No evidence for claims linking Doherty Institute to biological weapons labs

^{By Ellen McCutchan}

An Australian infectious diseases laboratory has been dragged into a conspiracy theory which alleges that US-owned labs in Ukraine producing biological weapons formed part of Russia’s motive for invading its neighbour.

According to a number of posts and videos shared online, a document released by the Russian military purportedly shows that the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne received human blood samples from a US-backed Ukrainian lab.

“What they’ve done is, from Ukraine, from this biological weapons research laboratory, they actually exported some very suspicious materials,” an Australian conspiracy theorist and supporter of Russia said in a video shared on Facebook.

RMIT FactLab found no evidence of US-backed biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine having provided samples to the Doherty Institute. Rather, blood samples sent to the Doherty Institute came from Ukraine as part of a program that the Doherty Institute provides to support labs around the world testing for measles and rubella.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the US Government established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to reduce the risk from biological weapons left behind in countries that had been part of the Soviet Union.

The Biological Threat Reduction Program, established in 2005, is part of this program. Under this program the US Government partners with other countries, including Ukraine, to reduce the risk of outbreaks of infectious diseases whether they are deliberate, accidental or natural.

The US Department of Defense works in partnership with Ukraine’s Ministry for Health to prevent the proliferation of technology, pathogens and expertise that could be used in the development of biological weapons. Under this partnership Ukrainian labs receive financial assistance from the US Department of Defense.

According to a video released by the US Government in January 2022, its Cooperative Threat Reduction Program does not develop biological weapons. Rather, it supports laboratories that are “owned, operated and manned by host governments” to help reduce the threat of biological weapons proliferation.

Russian claims about the program long predate its invasion of Ukraine. The claims were dismissed as ‘disinformation’ by the US Embassy in Ukraine in 2020, and by academic researchers in 2021.

Other fact checkers have also said there is no evidence of US biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine, including PolitiFact, Factcheck.org and the BBC.

As for the document showing the Doherty Institute’s supposed involvement with Ukrainian labs, FactLab has traced its origin to the Russian Ministry of Defence, which uploaded a cache of documents related to the biolab conspiracy to the Russian search engine Yandex on March 10. 

According to the Ministry’s Telegram channel, the documents were “provided by employees of Ukrainian biological laboratories", though this is unverified. 

An unsigned and unstamped Ukrainian customs document, which FactLab has been unable to verify as legitimate, appears to show that 350 human blood serum samples were shipped on 11 December, 2018 from the Ukrainian Ministry for Health’s Centre for Public Health to the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Doherty Institute.

In an email, a spokeswoman for the Doherty Institute confirmed that it had received “approximately 300 serum samples from… Ukraine in 2019 to assist with global preparedness for measles testing and quality assurance". 

“The Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Doherty Institute has been providing international support for more than 20 years to laboratories around the world testing for both measles and rubella,” the spokeswoman told FactLab.

“Receiving serum samples from laboratories globally is routine practice for the success of this public health initiative.”