Russian Plague Lab Reportedly Received Funding From RFK Jr.’s HHS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly permitted more than $800,000 in taxpayer funding for a research project linked to the Siberian laboratory at the center of reports about a possible Russian plague outbreak.

The reported death last week of a worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute sparked international concern. At least one additional death has since been reported, drawing renewed attention to the Siberian facility.

In 2025 and 2026, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign partnered with Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics. That institute has previously worked with the Irkutsk facility, which is now facing scrutiny.

White Coat Waste, a bipartisan government watchdog that primarily campaigns against animal testing, reported that the National Institutes of Health granted nearly $800,000 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025 and 2026. Kennedy oversees the NIH through the Department of Health and Human Services.

The university received $389,943 from the NIH in July 2025, followed by another $389,746 in September 2026. The project examined social behavior in foxes raised at a breeding facility in Siberia.

White Coat Waste said the project came to its attention because the animals are killed before samples are sent to the university for additional analysis.

The watchdog argued that Kennedy should not have funded the work, citing a 2022 directive from President Biden that called for an end to US funding of animal testing in Russia following the start of the war in Ukraine.

The Daily Mail has contacted the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.

Alarm spread last week after Darya Shipilova, 28, a laboratory worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, reportedly told medical staff that she had accidentally broken a test tube containing live bacteria.

Russian officials said Shipilova died from “unidentified pneumonia.” They also reported evidence that some of her colleagues had COVID-19 and the common cold.

However, reports have claimed she contracted pneumonic plague, a disease caused by the bacterium associated with the “Black Death,” which killed millions of people in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Hundreds of people who had contact with Shipilova, along with five hospitals including a maternity unit, were placed under quarantine. She was hospitalized and died from the infection on October 2.

Local media have since reported that a second person died from plague in the Irkutsk region.

Meanwhile, reports about the first suspected plague case have reportedly vanished from Russian media outlets, including a report published by Moscow’s Channel 5 broadcaster.

The independent Russian outlet The Insider reported on October 2 that federal television channel REN TV had also removed all five of its reports about plague in the Irkutsk region.

Countries bordering Russia, including Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, have nonetheless tightened health controls at their borders in response to the situation.

The plague is a serious infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that can cause swollen lymph nodes, particularly at the groin, armpit and neck, coughing up blood and bleeding under the skin.

Pneumonic plague is among the most severe forms of the disease that leaves patients bedridden within 24 hours after it attacks the lungs, causing them to fill with fluid and leaving someone struggling to breathe.

It is nearly always fatal unless someone is treated with antibiotics shortly after they have been infected. 

Anyone can catch the plague, scientists say, which is a severe infection for all age groups.

It can spread from person-to-person if an infected person coughs or sneezes, expelling tiny droplets containing the bacteria, which can then be breathed in by another person, causing an infection. 

The plague is endemic to Siberia, the location of the first known prehistoric human outbreak, as the bacterium that causes it is present among the small wild mammals in its vast wilderness and their fleas, which can also become infected and transmit the bacteria. 

Cases are occasionally reported in the region, although it is generally rare for Russians to fall ill. 

But in July, Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Diseases (NCZD) confirmed a human plague case in Khovd province in the western part of the country. The center warned that 17 out of 21 provinces in the country were classified as plague-risk areas.

In the US, the CDC says that about seven cases of the plague are recorded every year, mostly in northern New Mexico and Arizona. 

These are triggered because the bacteria that causes the disease is present in the small wild mammals in the region. 

More than 80 percent of human cases in the US are triggered when the fleas on these animals bite them, becoming infected, and then bite a human, passing on the bacteria.

Globally, there are about 1,000 to 2,000 plague cases every year.

Many of these are in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar, which records infections every year. 

It isn’t clear how many die from the disease, but with the bubonic plague, the most common type, caused by flea bites and which triggers swollen lymph nodes, about 30 to 60 percent of patients die if they are not treated early. 

A top official with the World Health Organization said Wednesday it doesn´t know how Shipilova died and she urged Russia to provide more information about a case that prompted global concerns about suspected pneumonic plague.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, said the UN health agency doesn´t know what the ‘causative agent’ was behind her October 2 death.