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A recent virus-smuggling case involving a National Institutes of Health (NIH) researcher has renewed questions about oversight in biomedical research, with investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker arguing that some scientists believe they are above scrutiny.
Speaking on “The Kim Iversen Show,” Thacker said the allegations against Vincent Munster, Ph.D., reflect a pattern of scientific arrogance that has surfaced in controversies involving gain-of-function research, COVID-19 origins and government transparency.
“The main thing that we see is that there was this obvious … coalition of lies that happened,” Thacker said. “More and more evidence of these lies keeps coming … to the fore.”
Munster, a Dutch citizen who leads the Virus Ecology Section at the NIH Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, and research fellow Claude Kwe Yinda, Ph.D., were charged June 2 with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the U.S. and making false statements to investigators.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, the men were stopped at a Detroit airport in January carrying coolers containing deactivated monkeypox virus, chickenpox virus and human DNA.
The complaint alleges that Munster “adamantly denied” carrying biological samples and claimed any required documentation was on his laptop. Authorities said he failed to produce the documents.
According to an FBI affidavit, Munster also told investigators, “I do this all the time.”
For Thacker, that statement speaks volumes. “I think what happened … is this is how he was always doing things,” Thacker said.
‘It’s about a culture that treats dangerous pathogens as a playground’
Munster is one of many researchers who travel the world collecting viruses, Thacker said. Over time, some begin to view regulations and oversight as obstacles rather than safeguards.
Thacker described a mindset in which scientists believe they can simply “grab something and bring it back” without worrying about paperwork because they are the experts.
“This is the kind of attitude these people have,” Thacker said. “They see themselves as above it all because they have a Ph.D. and they are the scientists … they have the answers for American society, and we’ve got to shut up and listen.”
That attitude extends well beyond one researcher, he said.
“There’s a bit of a master of the universe … ego thing going on here,” Thacker said. “There’s an arrogance there. It’s, ‘we are the smart people. … You’re stupid. Shut up.’”
The problem is compounded by a lack of meaningful oversight, according to Thacker. “We don’t really spend enough time, I think, looking into what these researchers do,” he said.
Iversen agreed, arguing that the issue is about more than budgets or grant funding.
“It’s about a culture that treats dangerous pathogens as a playground while the public is expected to simply trust that everything is under control,” she said.
‘Anyone who knows science knows that that’s a misdirection’
According to Thacker, controversies such as the Munster case reveal how difficult it can be for the public to scrutinize scientific research. That lack of transparency also played a role in debates over COVID-19’s origins, he said.
Thacker pointed to Project DEFUSE, a controversial 2018 grant proposal involving bat coronavirus research linked to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The proposal has drawn scrutiny because some of its planned experiments — including inserting genetic features to see how they would function in human cells — closely resemble the biological makeup later seen in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“When you look at the details of this grant, what they look like they were doing from parts of it was creating a virus just like SARS-CoV-2, just like the COVID virus,” Thacker said.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ultimately declined to fund the proposal, citing concerns that it could create potentially dangerous pathogens.
However, “about a year after these people submit a grant saying we want to create this particular type of virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, surprise, this type of virus ends up in Wuhan,” Thacker said.
Researchers linked to the proposal have argued that the work could not have contributed to SARS-CoV-2 because DARPA never funded the project. Thacker disputed that reasoning, saying scientists frequently complete substantial research before formally submitting grant applications.
“Anyone who knows science knows that that’s a misdirection because before you actually submit a grant, you’ve already done a lot of the research,” he said.
Officials relied on ‘serious misdirection’ to deceive public about COVID origins
Thacker also criticized how public officials shaped the debate over COVID-19’s origins, arguing that key figures targeted China while downplaying questions about U.S.-backed coronavirus research.
“There was a serious misdirection” by people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, former NIH Director Francis Collins and various U.S. senators who kept steering the public toward China, Thacker said. “Remember the whole, ‘let’s look at China’s books’? No, let’s look at Americans’ books.”
Iversen cited comments by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has led congressional investigations into COVID-19’s origins.
“Six out of seven of the scientists that were experts in this field all said it came from the lab,” Paul said in a clip, referring to early discussions about whether the virus may have emerged from a laboratory. “Anthony Fauci comes in and says no.”
Paul argued that the controversy over the virus’s origins did not begin as a coordinated scheme so much as a “convergence of interests” among officials and researchers who were “covering their tracks.”
“It was a serious mistake in judgment — maybe one of the worst mistakes in judgment of the last century — to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan,” Paul said.
“They fund it. Now this virus takes off. So what do they do for the next several years? Even people who didn’t know each other, they’re all doing the same thing: ‘We don’t want anything to link us to funding this.’”
Fauci walked into a CIA briefing in 2020 and overrode six out of seven scientists who said COVID came from a Wuhan lab. This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a convergence of interests. They funded gain-of-function research. The virus leaked. So they covered their tracks. @MattKibbe pic.twitter.com/NCLKyTf5UG
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 20, 2026
Paul echoed Thacker’s argument that officials engaged in a “serious misdirection” by steering scrutiny toward China while minimizing questions about U.S.-backed coronavirus research.
“We created this technology,” Thacker said. “We did it. So, we can sit there and look at China all we want,” but doing so misses the larger question of how such research was funded and conducted in the first place.
‘This type of research, we pioneered it in America’
For Thacker, the concern extends beyond what happened in Wuhan.
Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released declassified documents showing the U.S. government has funded more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries. According to the documents, many of those facilities conduct research involving hazardous pathogens and, in some cases, gain-of-function experiments.
At the same time, the technology needed to manipulate viruses has become increasingly accessible, Thacker said.
“This research is now pretty cheap and it’s pretty well understood,” he said. “The scary thing” is that “it could be popping up in … pretty much any country.”
Iversen argued that some countries feel compelled to keep pace with one another in this space. “If we don’t do it, somebody else will because somebody else is,” she said. “You know, China’s doing it. All these other countries are doing it. So, we have to get on that bandwagon and do it, too.”
Thacker disputed that point. He noted that many of the techniques used today were developed in the U.S., particularly by University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., a leading expert in coronavirus engineering and gain-of-function research.
“The thing you have to understand, and I think this is a point that’s really important, this type of research, we pioneered it in America,” Thacker said.
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‘This is actually not virus research … this is an integrated system’
In his view, the debate is not really about a single scientist, a single laboratory or even a single virus.
“This is actually not virus research … this is an integrated system,” he said. “This is biodefense.”
Thacker noted that NIH is “the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet.” He pointed to the Wellcome Trust as another major source of funding for research connected to Wuhan.
Thacker also criticized the former director of Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., whom he accused of helping “to cover up” evidence supporting a lab origin early in the pandemic.
Farrar served as chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2023-2025. He’s now the WHO’s assistant director-general in the Division of Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Control.
It is a self-reinforcing cycle in which researchers collect viruses, manipulate them in laboratories and then help develop products intended to counter the same threats they created, according to Thacker.
“That’s how the system’s working,” he said. “We give grants and contracts to these researchers to go out and collect these viruses in different places, right? They bring them back to these labs, right? They start messing with them like, ‘Oh … what happens if I make this thing more dangerous?’ … Then they make it more dangerous.”
The result is “an entire money-making system that goes round and round and round and round and round,” he said.
Watch Thacker on ‘The Kim Iversen Show’ here:
Related articles in The Defender
- U.S. Funded Biolabs in 30+ Countries — Many Experimented With Highly Contagious Pathogens
- ‘Let That Sink In’: Feds Charge Two NIH Researchers With Smuggling Mpox Into U.S.
- Virologist Linked to Fauci Under FBI Investigation for Smuggling Dangerous Pathogens Into U.S.
- Virologist at Center of Coronavirus Research Loses NIH Grants, University Places Him on Leave
- Smoking Gun? Documents Suggest Fauci Knew COVID Was Created in Wuhan Lab, and mRNA Vaccines Wouldn’t Work
- WHO Promotes Farrar, Fauci Ally and Architect of COVID Mass Vaccination Policies
