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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."
Andromeda Strain
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
H1N1, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore
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
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
"It's because of the heat."
Nah....it's the humidity.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Congress is actually going to practice a little due diligence. How nice if they always did this.
110 miles from NYC is safe but Kansas is far too dangerous?
This doesn't make any sense.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Nah, lets put it in a far more geographically stable area like California, or a more meteorologically stable area like Florida!
Playing devil's advocate here, clearly this isn't the best location for such a facility but I don't think "being in the middle of the continent" has anything to do with that.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
maybe better than the alternative location...............
some jerkoff senator is scratching some corporate donor's back by bringing the massive contruction contract to his own back yard in BFE, Kansas.
This is the worst kind of politicking. Anyone with any kind of common sense knows that the only facility safe in tornado alley is built underground.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Why not put it somewhere isolated that is very cold or very hot, like Alaska or the desert, where the environment would help limit the spread of any escaped pathogens, not give them an ideal breeding ground like Kansas would.
You could use the argument that researchers wouldn't want to live there, but you could say the same thing about Kansas!
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Revolutionary. It will be resistant to terrorists attacks because it will obviously be _guarded_ by tornadoes.
The way you tried to turn this into a Dems bad/ Reps good issue is incredibly boneheaded. When some nasty pathogen gets loose, I plan to blame you personally because by subverting this argument to your pathetic politics you have undercut all rational discussion that might have prevented the apocalypse. The deaths of 99% of the human race will be personally on your head, and you will be the most thoroughly damned person ever to live. The survivors will eventually make a movie, where Snake Pliskin and a time traveling robot simultaneously hunt you down, join forces in the end, attach chains to opposite sides of your head, and rip your brain in half to the cheers of the entire surviving population. You will be played by John Warner in a fat suit, and he will set the scene by portraying you eating Dalmatian puppies.
Who is John Cabal?
It's the fact that they're moving it at all. This stuff is currently secure. It's locked up in a building that is supposed to be able to handle a dropped vial or something. It seems to my admittedly non-biotech-schooled mind that moving the stuff for a week is far more dangerous and has a much higher risk factor than letting it sit in the same place for 50 years.
I'm not exactly sure what the big deal is. Yes, tornados do happen, however -every- place has its risks. Any place located on any cost has the possibility of hurricanes, California has a lot of earthquakes, etc. And honestly the chances of a tornado hitting that exact same place and causing any sort of major damage is slim.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Let me count the ways its a bad idea.
1. All samples have to come from "someplace else" to the middle of the continental USA, where everybody lives. Plane crash? Car crash? Train derailment? Stupid screw up (oh that could never happen, right?) Your bug is loose in frickin' Kansas. The middle of the continent. Perfect set up for it to spread.
2. Any agriculture bug you're testing? You're surrounded by... agriculture! Better hope you don't have a test tube break.
3. People live right outside. See #2.
4. How many super duper Level 5 trained people want to move to Cow's Butt, Kansas?
5. Almost forgot, tornadoes.
I'm not even trained in this specialty, I came up with that off the top of my head. The little island off the NY coast is a -good- place. A better place would be an island off the coast of Alaska, or in the middle of the Pacific.
But hey, I'm "flamebait" for suggesting that this kind of stunning stupidity is BUSINESS AS USUAL for the f-ing MUTANTS who run the US government. Fire them all.
I'm not even trained
Clearly. FYI, but not everybody lives in the middle of the continent. The vast majority of the population lives on the two coasts, not in the middle. Kansas specifically has a relatively sparse population. A better location would be somewhere in North Dakota, where you've got the smallest population density in the continental US and the cold would also help alleviate any spread.
The little island off the NY coast is a -good- place.
Maybe so, if you ignore the fact that it's next door to the largest population center in North America.
But hey, I'm "flamebait" for suggesting that this kind of stunning stupidity is BUSINESS AS USUAL
No, you're flamebait for suggesting that any single political party, and all of its constituents, is to blame for the general stupidity coming out of the government. Not to mention that you assume the constituents of any party actually want to see stupidity from the government. That's why you're flamebait.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
1. All samples have to come from someplace else no matter where you are
2. Not disputed.
3. People in the surrounding area will be an even bigger issue outside of the mid-west.
4. That's more of a HR issue than anything else. My guess is it wouldn't be that big of an issue. How many super duper Level 5 trained people want to move out to some little island in the middle of the fucking Pacific ocean?
5. I never argued that.
Oh, and you were modded flamebait because you decided to include seemingly partisan political attacks in your post and the mod in question didn't think it was clever enough to be a proper troll.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
MRI (Midwest Research Institute) is already in tornado alley at Kansas City, Missouri, just off the UMKC campus. MRI holds the largest archive of communicable pathogens in the world, down the road from the largest public-private science and technology library in the world (Linda Hall, from which library we faxed the University of Tehran [at DHS' approval] almost the entire bibliography of U.S. nuclear research a few years ago just before The Media(TM) started its 'Iran has nuclear tech' scare).
It makes perfect sense that They(TM) would want this new lab to be near the older and larger lab.
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
They should put the lab in an underground complex under Raccoon City, Colorado. What could possibly go wrong?
>4. That's more of a HR issue than anything else. My guess is it wouldn't be that big of an issue. How many super duper Level 5 trained people want to move out to some little island in the middle of the fucking Pacific ocean?
Substantially more than want to move to Kansas?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Actually I suggested that Democrats are the party of more government, which I take from this debacle to be a bad thing. Only government lobbying and wheeling/dealing can create situations this infernally stupid.
If you RTFA you'll discover that the governor of Kansas is indeed a Democrat, but the two Senators pushing the thing are REPUBLICANS, which only goes to show that the answer is not having the "right" party in power. The only solution is to have -less- government, with less money to create dangerous situations like this.
But don't feel too bad. The Canadian super duper bug lab is in Winnipeg. That's a city pretty much in the middle of the country. Government funded assholery is international.
Long Island isn't known for regularly-occurring natural disasters. Kansas is.
However, your suggestion of North Dakota is a very good one. It's even more sparsely-populated than Kansas, and there's never any natural disasters there, unless you count -40 temperatures (which as you point out are a good thing for this application).
Well, except that it wasn't in Kansas, nor was it in a location especially noted for tornados, or earthquakes, or much of any recent climatic or geologic problems.
4. That's more of a HR issue than anything else. My guess is it wouldn't be that big of an issue. How many super duper Level 5 trained people want to move out to some little island in the middle of the fucking Pacific ocean?
If it's a nice island, I imagine you'll have a much easier time recruiting great candidates to there rather than Kansas. I, for one, would be happy to live on a nice tropical Pacific island as long as there's at least a town there, and good internet access. But there's no way you'll ever get me to move to Kansas.
However, it did occur to me that they have hurricanes in the Pacific, so wouldn't that be a danger to putting a research station like this on someplace like Guam?
Typical New Englander mentality: Fuck the Irish.
I'm rated troll now. :)
But on topic,
1. yes, samples come from somewhere but they don't escape to anywhere important if you crash on an isolated island. They do if you crash in Kansas. Or drop the sample box on the runway.
3. There's plenty enough people in the mid-west for an escaped bug to spread through. And isn't the point of a secure Level 5 lab to make people -safer-?
4. People will be expected to -live- in Kansas and drive to work. (Thereby radically increasing the chance of spreading bugs, btw.) No one will be expected to live full time on Dr. No's Pacific island. They will do rotations and live someplace where they want to be.
5. No, you didn't.
Isolated island good. Farmer's field in Kansas, bad.
I bet you more will get done about this by people who first look to see who endorses it than who worry first about what party they associate with. Get the names of people involved. Don't even start off by describing them as 'bureaucratic' until you know a few job titles and such. See if any of them are scientists, MD's, representitives. Senators, business leaders, or lobbyists, find out who is on a federal public payroll, who is state funded, and who is on a private one, and then, if it still looks important, yes by then you might want to check party affiliations. But all rushing that part does is alienates some people who might give a damn otherwise.
Oh, and Snake probably won't be played by Kurt Russell if 99% of everybody dies first. Ahnald will naturally survive to play the terminator one last time - he said he'd be back after all. What, nobody argued with John Warner living through the global pandemic from Hell? What's with you people?
Who is John Cabal?
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.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
6. Much of the population does not believe in Evolution.
What a great place to do evolution dependent research.
Wait a second. If they don't believe in Evolution, then it none of it is really dangerous.
Living in Chile
How is it assholery?
The government has to choose between placing the lab in the geographic center (Kansas) or the population center (coasts) of the US. Both are bad for different reasons.
If remoteness is what you want, we could build it in Alaska, but that would generate all sorts of complaints about the region's geographical stability, cost, and political favoritism. You also have the issue of transportation.
Truth be told, modern construction techniques have made it perfectly safe to place buildings in tornado and earthquake-prone zones. Transport also isn't much of an issue, given that we've figured out how to transport nuclear waste in containers that are designed to withstand pretty much anything. (Hazardous materials could and should be stored on-site in similarly robust containers)
Honestly, this sounds like a story cooked up to increase ratings, and get people riled up.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Before starting, I should probably mention that I actually live in Manhattan, KS and attend Kansas State University, the proposed site for the lab.
I have to start by say that not putting something here because of tornadoes is a pretty thin claim, as tornadoes are a pretty rare occurrence by all accounts, especially in Manhattan due to it's location. In the seven years I've lived here only one has even brushed a portion of the town. While for some this may be too much of a risk, there are plenty of precautions that can be taken to lessen the risk.
More importantly, the campaigning for the location of this lab and all the money and frills that come with it has been very competitive and heated over the last couple years with a number of accusations and claims coming from all the sites. A good number of them coming from the contender site that was almost chosen in Texas that has been very critical of the Kansas location. Though it is rarely mentioned that the section of Texas in question has a greater likelihood of tornadoes by a large margin.
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -Isaac Asimov
It's what my wife has, always sticking her foot into her mouth.
Funny, she's got bird flu too, from putting too much cock in her mouth.
Ba da bing!
I've posted this elsewhere on this story, but it's worth pointing out that we've been transporting nuclear material by road for quite some time, and without major incident.
Part of the reason behind this is that the containers used for shipping are deigned to withstand a collision from a fully-loaded high speed train.
That sort of accident is extremely unlikely, given that trains are not permitted to run at high speeds through grade crossings, while commercial/hazmat truck drivers are required to make a full stop at such crossings. I'm having trouble finding any record of an at-grade high speed collision (the Acela once hit a car while traveling at 70mph, while France's TGV has been operating for 25+ years without a single fatal accident).
Nevertheless, should extreme stupidity prevail, the container would still survive. It's hard to imagine an incident that would breach the container without also killing the pathogens stored inside.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Actually I suggested that Democrats are the party of more government...
This is often claimed, but I have never, ever observed this to be the case. Aside from a short period of small examples early in the Clinton administration, I've never observed either party make any significant effort to shrink government. Ever since Ford (the first president I remember), every party, every administration, and every congress has been the party, administration, and congress of more government. Lip-service aside, no one is committed to anything else. You can gauge someone's gullibility by the degree to which they believe one party the other favors smaller government, rather than just larger or smaller roles in various areas (each favors an expanded role in some areas and a smaller role in others).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Oddly enough, we already have facilities in highly questionable locations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_Level
Look for:
"National Biocontainment Facility"
"Shope Laboratory"
These are Biosafety level 4 facilities in Galveston, Texas.
They have hurricanes in Galveston... Big ones...
"If you RTFA you'll discover that the governor of Kansas is indeed a Democrat, but the two Senators pushing the thing are REPUBLICANS, which only goes to show that the answer is not having the "right" party in power. The only solution is to have -less- government, with less money to create dangerous situations like this."
Flaw: the whole thing is about a research facility designed to mitigate the risks of dangerous and extremely damaging diseases, something that's actually a good idea to have. this isn't an issue of government having too much money with which to do stupid things, or even an issue of having too much government, it;s an issue of government doing things for stupid, greedy reasons. In this case, the reason is almost certainly that Kansas wants more Federal research money to infuse the local economy (researchers need food, water, homes, clothes, cars, and all manner of other goods, plus they have to pay taxes), and given the topic at hand that is a stupid, greedy (who wants to bet me that either Senator has no ties to local construction contractors capable of taking on the government contracts this would immediately lead to? I'll just take your money now) reason.
It's not a matter of more government or less, it's a matter of better. For all that they claim to intend otherwise, the last 3 Republican presidents and have acted to increase the size and scope of government more than almost any other administrations in American history, and at least in my opinion they've done a tremendously shitty job of it. The Republicans believe that government is flawed, ineffective, intrusive and harmful to all aspects of our nation, and if you elect them, by God they will prove it. The Democrats may not do much better, but at least they don't bullshit you about trying to decrease the reach of government.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.