Would biolab make a good neighbor?/Germ research a bit too creepy

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Would biolab make a good neighbor?

05-07-2006

http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2006/as-insight-0507-0-

6e05r1510.htm

Leilah Rampa/The Anniston Star

Anniston should vie for facility

By Alfonso

Special to The Star

Should Anniston pursue its potential as a site for a biodefense

facility? If I were a citizen of Anniston, I would say yes. Let me

explain why.

The proposed new National Bio- and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) is

intended to be a modern facility that will house all the activities

currently being conducted at the aging Plum Island Animal Disease

Center, with additional programs for the study of zoonotic diseases.

The origin of the Plum Island, N.Y., lab and its mission is

intimately linked to the history of foot-and-mouth disease in our

country. The United States became free of the disease in 1929 and has

remained so ever since. At that time, manipulation of the virus was

prohibited any place in the country. The presence of the disease in

Mexico in the mid-1940s led to the need to have a laboratory where

this disease could be studied.

In 1948, a law was enacted authorizing the U.S. Department of

Agriculture to build a laboratory for the study and prevention of

foot-and-mouth disease. This law required that the laboratory needed

to be located on an island surrounded by navigable waters and not

connected to the mainland by tunnels or by bridges.

At that time, technologies to prevent a virus from escaping from a

laboratory were quite rudimentary, so being on an island provided the

extra level of protection by creating physical separation between the

lab and areas where livestock were raised.

In 1954, the center at Plum Island became operative. Once facilities

with proper biocontainment were available, other highly contagious

foreign animal diseases were added to the list of those diseases

studied at facility.

Plum Island's safety record has been quite remarkable. With the

exception of an escape of foot-and-mouth virus limited to the island

in the 1970s, before the HEPA air-filtration technology was

available, there have been no health risks to the environment, or to

the dedicated scientists and support staff working at the center.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to be free of foot-and-mouth

disease and free of many other highly infectious foreign animal

diseases not because of luck, but because of the essential research

done at Plum Island in the last half century.

Given the extent of our livestock economy, it is both prudent and

foresighted to build updated facilities to replace the aging

facilities at Plum Island. Just as our military requires regular

modernization of its facilities and equipment, safe and effective

animal health research facilities profit from periodic updates that

permit new advances in the defense of livestock health.

There is no scientific reason today to maintain these facilities on

an island setting; in fact, all new animal health research facilities

around the world are built on mainland locations. The risk of a

microbiological escape out of modern biocontainment facilities is

extremely low. In the same way that the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention have safely operated its biocontainment facilities to

work with lethal human infectious agents right in the middle of Emory

University in Atlanta, we would operate the NBAF safely in any place

on the U.S. mainland.

As a former director of the Plum Island facility, and with the

experience of having visited many animal health biocontainment

centers around the world, I strongly support the proposed mainland

location of the new NBAF. We must maintain strong institutions and

missions to protect the health of our animals, our food supply, our

food security and the economy of our nation.

My best wishes to Anniston in making a successful bid for the NBAF

relocation.

Alfonso is associate dean for public policy of the College of

Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. From 1996 to 1999, he was

director of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center on Plum Island,

N.Y.

Alfonso is associate dean for public policy of the College of

Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. From 1996 to 1999, he was

director of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center on Plum Island, N.Y.

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Germ research a bit too creepy

By Keppel

Special to The Star

As residents of Anniston — who are already no strangers to living

with hazards — consider the prospect of Fort McClellan becoming home

to a high-security biological laboratory, they might like to know the

experience of neighbors to other such facilities.

I am a former Connecticut resident and neighbor of the legendary

facility on Plum Island, N.Y. Just off Orient Point, Long Island, and

six miles from the Connecticut coast, Plum Island is the site of a

U.S. Agriculture Department Animal Disease Research Center.

The USDA acquired the island from the War Department at the end of

World War II with a charter from Congress to study animal diseases

such as foot-and-mouth disease. In surrounding communities, distrust

of Plum Island runs deep. Lyme disease takes its name from a

Connecticut town across from the island: Many wonder whether birds or

swimming animals could have brought the disease from the island.

It was no surprise, then, that citizens were galvanized by the news,

beginning with a Sept. 22, 1999, New York Times article, that the

USDA planned to expand its Plum Island laboratory to make it an ultra-

high-hazard biosafety level four (BSL-4) facility. BSL-4 status would

allow the lab to study zoonotic diseases such as the Nipah virus,

anthrax and Venezuelan equine encephalitis — all lethal to both

animals and humans.

In stormy public hearings in Connecticut and on Long Island, citizens

challenged both the safety and the purpose of the expanded

laboratory. Many considered it an intolerable risk in a highly

populated area. Though on an island, Plum Island's lab is not truly

quarantined; scientists and other lab workers commute from

Connecticut and Long Island.

At a public hearing in Waterbury, Conn., one Plum Island scientist

told the audience, " We hug our kids every night, " in an attempt to

persuade residents that he considered the work safe and they should,

too. But in August 1994, a worker at Yale's Arbovirus Laboratory

became infected with Sabia virus but went home and then to Boston

before realizing his symptoms were serious. Such diseases have

incubation times of days; workers could easily go home or travel

without realizing that they had been infected.

Officials refused to discuss their plans for the laboratory and its

animals in the event of an emergency at the nearby Millstone nuclear

reactor — a facility that itself has a notorious safety and cover-up

record.

After I left Connecticut in August 2002, 76 union workers at the lab

went on strike. During the strike, temporary workers were hired.

Water pressure fell precipitously on the island, and decontamination

rooms and the necropsy rooms were disabled. These are not trivial

hazards when dead animals are infected. The FBI was called in to

investigate.

According to Carroll in his book, " Lab 257: The

Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ

Laboratory, " in 2002 U.S. forces in Afghanistan found a dossier of

information about the Plum Island lab in the Kabul residence of

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Western-educated nuclear physicist and

former chairman of the Pakistan Nuclear Energy Commission who has

been identified by U.S. officials as an associate of Osama bin Laden.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based Council for Responsible Genetics has

argued that genetic engineering of new strains of disease is at least

ambiguously offensive. Indeed, logic makes offense its most likely

use, since its defensive value is questionable. Even if terrorists

or " rogue " states were developing genetically engineered diseases,

these would be unlikely to match our new, genetically engineered

strains.

Thus, germ and vaccine development makes more sense as a sword and

shield pair: The potential attacker vaccinates its own troops or

population against the strain of disease it is then free to use

offensively. Other nations, seeing such a program of ours, will feel

free to embark on their own program.

Recently, Plum Island has been transferred to the Department of

Homeland Security, and the government has announced that it will

remain a BSL-3 rather than BSL-4 facility. But the record does not

inspire confidence.

Meanwhile, residents of Anniston have good grounds for worry about

the risks — from storm, accident and terrorism — posed to any high-

hazard biological laboratory in the community.

Keppel, formerly of Essex, Conn., and now a resident of

Bloomington, Ind., is writing a book about science and politics in

the 21st century.