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A College Lab Mix-Up Left Over 30 People Thinking They Were Exposed to a Deadly Pathogen

CDC says 32 people took preventive antibiotics after a Utah lab exercise appeared to involve a deadly bacterium.

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Thirty-two people thought they were exposed to a deadly bacterium during a 2025 college microbiology lab exercise, according to the CDC’s recently released Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

It’s a classic blunder-headed mix-up, but one that could potentially have been tragic.

It was just a routine laboratory classroom exercise wherein students in Utah were supposed to identify Plesiomonas shigelloides, a fairly innocuous bacterium. They weren’t told what it was beforehand. They........

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