and the whole Ukraine thing, this is probably not going to end up being a big deal. Wait and see, I suppose.
The hypocrisy is a whole other story.
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u/madmoomix 8d ago
The domesticated fox lab! I didn't know there was US research on them. Neat!
This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the plague institute, though. The US institution getting the money is working with a different institution in Russia. The link is extremely tenuous, and I don't want to see fox funding stopped over the media getting something wrong.
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u/blackmobius 9d ago
So, literally exactly what they accused Fauci and China of doing. Step for step.