The pandemic brought to light the risky research methods that the government had financed for years despite opposition. And yet, the US government is creating a deadly hybrid monkeypox strain.
In order to conduct extremely contentious research on mice, a government lab in Maryland intends to make the prevalent monkeypox strain more deadly.
The researchers hope to inject genes from another strain that produces severe illness into the dominant clade, which usually induces a rash and flu-like symptoms.
They believe that the trial will disclose how different genes make monkeypox more lethal, paving the way for the creation of better human medicines and vaccines.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a research division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is funding the most recent monkeypox study.
However, Dr. Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, claims that if the altered virus mistakenly leaks, it ...