High Security Animal Disease Lab Faces Uncertain Future 105
Dupple writes in with a story about the uncertain future of a proposed bio lab in the heart of cattle country. "Plans to build one of the world's most secure laboratories in the heart of rural America have run into difficulties. The National Bio and Agro defense facility (NBAF) would be the first US lab able to research diseases like foot and mouth in large animals. But reviews have raised worries about virus escapes in the middle of cattle country. For over fifty years the United States has carried out research on dangerous animal diseases at Plum Island, just off the coast of New York. However after 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security raised concerns about the suitability of the location and its vulnerability to terrorist attack."
Safety First (Score:2)
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I dunno about that Manhattan/Lawrence is probably the nations breadbasket for LSD, outfreaking San Francisco. Do you really want to chance some government sponsored psychedelic terror? Other than that, they need to put it down by the Mexican border to scare aliens or something. We raise Black Angus here mostly, the most delicious cow. Get your damn priorities straight.
The only thing evident to me is that New York shows every sign of being affected and producing negative mutations/diseases for the years it h
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The easiest way to reduce the damage caused by an escaping pathogen is to release it into the wild now. That way if it escapes from the lab later no harm is done.
Re:Safety First (Score:5, Insightful)
The scientists owe it to the people there to reduce the risk of an escaped pathogen by as much as they can. Once they do that, there really shouldn't be anything to complain about--it would just be pure, irrational fear from what I can see.
Arguably, siting the lab in the middle of a giant supply of natural hosts for the pathogens being studied is a massive failure of risk reduction, no matter how many sci-fi airlocks they pencil in...
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What they are missing is human error. Happens all the time. One person doesn't follow procedure and BOOM!
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Re:Safety First (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, if the security is perfect then there is no problem. In the same vein, putting it on an island near NY is completely safe as long as NY doesn't get hit by Tsunami or terrorist/millitary attacks. Yet they are speculating about placing it in the middle of the country precisely because you can't expect things to go alrgiht forever.
Part of the question then is, what is more likely? Disseases escaping containment procedures or a cataclysmic event devastating NY? Before 9/11 or Sandy (and I'd wager Sandy is the real kicker here) such pondering would seem the stuff of Science Fiction. But considering this AGW problem is here to stay, you can only expect worse storms to come in the future. Relocating the lab to the iddle of the country seems like a better idea right now.
My question here is, don't you guys have lots and lots of dessertic zones? Just put it there. Or is it packed already with too many secret millitary bases?
Re:Safety First (Score:4, Insightful)
Disease escape is a far more likely failure mode than terrorist attack. Microbes have evolved over millions of years to be easy to spread.
In terms of terrorist attack, New York is on the eastern seaboard not far from Washington DC. A relatively close radius should contain: half of the US Navy's Atlantic fleet, huge amounts of coast guard assets, thousands of FBI agents, and a pretty massive city police presence. No where else in America is safer.
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Sounds like somebody is forgetting 9/11.
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To clarify - the safest place to be is somewhere that nobody gives a shit about. NY is an obvious terrorist target, and the fact that some people consider it the most secure place in the US would be enough reason to attack it. It might be conventionally safe, but right now perhaps someone is planning some method of attack that was so crazy that nobody else has even considered it, as happened with 9/11.
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These are bio-hazard level 3 and level 4 labs. The same procedures that are used to study diseases like Smallpox and Ebola. Know where else in the US facilities like these exist? Boston, Richmond Virginia, San Antonio Texas, Atlanta Georgia, and Fort Detrick Maryland (less than 50 miles from Washington DC). So, investigating highly contagious, highly lethal diseases in major population centers is ok, but investigating animal diseases with the same precautions in cattle country isn't? This just screams N
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If there's anything I learned from books, it's that all proper precautions can be defeated by a single person breaking a single rule and releasing Captain Tripps into the wild.
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> Arguably, siting the lab in the middle of a giant supply of natural hosts for the pathogens being studied is a massive failure of risk reduction, no matter how many sci-fi airlocks they pencil in...
You know, except for the fact K-State runs a level 3 lab literally right next door to where they'd build this new level 4 lab. In addition Kansas is home to quite a few underground salt caverns that would mitigate the fear of tornadoes.
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You mean like the CDC in Atlanta?
Re:Safety First (Score:4, Funny)
The scientists owe it to the people there to reduce the risk of an escaped pathogen by as much as they can. Once they do that, there really shouldn't be anything to complain about--it would just be pure, irrational fear from what I can see.
Arguably, siting the lab in the middle of a giant supply of natural hosts for the pathogens being studied is a massive failure of risk reduction, no matter how many sci-fi airlocks they pencil in...
What if terrorists bring erasers and pencil them out.
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CDC in down town Atlanta.
Level 4 biohazard lab in the middle of 9-10million people.
Just sayin
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The CDC has a Biohazard Level 4 lab in the middle of downtown Atlanta, one of the biggest sprawlingest metro cities in the country (ATL itself only has ~1mil people population...but the entire metro and all the people that work there comes to around 9m, and thus is why ATL traffic suck so damn bad; ATL is the biggest city without a real, modern, metro system, and it desperately needs one..so glad I moved..but im getting off topic). Point is: its scary as hell to have such a thing in the middle of so many pe
Posse commitatus (Score:2)
I'm sure that security is better where God and the County Sheriff are packing.
Re:Posse commitatus (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure that security is better where God and the County Sheriff are packing.
Even a rather large virus will spatter like an overripe melon if hit with a mere .000012 caliber round. The real trick is in the aiming...
Build it right where it can infect the most? (Score:1)
THAT... sounds completely stupid. i'd want to put something like this somewhere it CAN'T do any harm if it gets out...
The arctic sounds nice.
I also kind of wonder what kind of nasty stuff got washed out of plum island in the hurricane. There's some fairly scary storys about that place. Oh sure most is prolly overblown bullcrap. But it only takes a little truth to kill a whole bunch of people... :(
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Actually nothing, The place has survived much worse hurricanes (1978 and 1984) during my lifetime.
Containment is fine, security is the issue. (Score:1)
Yes, that's the exact thing that happened in 28 Days Later. Yes, I can see that actually happening. All it takes is a bunch of ill-informed, militant,
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that's what I was thinking as soon as I saw the title.
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Yes, surely no one will ever become complacent after working there for a long time.
Many biological safety and containment protocols are regularly disregarded at least in part because scientists think that their own lower assessment of the risk is more accurate than the "bureaucrats" who designed the protocols. Dealing with the lab moron(s) in BSL-2 is a pain. Dealing with them in BSL-4 is potentially deadly.
Stupidity finds a way. That's why designs must be as foolproof as possible.
Re:Containment is fine, security is the issue. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've heard that one of the more difficult aspects of working in a level 4 lab is learning not to catch things that are falling, such as scalpels, and that when the scientists go home after work, they don't catch tableware and glasses and such, leading to much domestic strife.
(I don't know how true it is, but it seems to make sense.)
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I heard the same from butchers and glassblowers.
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blacksmiths too.
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keeps morons out, and if morons manage to subvert security and let animals loose, the animals can't get out
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"28 Days Later"
Kids [wikipedia.org]... Always with the zombies
Activists have killed healthy animals ... (Score:1, Interesting)
What I'm concerned about is a bunch of militant "animal rights" nitwits getting in and "liberating" diseased animals, causing all kinds of hell.
The University that I attended had a large agriculture department. They had a bunch of caged chickens. Healthy but caged. Activists freed them and the chickens soon started to die. Apparently living in cages with wire bottoms suspended a few feet off the ground did not prepare their immune systems for what waited on the ground below. They all got sick and most died.
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I'm not worried about some virus spontaneously escaping into the wild. What I'm concerned about is a bunch of militant "animal rights" nitwits getting in and "liberating" diseased animals, causing all kinds of hell.
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I'm not worried about some virus spontaneously escaping into the wild.
You should be, it's happened before. The most likeliest explanation for lyme disease is accidental release from Plum Island, carried away on ticks by migrating deer.
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And were these magical, space-time traveling deer, as well? Able to go back hundreds of years in time, and reappear on an island off the coast of Scotland [wikipedia.org]?
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I think even that is a pretty significant stretch with nothing but speculation to support it. The disease was already known before Plum island was even a twinkle in Uncle Sam's eye. The most likely explanation for the incidence of Lyme disease would be that the tick and its parasites came across the Atlantic with colonists from Europe (where the disease was fairly well known), established a foothold, and has been present and spreading since.
The fact that a cluster of cases in 1975 around Lyme, Connecticut
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Nobody's claimed they did. It's a zoonotic infection, and it's VERY common for diseases like that to circulate in their animal reservoirs (mice & deer, in this case), until conditions line up just right for an outbreak. In this case, the tick that transmits it feeds on blood three times in its life, once for each phase. This means a tick, in order to infect someone, has to first feed on a mouse or a deer infected with the bacteria, and THEN feed on
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The genetic material from the North American strain of bacteria that causes Lyme disease has been found in museum specimens dating back to the 1800's, and according to Wikipedia, they found B. burgdorferi DNA in a 5300 year old mummified ice age hunter. There's a lot of evidence that the pathogen has been around for centuries.
Every disease has been around for a long time. The problem is we may not have the ability to look back in time.
A pathogen whose DNA has been found on hundreds and thousands of year old museum samples cannot have been "manufactured" exclusively at Plum Island in 1975.
Also - how could Plum Island have been "studying Lyme Disease" in 1975, when Lyme Disease was not identified as a tick-borne illness, with a bacterial cause isolated, until 1982? (Do you see how the sequence of these things is sort of important?)
I never said "manufactured". You don't need to make up things about what I said to make yourself feel better. You indicated that Lyme disease has been around for thousands of years, and that it was identified as a disease hundreds of years ago. Someone, somewhere had to study it in a lab to isolate the pathogen in 1982. And the disease was known prior to 1975, so why are you so sure that the
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Lucky for us this is one of the ones we DO have the ability to identify in centuries-old samples of ticks, mice, and humans. Making a general assertion that "sometimes we can't look back" is an inadequate argument to counter the fact that it's been found in multiple centuries-old samples.
I'll once again act the direct question you ignored:
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Then surely you can provide us with some examples of scientists disputing this?
The Black Plague was believed to be the Bubonic plague. Then it wasn't. Then it was again. I'm not sure where it sits today.
Yes, his name was Willy Burgdorfer, and that's why the microbe is named after him.
That's an odd assumption. Nobody ever studied it before him. Can you support that assumption? Because it must be true for your correction to be on topic.
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I'll once again act the direct question you ignored:
It's a pretty simple question.
It's not an assumption at all - it's fact. He isolated the bacteria in 1982. The disease itself was described in
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It's not an assumption at all - it's fact. He isolated the bacteria in 1982. The disease itself was described in medical literature LONG before 1975, and its genes have been isolated from museum samples hundreds and thousands of years old. In other words - it existed in North America and Europe long before the any alleged disease "escape" from Plum Island.
Your argument makes sense only if you assume he isolated it without ever studying it. Otherwise, it had to have been in a lab before it was isolated. I don't believe he isolated it without ever studying it. And it's silly to assume he was the *only* person on the planet to study it. Ever. It was a licestock disease primarily before 1975, and Plum Island is tasked with studying livestock diseases. Trade in "diseased tissue" (where the component involved, bacteria or virus, is not known) is common, and
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Plum Island ain't closing anytime soon. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know people that work on plum island. They say that the place will be open till at least 2021. The decision to move it was purely political. At the time the local governments did not want a level 4 facility on the island, Once it was announced that the research would be moved to Kansas they recanted. There has also been much discussion about the wisdom of moving it to the middle of tornado alley and cattle country. Terrorism has had little effect on the decision, an island makes it very easy to control who comes and goes as compared to a facility reachable by foot. It would not surprise me to see them upgrade Plum island and cancel the project in Kansas, on the other hand it is up to the usual political backroom deals.
Re:Plum Island ain't closing anytime soon. (Score:4, Insightful)
um tornado alley is easily prepared for. Just build the actual labs underground.
just like Umbrella and look how well that turned out.
oh
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Actually they don't study anything that can be transmitted by rat, They study diseases that effect agriculture (cows, horses, pigs etc...) with the exception of avian diseases.
If there were a lack of containment there is little on Long Island that would be infected as there are few if any cattle ranches there. The deer population would take a hit as would horses, but there are no ranches so to speak of. Kansas on the other hand has plenty of such and an outbreak could devastate the economy. Again th
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Deer and cattle typically have difficulty hopping electrified razorwire-topped fences. Do you think this is going to be some sort of Little House On the Prairie farmstead, where the scientists just tell the cows, "Okay, now don't go past this river or that hilltop. We trust you!"?
They study dozens of highly infectious, highly lethal diseases at the CDC facilities in Atlanta. Right in the middle of millions of people, who are certainly good hosts for hemorrhagic fevers, smallpox, and the like. Yet we don
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Amen. I've been saying for years -- since I heard about the plan -- that moving the facility there was just about the most goddamned stupid thing that could possibly be done. Plum Island is almost perfectly situated for a containment facility. The fact that it's an island means that most critters won't get off of it, so you don't have to worry about a lab rat getting out and spreading it all over. Also, if a breakout did happen, and it -did- come over to Long Island, it would likely progress from east to west and allow a chance to stop the spread before it could get to the mainland.
Sounds like a perfect use for Gitmo. You even have captive humans to test on. And if anything gets out, it's Raul Castro's problem not ours. Just sayin'.
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Technically they were both downgraded to tropical storms before they hit Long Island. Long Island hasn't had an actual Hurricane since Gloria in 1985.
meanwhile, a BSL-4 facility smack in Boston= AOK (Score:3)
Meanwhile, everyone's been ramming through a BSL-4 facility which will study live human diseases, right smack in the middle of Boston:
http://www.wbur.org/2012/04/19/biolab-research-approval [wbur.org]
They picked a poor minority neighborhood they and city officials could bully around, and despite public uproar, soon residents can look forward to being neighbors with Ebola.
Apparently BU just couldn't be bothered to build it, say, out somewhere in the suburbs where there'd be some isolation from the general populace. Let's put it right smack in the middle of a city with a big public transit system and an international airport, just so our researchers won't have to hop in a car for a drive. BRILLIANT.
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Man, good thing the CDC doesn't have a BSL4 lab in Atlanta, where they're headquartered. Oh, wait.
Above the arctic circle maybe? (Score:1)
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Oh, it's a surprise that SCIENTISTS ARE PEOPLE WITH FUCKING HUMAN NEEDS? Well fuck you up the ass with a goddamn railroad tie. Covered in railroad spikes. And razor wire. Coated in AIDS. And mutant lab rats. And radioactive compounds. And it's fucking on fire.
Don't hold back AC. Tell us how you *really* feel!
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There is no place more isolated than the arctic. We have had bases there in the past, one even had a sub reactor to power it. Considering the fact that the environment is very much not in tune with the needs of any escaped pathogens I would say that it is just about the best choice. It would be hard to access and harder to enter. Get down under the rock and you are safe and contained with no vectors of escape of the bugs. It is a far better choice than the bread basket of the USA and allot of the world.
Mike
Thule?
for the record (Score:2)
By the way, it's more fun if you read the article title as High Security Animal, Disease Lab Faces Uncertain Future.
Gotta watch out for those high security animals, lol.
It is damn near on campus (Score:4, Interesting)
This was all mainly due to one of the worst US Senators in the modern age: Pat Roberts. His other claim to fame was putting off the investigations of the Iraq invasion lies until after the elections to 'take politics out of it'. After the election, he then claimed there was no point in investigating the lies as the past is the past, spilt milk, etc. Scumbag.
Mistakes will be made (Score:1)
I think it is a stupid idea to place this where there will be lots of damage when things get out. And they will get out. Just like it is impossible to have code with zero bugs, it is impossible there will be no mistakes.
Does anyone else remember this report about the air flow being redirected from inside the lab to the hallway outside where people don't wear protective gear? Bad Air Vents [preppercentral.com]
In February, air from inside a potentially contaminated lab briefly blew outward into a “clean” corridor where a group of visitors weren’t wearing any protective gear which raised concern about exposure risks, according to e-mails reporting and discussing what happened. Research animals in the lab had not yet been infected at the time of the incident, the records say.
The philosophical point of view (Score:2)
High Security Animal Disease Lab Faces Uncertain Future
Thanks to quantum mechanics, don't we all?
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And at Plum island they weaponized them, even though it was a non-military FDA site. Their excuse was that they needed to weaponise them to be able to defend our livestock against them.
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I figured it would be obvious Queens is on Long Island,
Americans can't identify most states on a map, to assume everyone knows where boroughs of NYC are would seem to be an overestimation of general geographic knowledge.
Even if they get a lot of workers from Plum Island, they would also be getting a lot of travelers too.
It's not like there are any international airports in Queens.
But, given that the first major outbreak of Lyme disease in the US was geographically adjacent to Plum (far from airports), and Plum was studying it before release, it seems likely that there was at least one major containment breach, indicating the likelihood of another is much highe