RELATED RESOURCES:
News Release on Texas A&M, 12 April 2007
News Release on Texas A&M, 26 June 2007
Online Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) Minutes ArchivesThe Sunshine Project
News Release
3 July 2007Texas A&M Bioweapons Accidents More the Norm than an Exception
• From anthrax in Albuquerque to tuberculosis in New York, the public is kept in the dark about many biolab incidents
• It is unclear if the government is aware of the extent, the danger continues to grow with mushrooming biodefense research
• Need for stronger federal biolab oversight, reduced and rationalized biolab system
• "Instead of a 'culture of responsibility', the federal government has instilled a culture of denial... so labs hide problems, and think that accident reporting is for masochists... "
Far more accidents have happened in biodefense and other high containment labs in recent years than the public knows about. It is not clear if the federal government is even aware of the extent of the problems. The rash of biolab accidents is a result of the massive expansion of the biodefense program, which has brought research on bioweapons agents to scores of new labs in recent years.
What is needed, according to the Sunshine Project, is to reduce the number of facilities and people handing bioweapons agents in the United States and to bring the fragmented and frequently unenforced hodgepodge of federal biolab rules and suggestions together into a unified, mandatory, and enforced system that ensures laboratory safety and public accountability.
The Sunshine Project has recently released information about unreported accidents with biological weapons agents that resulted in an order from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for Texas A&M University to cease and desist all research with "select agents", as bioweapons agents are called in federal regulations.
Here, the Sunshine Project releases information on other accidents that it has confirmed involving select agents and/or biosafety level three (BSL-3) labs. None of these accidents, to the Project's knowlege, have been made public before:
- In mid-2003, a University of New Mexico (UNM) researcher was jabbed with an anthrax-laden needle. The following year, another UNM researcher experienced a needle stick with an unidentifed (redacted) pathogenic agent that had been genetically engineered;
- At the Medical University of Ohio, in late 2004 a researcher was infected with Valley Fever (C. immitis), a BSL-3 biological weapons agent. The following summer (2005), a serious lab accident occurred that resulted in exposure of one or more workers to an aerosol of the same agent;
- In mid-2005, a lab worker at the University of Chicago punctured his or her skin with an infected instrument bearing a BSL-3 select agent. It was likely a needle contaminated with either anthrax or plague;
- In October and November of 2005, the University of California at Berkeley received dozens of samples of what it thought was a relatively harmless organism. In fact, the samples contained Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, classified as a BSL-3 bioweapons agents because of its transmission by aerosol. As a result, the samples were handled without adequate safety precautions, until the mistake was discovered. Unlike nearby Oakland Children's Hospital, which previously experienced an anthrax mixup, UC Berkeley never told the community;
In addition to lab-acquired infections and exposures, other types of dangerous problems have occurred, such as unauthorized research, equipment malfunction, and disregard for safety protocols:
- In February 2005 at the University of Iowa, researchers performed genetic engineering experiments with the select agent tularemia without permission. They included mixing genes from tularemia species and introducing antibiotic resistance. The University reported the incident to the National Institutes of Health, but public disclosure was (to our knowlege) never made;
- In September 2004 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, lab workers at a BSL-3 facility propped open doors of the lab and its anteroom, a major violation of safety procedeures. A alarm that should have sounded did not;
- In March 2005 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lab workers were exposed to tuberculosis when the BSL-3 lab's exhaust fan failed. Due to deficiences in the lab, a blower continued to operate, pushing disease-laden air out of a safety cabinet and into the room. An alarm, which would have warned of the problem, had been turned off. The lab had been inspected and approved by the US Army one month earlier;
- In December 2005 at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City, three lab workers were exposed (converted) to tuberculosis following experiments in a BSL-3 lab. The experiments involved a Madison Aerosol Chamber, the same device used in the February 2006 experiments that resulted in the Texas A&M brucella case;
- In mid-2004, a steam valve from the biological waste treatment tanks failed at Building 41A on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The building houses BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs. Major damage was caused, and the building was closed for repairs;
It is very important to note that these and other examples of lab accidents are drawn from biosafety committee meeting minutes of institutions that actually record such incidents in records that are (at least nominally) available to the public. Often, this is not the case, such as that of Texas A&M, which only released accident information under extreme pressure. Thus, the sample of institutions named above is skewed toward those that have been more open about their accidents than others.
There is no reason not to presume that many more similar accidents have occurred but have yet to come to light.
"One can see in Texas A&M's statements and actions an ingrained resistance to transparency about accidents," says Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond, "this is the result of an irrational and ineffective federal system in which incentives are tilted against reporting and transparency."
Add Hammond, "Instead of a 'culture of responsibility', the federal government has instilled a culture of denial. Reporting requirements, to the extent that they exist, are not well-enforced unless NGOs or the press make a stir, so labs hide problems, and think that accident reporting is for masochists, an attitude clearly reflected by A&M's President, who says that he now regrets reporting the the Q Fever infections."