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CDC Closes Anthrax, Flu Labs After Potentially Deadly Mix-Ups Come to Light
In the wake of two potentially deadly accidents, the CDC yesterday announced the temporary closure of both the anthrax and flu research labs at the agency's Atlanta headquarters. The New York Times reports:
In one episode last month, at least 62 C.D.C. employees may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria after potentially infectious samples were sent to laboratories unequipped to handle them. Employees not wearing protective gear worked with bacteria that were supposed to have been killed but may not have been. All were offered a vaccine and antibiotics, and the agency said it believed no one was in danger. “We have a high degree of confidence that no one was exposed,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the C.D.C. director. Credit David Goldman/Associated Press In a second accident, disclosed Friday, a C.D.C. lab accidentally contaminated a relatively benign flu sample with a dangerous H5N1 bird flu strain that has killed 386 people since 2003. Fortunately, a United States Agriculture Department laboratory realized that the strain was more dangerous than expected and alerted the C.D.C. ... The anthrax and flu labs will remain closed until new procedures are imposed, Frieden said. For the flu lab, that will be finished in time for vaccine preparation for next winter’s flu season, he said.
That is what should happen surely?
As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
Live Anthrax
It looks a hell of lot more than 62 people, though.
Why am I reminded of the game: Halflife, level: Unforeseen consequences right now?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"People that do stupid things with dangerous objects often die."
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If you think mistakes and carelessness are rare with level four viruses, I recommend The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.
If you remember you have something to live for, it will keep you up nights.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The handling of deadly disease agents should be privatized and put into the hands of industry as soon as possible! Let the free market solve the problem!
You win the internet! Make sure you don't get Caught in a Mosh when you Got the Time.
And then everyone dies.
Why the hell is the USDA being given samples of flu from the CDC?
I really, realy hope you aren't this stupid - anthrax spores can probably be cultured from the dirt in your backyard by any competent undergrad microbiology student.... sticking our head the sand and saying "LALALALALALALALA" works about as well in bacteriology as it does for global warming, the NSA, Wall Street corruption, etc.
Really hoping I've been Godwin-d.
See subject. Says it all.
... thank goodness the Feds are taking ever larger roles in healthcare! Clearly, they know what they are doing.
> Employees not wearing protective gear worked with bacteria that were supposed to have been killed but may not have been.
So the employees didn't use protective gear during their work, and that got them slated for a killing? I can understand trying to contain an outbreak, but one would think they should have been quarantined and tested for infection before commencement with the killing. Who's in charge of this mickey mouse operation anyway?
I suppose if upper management ignored the problem for long enough, it WOULD eventually sort itself out...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Re "Why the hell is the USDA being given samples of flu from the CDC?"
A lot of cash is/was sloshing around for eg. Department of Health and Human ServicesÃ(TM) Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority: BARDA, Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, National Biodefence Analysis and Countermeasures Centre (NBACC) and Project BioShield.
Thats a lot of cool grants, funding, equipment, advancement and status within the US military industrial complex.
Every so often staff, the press and other governments like to comment on the signed international treaty obligations and labs that "test equipment", do "biosurveillance", "monitor pathogen outbreaks" or 'defend' or 'predict' using creative lab work.
e.g. that pesky 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC)
To share the funding and escape any questions over decades a wide variety of fronts, funds and locations are used, some internationally.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"Employees not wearing protective gear worked with bacteria that were supposed to have been killed but may not have been."
The Employees were supposed to have been killed? Now which Three-Letter-Angency is responsible for that?
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Mira Grant sleeps with a machete under her bed, and highly suggests you do the same.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But without the Headcrabs
So begins World War Z!
In British law we have the slightly perverse sight of government instutition being charged in their own right - without the need to identify an individual. The outcome is fines paid by one part of government to another, but it does focus the leadership to get it right (my own police force has at least one conviction for health and safety violations arising from the death of police office).
When you live with a situation that the world labels 'dangerous' and nothing happens, it's hard to keep believing its really dangerous. This is why deterrent sentences on criminals don't have much effect; people get used to the idea, and carry on living in the same way regardless of the risk. Sad but true!
If the law has been broken, then it is always chargeable as a offence, even if it's as a result of stupidity not criminal intent. The alternative is that ignorance becomes an absolute defence, which makes no sense.
I'm guessing that there are laws about such things...
At the vaccination research lab funded by Jenny McCarthy, all of the workers who were treated for exposure are now autistic.
... seeing as there is no such thing as 'vaccination', and Jenner was a fraud...
http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen1.html
Still, better parrot whatever the T.V. tells you, right?
Alas, it exists in the wild and so the only way we can destroy it there is to study it in a lab.
The problem, of course, is that if there is no meaningful accountability, then there's no incentive to get it right. UK unions are attempting to get a named company director liable for health and safety violations to encourage compliance, but the reality is that it's so difficult to do that the outcome is liable to be that nobody would accept the job. By contrast the National Health Service is trying to encourage 'no blame' reporting of errors, but there the ambulance chasing lawyers turn up and make it undesirable to admit errors for a different reason Thanks for making me think!
Mixing up viles of anthrax and flu to create.. Anthrax-Flu!
All this comes with a potential smallpox scare this week too:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-09/vials-of-smallpox-discovered-in-us-government-storage-room/5583542
A fun week at the CDC.
--Q
I just binge-played Plague, Inc. on my phone.
Now when I hear a story like this, my first thought is, "Will I get bonus DNA points because of this?"
I was confident that rules would exist. Two minutes playing on the OHSA website produced https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaw... which lays out comprehensive requirements for biohazard materials. I would have been amazed if they hadn't existed - which is why I 'guessed'. Governments are often predictable!
I accept your point which is well made. I was referring to ignorance of the regulations about a topic when fully aware of the facts. Telling the IRS you didn't know about a tax rule is generally not a successful strategy!
You're all fired.
The purpose of the criminal law is to protect the public from damage caused to people or their property as a result of the actions of another. The failure to deal correctly with these biohazards raises the prospect of serious damage to people. Therefore it is logical to invoke the criminal law to punish those who put people at risk of serious damage. If there are no consequences on the perpetrators of an offence, in the broadest terms, then there is every reason to expect people to do it again. The only question left is whether this is the BEST way to ensure future compliance / a safer society. This can be disputed - but that criminal sanctions should be seriously considered should be inevitable.
I know you are, so to speak, acquiring the urine in your post, but it should be pointed out that the sentence you quoted is not actually ambiguous in the slightest. For one thing, typically clauses modify the thing they immediately follow, which here is "bacteria," not "employees." There is also a phrasal verb ("worked with") in between the subject ("employees") and the object of that verb ("bacteria"), so there really is no way to parse the sentence differently. Furthermore, it is not idiomatic in standard English to refer to "employees that"; employees (like corporations!) are people, so it would have to be "employees who."
In my clinical virology lab we get test samples several times a year from the College of American Pathologists (CAP) to assure that we maintain our competency in diagnosing viral agents. One year, a technologist noticed that the respiratory culture she was looking at was remarkably "hot." Turned out it was the 1918 Pandemic Influenza A strain that killed a bazillion people! Gee, thanks CAP! That should be handled in a Biosafety Level 5 lab, not a Biosafety 2 lab! Thank goodness I wasn't reading those tubes as I'm very clumsy and have dropped way too many culture tubes in my 20+ year career! (Most of the time, they were negative, phew!)