DHS Pathogen Lab To Be Built In "Tornado Alley"

Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that Department of Homeland Security is relying on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate the $700 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas. A GAO report says that it is not 'scientifically defensible' to conclude that lab can safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas. Such research has been conducted up to now on a remote island on the northern tip of Long Island, NY. 'Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences,' the GAO warned in its draft report. Critics of moving the operation to the mainland argue that a release could lead to widespread contamination that could kill livestock, devastate a farm economy, and endanger humans. Along with the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, NBAF researchers plan to study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, and other viruses in the Biosafety Level (BSL) 3 and BSL-4 livestock laboratory capable of developing countermeasures for foreign animal diseases. According to the article, DHS lobbied a Congressional committee to try and convince them that the GAO report was flawed, and to head off any hearings on the controversy. Despite this, the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee plans to hold a hearing Thursday on the risk analysis."

Comments

OMFG!!!!

[Vinegar Joe]

This is the plot to "Devil Winds".......one the all-time worst disaster films!

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/306319/Devil-Winds/overview
http://www.blockbusteronline.com/movies/devil-winds.html

Re:Kansas is unsafe but Long Island isn't?

[ccbailey]

Disclaimer: I am a veterinarian Currently this sort of research is done on Plum Island (http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=19-40-00-00) which is conveniently separated from everything else by a nice long bridge. Very little of the disease work that goes on there has zoonotic potential, that is potential to infect humans, and those diseases that do would require transmission via arthropod vectors that hopefully don't live in New York. The worry with putting this kind of facility in Kansas is for diseases like foot and mouth disease (FMD), which cause epidemics in livestock but are harmless to people. Foot and mouth can be easily transmitted on objects and through aerosol. Outbreaks in FMD-free countries take months and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up before you can convince anyone to buy your exports again. I think the idea is that there aren't too many cows on Long Island but a hell of a lot more of them in Kansas.

As someone from "Tornado Alley"

[Nimey]

we don't get hit with tornadoes all that often. They do happen, and small towns do get properly torn-up by them, but one of those only hits every few years. Most of our tornadoes touch down in uninhabited areas, because there's a /lot/ of space that's farm fields, pastures, or forested. Also, I'd much rather be here than where hurricanes or earthquakes or forest fires are apt to hit, because tornadoes by their nature affect only a small area.

Taco, would you get around to firing kdawson already? His sensationalism was amusing during the election cycle, but it's getting really tiresome.