Robert F Kennedy Jr allegedly allowed over $800,000 in taxpayer money to go to a research project with ties to the Siberian lab behind the possible Russian plague outbreak.

The death of a worker from the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute last week caused concern worldwide and is said to have killed at least one other person since and has many curious about the Siberian lab.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign conducted a partnership with Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics, which has worked in the past with the now under fire Irkutsk facility, in 2025 and 2026.

White Coat Waste, a bipartisan government watchdog that largely fights animal testing, reported that the National Institutes of Health – which Kennedy oversees as part of Health and Human Services – granted nearly $800,000 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025 and 2026 for their research.  

The university received $389,943 from NIH in July 2025 and another $389,746 in September 2026 for the research, which investigated social behavior using foxes that had been raised at a breeding facility in Siberia. 

It came to White Coat Waste’s attention because the researchers kill the animals before sending samples to the university for further analysis.  

The website claimed that Kennedy shouldn’t have been funding the research at all given a 2022 directive from President Biden to stop funding animal testing in Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine. 

An HHS spokesperson told The Daily Mail that White Coast Waste’s characterization of the funding is ‘misleading’ and made it clear that ‘HHS is not funding a Russian plague laboratory.’

Robert F Kennedy Jr allegedly allowed over $800,000 in taxpayer money to go to a research project with ties to the Siberian lab behind the possible Russian plague outbreak

The death of a worker from the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute (pictured) last week caused concern worldwide and is said to have killed at least one other person since and has many curious about the Siberian lab

‘NIH funds research conducted at a US-based laboratory in Chicago examining genomic and protein mechanisms associated with behavior to advance our understanding of psychiatric diseases,’ they added. 

‘NIH funding is directed exclusively to the U.S. laboratory and does not support the Russian laboratory. HHS takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard taxpayer dollars, protect research security, and ensure rigorous oversight of federally funded research.’

Panic broke out last week when Darya Shipilova, 28, a lab 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 have claimed Shipilova died from an ‘unidentified pneumonia,’ and noted that there has been evidence her colleagues had COVID and the common cold.  

But reports suggest she was infected with pneumonic plague caused by the ‘Black Death’ bacterium, which infamously killed millions in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Hundreds of people she came into contact with and five hospitals, including a maternity unit, were placed into quarantine. Shipilova was hospitalized and died from the infection on October 2. 

Local media has since claimed that a second person has died of the plague in the Irkutsk region. 

At the same time, Russian reports on the first plague case have been disappearing across national media, including one from Moscow’s Channel 5 broadcaster. 

Darya Shipilova, 28, a lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia died of the suspected plague on October 2

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign conducted a partnership Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics, which has worked in the past with the now under fire Irkutsk facility, in 2025 and 2026

Independent Russian outlet The Insider said on October 2 the federal television channel REN TV also deleted all five of its publications about the plague in the Irkutsk region.

Still, countries on the border of Russia, including Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are tightening border health controls over 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. 

President Donald Trump has said he will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin about a possible plague outbreak in the country

Russian officials have claimed Darya Shipilova, 28, died from an ‘unidentified pneumonia’

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.