How smallpox samples ended up in a cold-storage room on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus where they were overlooked for more than four decades and who brought them there are still a mystery, according to findings released today from an independent blue ribbon committee tasked by the NIH with reviewing the incident and related oversight policies.
However, the review uncovered a set of problems that led up to the event, as well as recommendations to prevent lab samples from going off the oversight radar.