Arrests of scientists over smuggled samples add to US border anxiety
nature.com
nature.com
A PhD researcher at U. of Michigan was arrested and charged for possession of... C. Elegans? And the secret police dude is telling the media it was a national security threat to US farms?
Did I parse that correctly?
You parsed that one specific incident correctly, but sems like you also missed key parts of the article that helped bring a bit more nuance into the discussion. I thought this rather short Nature article was actually pretty balanced. Two key quotes are:
* "“The rules have not changed” under the Trump administration, Grode says."
* "The hazardousness of the materials that the scientists sent will need to be assessed in each case, as will the scientists’ intent in using the materials, but their lack of transparency will make their cases more difficult, Grode says. “It’s not so much what was being sent, __but the effort to conceal what was being sent__,” he says."
Gee I wonder why people are being weird about bringing bio samples! /s
The change in enforcement can have just as much of an impact on reality, so this statement alone isn't very meaningful.
Nor nuance in the Director of the FBI personally getting himself involved, to tweet falsely about this student's "pathogen [sic] smuggling". There's no nuance in those words—words that incited three thousand conspiratorial-minded comments, by the way—three thousand commenters who sincerely, truly believe this C. elegans scientist is a bioterrorist. (Read them for yourself if you like). Where's the nuance in any of that?
Said professional recommended this treatment in particular, but they won't sell it to you and you can't buy it domestically; Gotta pay their extortion tax for it... unless...
Also makes me wonder if they recommended this restricted product because they think I can't find a shelf on the continent with it and something more available/less-potent might have worked fine
That's basically it. This is just the standard fascist playbook.