According to the World Health Organization, “biological and toxin weapons are either microorganisms like virus, bacteria or fungi, or toxic substances produced by living organisms that are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals or plants.”

Monkeypox has the potential to be used as a biological weapon. However, there is no evidence that any past or current outbreaks of monkeypox are due to intentional manufacturing to use in this way.

Analyses of the genetic material we have from the monkeypox cases in this outbreak show that the current outbreak is tied to a naturally-occurring outbreak in West Africa. These findings show that this outbreak is in no way manufactured. 

The monkeypox virus appears on a list of "select agents and toxins," which are toxins and biological agents that the U.S. government has determined "have the potential to pose a severe threat to both human and animal health, to plant health, or to animal and plant products." 

Some have interpreted this to mean that monkeypox is labeled by the U.S. government as a biological weapon. However, the fact that monkeypox is on this list basically means that researchers need to go through extra careful processes to work with this virus in a lab. 

Monkeypox does have the potential to be used in this manner; viruses, including the monkeypox virus, can be cultivated in a lab, and have the potential to be released and spread deliberately. That being said, there is no evidence that this has occurred or may occur. 

As of September 14, 2022, there have been 59,606 confirmed cases of monkeypox globally, with 22,773 of those cases reported in the U.S. Prior to 2022, there were typically few to zero outbreaks of monkeypox outside of a few countries primarily in Central and Western Africa. In fact, the number of confirmed monkeypox cases in mid-May to mid-August was about 23 times more than all cases recorded from about 1970 to 2018.

This large human-to-human transmission outbreak is likely the result of luck for the monkeypox virus in that the virus has made its way into a part of the global population where people are in very close contact with each other and also travel internationally. In addition, routine vaccinations against smallpox – which can be up to 85% effective at preventing monkeypox – stopped in some countries like the U.S. and the UK in the early 1970s.

Claims are being made that the current monkeypox outbreaks are due to intentional biological warfare by governments – especially the U.S. Some of these claims are being made by U.S. citizens about the U.S. government. Other claims are being made by the Russian government. 

The Russian defense ministry and a range of media outlets controlled and back by the Russian government have suggested that the current monkeypox outbreak was engineered by U.S. military biological laboratories, and have suggested that some of those laboratories are based in Nigeria. These claims are false. There is no evidence to back up any of these claims and there are legitimate scientific reasons for why there is a current outbreak.

Another claim from the Russian government is that the current monkeypox outbreak is due to a lab leak. There is also no evidence that supports this claim.