Biodefense Labs, Bad for Our Health

By Noah Shachtman

Better late than never, I suppose. For the last five years, some of us have argued that the government's biodefense priorities are screwed up, massively. Research into largely theoretical bio threats has sucked up money from tackling real killers, like tuberculosis. In fact, the biggest threat may be from the proliferation of biodefense labs, packed with largely untrained staffs; an accident or a malicious insider was more likely to cause serious damage than nearly any bioterrorist.

In the meantime, we've seen biolab workers infected in Texas and Boston; disease-ridden mice escaped (twice), and a deadly flu strain accidentally shipped all over the country.

Today, The New York Times echoes what we've been saying. All it took was the suicide of Army biodefense scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins, a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. "Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs?" the paper of record asks.

More people in more places handling toxic agents create more opportunities for an accident or intentional misuse by an insider ...

There also is insufficient federal oversight of biodefense facilities to make sure the laboratories follow security rules and report accidents that might threaten lab workers or, in an extreme case, lead to a release that might endanger the public ...

In effect the government may be providing the tools that a would-be terrorist could use ...

... Apart from the threat from insiders, some public health experts believe money being used to study obscure pathogens that are not a major disease problem could be better directed to study known killers like influenza or AIDS.

"Partly in response to this criticism, government officials now often talk about how strengthening the systems necessary to respond to a terror attack would also prepare the country for a natural epidemic like avian flu," the paper notes. About time.

UPDATE: "Several years ago I would have pooh-poohed the idea that highly trained and vetted scientists would present such a risk," biochem blogger Bugs n Gas Gal says. "But for at least the last couple of years I’ve felt that the expansion of biodefense labs is related not to research need but to homeland defense money. If you build it they will come, and a couple of them might be frakking nuts. Do we not now have enough investment in the study of the most dangerous, but least likely threats?"