Russia Launches Institute Dedicated to Keeping Cause of Death Permanently Unknown
The new agency's mission statement reportedly ends the moment any answer threatens to appear.
Officials have unveiled a new standing body tasked with investigating unexplained deaths at research facilities, with a charter explaining that an investigation concludes the instant a cause stops qualifying as unknown.
The institute's founding document describes a single procedural step: receive a case, confirm that the origin remains undetermined, and issue a certificate attesting to that fact before archiving the file. Investigators are reportedly barred from opening a case a second time once it has achieved unknown status, since doing so risks accidentally resolving it.
"We take every death seriously, which is why we stop taking it seriously the moment it's classified," said a spokesperson for the institute, before leaving to notarize another certificate of non-determination.
The World Health Organization's request for further detail has reportedly been filed at the institute as a new case, which staff say is proceeding smoothly toward its expected conclusion of remaining unknown.
The agency says it plans to expand next year into a second division devoted to investigating why the first division never finds anything.