A federally run experiment funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation deliberately infected 80 American adults with a lab-grown pandemic influenza virus at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Data from 74 of those infected were analyzed, and 53 of them (72% of analyzed participants, or at least 66% of all infected participants) were confirmed to be shedding the pathogen, meaning they were actively contagious and could infect others.
We do not know whether six participants who were excluded from the study after being deliberately infected were shedding the virus or not.
Regardless, 53 of the individuals became contagious to others.
The human-infection experiment—officially published in Science Translational Medicine (Aug. 2025) under the title “Nasal and systemic immune responses correlate with viral shedding after influenza challenge in people with complex preexisting immunity”—was conducted entirely under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The original HHS manuscript can be found here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12375958/pdf/nihms-2097372.pdf
Lab-Made Pandemic Virus Used to Infect Humans
According to the paper, participants were “challenged with 107 half-maximal tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50) of a 2009 pandemic H1N1 strain, A/Bethesda/MM2/H1N1.”
That purported virus was not naturally circulating.
It was a lab-engineered clone of the 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus, manufactured by NIH scientists in Bethesda and maintained as a standardized “human challenge” stock.
The virus name itself—A/Bethesda/MM2/H1N1—identifies it as an NIH-made strain.
The “Bethesda” designation marks its laboratory origin at NIH’s Maryland facility, and “MM2” denotes the second master-mix batch of the cloned challenge stock.
80 Individuals Deliberately Infected Under HHS Oversight
The study describes the deliberate exposure of 80 adults to this laboratory-made pandemic influenza strain in 2019.
“The challenge study (clinicaltrials.gov NCT01971255) was performed at the NIH Clinical Center between April and October 2019,” the study reads.
Interestingly, that means the 80 human participants were intentionally infected with the NIH-made H1N1 influenza virus roughly five to six months before COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China (December 2019).
So, while the study was published in Science Translational Medicine in August 2025, the actual human infections occurred in mid-2019.
Half of those deliberately infected had been vaccinated roughly two months earlier with a commercial quadrivalent influenza vaccine; the other half had not.
“All 80 participants were brought into the NIH Clinical Center as mixed cohorts and challenged with 107 TCID50 of influenza A/Bethesda/MM2/H1N1 virus … and assessed daily for a minimum of 9 days.”
Although only 74 participants were ultimately included in the analysis (after six were excluded), every one of them was intentionally inoculated with a live, replication-competent pandemic virus.
The experiment was run on U.S. federal property by U.S. government scientists.
It was approved by the NIAID Institutional Review Board (IRB No. 19-I-0058), making it an officially sanctioned HHS human-infection study.
The human infection experiment was carried out under a multi-million U.S. taxpayer dollar project titled “Universal Influenza Vaccine Development” (project number 1ZIAAI001372), led by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger.
Dr. Taubenberger—listed as an author on the study—is the current NIAID Director, taking over Anthony Fauci’s spot.
Taubenberger holds a patent for the carcinogenic BPL technology at the center of the Trump administration’s new ’Generation Gold Standard’ influenza bird flu pandemic vaccine platform.
His agency is also directing U.S. tax dollars to fund the creation of never-before-seen “Frankenstein” bird flu viruses.
Confirmed 72% of Analyzed Participants—& at Least 66% of All Infected—Became Infectious
A total of 80 volunteers were deliberately infected with the NIH-made influenza virus, but data from only 74 participants were included in the final published analysis.
Among those 74 analyzed participants, 53 were confirmed to actively shed virus, meaning they were contagious.
Because the six excluded individuals were not evaluated for viral shedding, the true number of infectious participants could be higher, but only 53 are confirmed in the published dataset.
That equates to 72% of the analyzed group and at least 66% of everyone infected becoming contagious, some for several days.
Shedding was tracked by daily nasal swabs using the BioFire Respiratory Pathogen Panel and qRT-PCR testing for the influenza M gene.
Participants were considered “shedding” when viral RNA was detected in nasal-wash samples.
“[P]articipants shedding virus for two or more days showed higher early viral loads and exhibited stronger induction of antiviral responses compared with participants who shed virus for one day.”
The highest viral loads appeared in multiday shedders on days 1–3 post-infection, coinciding with the most severe flu-like symptoms, as measured by NIH’s FluPro symptom scoring system.
Vaccination Failed to Prevent Infection or Shedding
Vaccination did not prevent infection.
The paper admits that “vaccinated shedders” displayed increased T-cell activity and inflammatory markers, including CD8A, PD-L1, IFN-?, IL-6, and TNF-ß, compared to unvaccinated shedders—indicating that vaccination did not stop infection but instead triggered a hyper-inflammatory immune response.
Females were three times more likely to clear the infection after only one day of shedding, while males were more likely to shed virus for multiple days.
Funding: NIAID, DARPA, and Gates Foundation
The study lists its financial backers as:
NIAID Intramural Research Program (grants AI000986-12 and AI001157-07)
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), contract HR0011831160
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, grant OPP1178956
That combination of government and private funders represents the same triad—HHS, the Pentagon, and the Gates Foundation—responsible for many dual-use biological and “pandemic preparedness” programs that blur the line between public health and bio-defense research.
Containment & Biosafety Measures Not Disclosed
Remarkably, the 2025 Science Translational Medicine paper and HHS manuscript provide no description whatsoever of biosafety precautions—no mention of negative-pressure rooms, isolation conditions, or post-infection quarantine protocols to prevent secondary transmission.
Readers of the study are unable to verify how the government prevented infected subjects from spreading the lab-made virus to others, raising national security concerns.
It further raises grave informed-consent concerns, as individuals who interacted with these infected volunteers beyond the study setting were never informed that they might be exposed to an NIH-made pandemic influenza virus.
Given that 72 percent of participants were confirmed viral shedders, this omission raises serious biosafety and public-transmission concerns.
Conducted Entirely Under HHS Authority
The trial was hosted, funded, staffed, and overseen by HHS agencies from start to finish:
Conducted at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland
Run by the NIAID Laboratory of Infectious Diseases
Reviewed by an HHS Institutional Review Board
Carried out under HHS Good Clinical Practice guidelines
In short, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services infected 74 American adults with a lab-grown pandemic influenza virus to study viral shedding and immune-system responses—while omitting basic transparency about containment.
The nation’s top health agency is infecting Americans with pandemic-grade pathogens.
Bottom Line
The federally directed experiment—funded by NIAID, DARPA, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—was a live human-infection challenge using a lab-engineered influenza strain created by NIH scientists in Bethesda.
Eighty adults were deliberately infected with the laboratory-made pandemic H1N1 virus; data from 74 were analyzed, and 53 of them (72 % of those analyzed, or at least 66 % of everyone infected) were confirmed to be shedding the pathogen—actively contagious and capable of transmitting it to others.
The six excluded participants were also infected, but the government provided no data indicating whether they shed virus, leaving the full extent of contagiousness unknown.
No description was provided for biosafety controls, isolation conditions, or post-infection release criteria, meaning the public record offers no verification of how HHS prevented the spread of its own lab-created virus beyond the NIH facility.
This omission raises not only national-security concerns but also informed-consent violations, since people who may have interacted with participants outside the study were never notified of possible exposure to an NIH-made pathogen.
Although the paper frames the experiment as advancing “next-generation vaccine development,” its findings instead showed that vaccination failed to prevent infection or viral shedding and appeared to trigger immune hyperactivation in vaccinated participants.
The newly published HHS study therefore stands as a rare, fully documented example of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services deliberately infecting American citizens with a laboratory-grown pandemic-grade virus—underwritten by HHS, DARPA, and the Gates Foundation, with no transparent account of how the resulting contagion was contained.
Finish reading: https://open.substack.com/pub/jonfleetwood/p/niaid-darpa-bill-gates-intentionally
