Slashdot Mirror
High Security Animal Disease Lab Faces Uncertain Future
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."
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.
I'm sure that security is better where God and the County Sheriff are packing.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
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... :(
Nothing to fear- all precautions have been taken.
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, bongo-beating idiots to cause problems. So security in this place should be "No badge, or it doesn't match the access list? Escorted away at gunpoint. ANY resistance? Bullet to the head."
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
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.
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!
Plum Island was not the only place where such research was done. There was this little Lab in the hills above Berkeley... (BTW, not LBL, although there was close collaboration.)
Nobody wants to live there anyway, especially during August.
If you feel a need, evacuate the rest of the state.
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
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.
Please help metamoderate.
Man, good thing the CDC doesn't have a BSL4 lab in Atlanta, where they're headquartered. Oh, wait.
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
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.
I thought the first outbreak was in Queens, not right next to Plum Island. Considering West Nile Virus has virtually no symptoms in 80% of the people it infects, and was well spread in parts of Asian, Australia and western Europe by the 60s (not to mention Africa where it came from, where in the 50s it was found 90% of people tested in Egypt had West Nile Virus antibodies), it is kind of surprising it took another 30 years to get to the US.
For the record, there's a massive human disease lab located right in the middle of tornado alley. Oklahoma if I'm not mistaken.
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.
These labs have a LONG track record of containment failures ?
Recent in both the US and UK.
Queens is on Long Island, and a number of Plum Island workers lived near NYC and commuted (with the ferry schedules and dorms on site, you didn't have to go home every night, for commuting the full length of long island).
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.
Learn to love Alaska
I figured it would be obvious Queens is on Long Island, as opposed to potentially misleading "Long Island Sound,right next to Plum island" when it was about 80 miles away on the opposite end of Long Island. Even if they get a lot of workers from Plum Island, they would also be getting a lot of travelers too. I had not heard of any US attempts at weaponizing West Nile Virus (outside of chem trail conspiracy theories), and had always seen it referred to as something the Soviets considered briefly and some scares that Iraq tried in the 90s.
The Plum Island laboratory has been run terribly in the past. There have been outdoor experiments on animals with communicable diseases, unrepaired holes in the roof, an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease (only in the US) from there which they admitted came from the lab, transfers of dangerous virus samples by car on busy highways against federal law[1], unlocked buildings with unlocked freezers holding samples to be transported, etc...
The first identified case of Lyme disease was within miles of Plum Island and spread from there. Research of similar viruses were going on at the time on the island. The first case of West Nile found in the US was within miles of Plum Island and spread across the US in the following few years. Encephalitis research was being done on Plum Island.
See the book "Lab 257" for details. http://www.amazon.com/Lab-257-Disturbing-Governments-Laboratory/dp/0060011416
This lab should be shut down, not relocated inland!
[1] Once a fatal accident of a courier left a virus package on the highway embankment until a fellow employee spotted it and retrieved it.
This nearly literal pork-barrel facility (which is already built, BTW) is about a quarter mile up the street of the main campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. It is however, within eyesight of the a) football stadium, b) basketball coliseum, and c) student recreational center. Bonus: just to the west of all of that is the only hospital in the city. Not that animal diseases *ever* jump to humans...
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.
We can completely eliminate the risk of an escaped pathogen by not doing any research. The progerssive anti-science outcry is just as stupid as the right-wing anti-science outcry.
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
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.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I take the Cross Sound Ferry (https://www.longislandferry.com/default.aspx) to New London, CT a few times a year. I'm always amazed at the ferry's proximity to Plum Island as we leave Orient Point, Long Island. On the CT side, I'm always amazed at the proximity to General Dynamics/EB's facility right in the harbor. Just on my last trip, we cruising within 500 feet of a nuclear submarine. From what I can see, there's no security, but then again, I have no idea what I can't see, and I imagine there is where all of the security is.
The OP post is incorrect about the new facility being the first in the US to study foot and mouth disease on large animals. The government's own website on Plum Island clearly shows a photo of a steer with a caption explaining that the scientists are injecting it with foot and mouth disease:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/plum/research.htm
I wasn't aware of Plum Island until I met someone last year whose son had contracted Lyme disease from one of the towns adjacent to Lyme (which is situated on the mainland directly across from plum island). There's a good episode of Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory which can be viewed on youtube about Plum Island. In it, they give the back story of how the "godfather of Plum island" was a nazi scientist under Himmler who had come to the states under Project Paperclip. One of his primary focuses while under the third reich was studies on spreading diseases to humans via mosquitos and ticks (lyme disease is spread to humans by deer ticks). In that episode they also reveal that in 2005 someone had uncovered federal documents which list lyme disease as one of the primary viruses being studied on plum island:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC1gV_6aSIA
There has NEVER been a facility that handles foot and mouth disease virus that has not had an outbreak. The most recent FMD outbreak in the United Kingdom was due to its high-security lab. Plum Island has also had a containment failure, but, because it was an island, it was able to be contained and the US didn't lose its FMD-free status. The same is HIGHLY unlikely to happen in Kansas.
I took a course at Plum Island a few years ago, and the place is amazing. If they are worried about terrorists, they should add armed guards to the current facility, or build a new facility on the island, rather than trying to defend a place that's 2 miles down the road from a veterinary school and in the heart of American cattle country.
The Kansas facility reeks of politics over science.
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 NIMBA or Pork or both.
Hey, now, this is *cattle* country -- they'd be screaming about beef , not that other, vastly inferior, meat product.
:-P
High Security Animal Disease Lab Faces Uncertain Future
Thanks to quantum mechanics, don't we all?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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 higher.
Learn to love Alaska