Researcher at Russian plague laboratory dies of ‘unknown’ infection

[u/hoosakiwi]

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/04/europe/russia-laboratory-plague-accident-intl

[u/cardinarium]

My dad (in the US) used to work in a lab that experimented with smallpox. He didn’t do it himself—he was in bioinformatics. But they brought it out fairly regularly apparently.

[u/SandpaperTeddyBear → u/cardinarium]

When was “bioinformatics” intersecting with Smallpox research.

We barely had Sanger sequencing when smallpox was eradicated. As in, a few months overlap.

[u/DynTraitObj → u/SandpaperTeddyBear]

There's still labs that study it. There's at least 1 in USA and 1 in Russia that are still poking at it, so presumably that guy's dad worked in one of those.