Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Halts Work at Labs For Dangerous Pathogens After Anthrax Scare
An anonymous reader writes: The Pentagon announced yesterday it is issuing a moratorium on work at nine different biodefense labs after live anthrax was discovered outside containment at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The facility was discovered to have been shipping live anthrax specimens — instead of dead ones — to other labs. Work can only begin again after the shuttered facilities are certain to be clean of anthrax and assured of safe conduct. "The review calls for the military labs to ensure that personnel are properly trained on lab safety procedures and that necessary maintenance is conducted on biosafety level 3 lab facilities that work with some of the most dangerous pathogens. It calls for validating record-keeping and inventories of the military's 'Critical Reagents Program' — including 'ensuring that all materials associated with the CRP are properly accounted for.'"
Han Solo: [sounding official] Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal.
Voice: What happened?
Han Solo: [getting nervous] Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
When confronted with the possibility of a pathogen able to kill people, people are afraid that a pathogen can kill people. People are now freaked out that people can be killed by said pathogen. People are now asking said people, and I quote, "Why?"
Luckily for people, other people with degrees in molecular biology are panicking.
But we are safe. Thank you.
"If you can't keep your toys in your room, then you won't be playing with them at all. No, I really mean it this time."
The scientists' dessert privileges were also revoked in an unrelated incident.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Voice: Good. Well, it's good that you're fine, and - and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine.
The facility was discovered to have been shipping live anthrax specimens — instead of dead ones — to other labs.
#whatcouldpossiblygowrong ...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Clearly the automated barcode reader tool which should have grabbed boxes of dead rather than live anthrax has been co-opted by Skynet. Not as much fun as nuking cities, but leads to the same mountains of skeletons in the end.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I just hope that they make sure the contractors install all of the self-destruct deactivation substations properly.
=Smidge=
You don't need intelligence to follow procedure, you need to follow procedure to follow procedure. That's why there's a procedure to follow.
So, would you call that a subroutine?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Yes, Utah is crapy. We've been having a population boom from people migrating here for 20 years. Please don't move here...I prefer to have people think of this place as crappy before our housing and land costs continue to skyrocket from new people and businesses.
Didn't I watch this on TV? Oh yeah...it was The Stand.
> So, would you call that a subroutine?
Well obviously I'd have to check the procedure on naming procedures and follow that procedure...
"Critical Reagents Acquisition Program", there, now their acronym is perfect.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
ERROR label "that a subroutine" not found - unable to resolve to address
Actually, for some people, the winter season around the mountains and minor cultural things like Sundance would be all they need. Besides, U of U has a pretty good med school as far as research goes - I'd tend to think they'd know them some pathogens.
If you relocated about 90% of the indigenous religious folk, SLC might be a decent place to live.
That is all.
I work in the parent organization for the lab in Edgewood Maryland. The lab in Utah belongs to a different command. I'm going to say what you probably expect me to say, which is that we've got really good people. We have people whose work was used in Africa against Ebola, who are working on bar-coding spores, synthetic biology, scanning suspicious mail for the White House and the UN, etc. If you remember the mission during which the U.S. neutralized the Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles, all the actual scientists and engineers but one or two came from our labs, and they also designed the equipment and went to sea to do the de-mil. You may remember it as the Cape Ray mission, but it should probably have been called the Edgewood mission.
One non-obvious reason people work for the Army is that we do things nobody else needs to do. So, for example, Edgewood lab is the only place in the country certified to remove level 4 hazards from explosives. You can't get that kind of excitement just anywhere.
A reminder to all Black Mesa personnel: Regular radiation and biohazard screenings are a requirement of continued employment in the Black Mesa Research Facility. Missing a scheduled urinalysis or radiation check-up is grounds for immediate termination. If you feel you have been exposed to radioactive or other hazardous materials in the course of your duties, contact your radiation safety officer immediately. Work safe, work smart. Your future depends on it.
- Half-Life Announcement
So, will we be replacing the microbiologists with a very small shell script?
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Outlining a procedure isn't enough if you rely on faulty memory or you're plagued by monotony. Using a checklist rests compliance from the jaws of distraction.
Even highly trained intelligent people dealing with deadly procedures fall prey to oversight. Ask the Airforce, they developed checklists to keep flight crews alive. Decades later, hospitals adopted checklists to decrease fatal surgical mistakes.
The Checklist Manifesto is a book that promoted the use of checklists in medicine. Apparently it hasn't been vetted for use in DoD labs yet.
"Halt and Catch Your Death"
Didn't the lab just send live pathogens intentionally as a way to work around paperwork?
Like maybe the request for dead pathogens is interpreted by both party as a request for live ones but without the additional paperwork. Considering how overzealous regulators can be, the procedure required to send dead pathogens is probably secure enough for live ones.
Edgewood lab is the only place in the country certified to remove level 4 hazards from explosives. You can't get that kind of excitement just anywhere.
oh yeah? well i work from home.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I'm the CTO of a software company in Fairfax VA that has a tied together software suite of biomedical, lab safety/inspection, inventory mgmt, EHR and EMR tools. Our big clients are the NIH/FDA/USDA/HHS. I've seen it all, though from a safer vantage point. The researchers and scientists I've been in contact with have been top notch. The problem we see is enforcement of process, or at least a strong resistance against anything that gets in the way of real work. Remember the NIH smallpox find when researchers were moving to the new FDA campus? Guess whos software was to be used to inspect that particular lab. Guess who walked by that lab a ton? *shudder* The root cause was obviously a breach of process. Sorry to be a sales pitch but this is the stuff I think about and implement. It hits close to home. We track cradle to grave every vial, batch, user, experiment, occupational hazard, accidents involved and inspections to ensure process is enforced and any breach of process can be tracked to the exact point of time when failure occurred. Keep safe. Side note, y'all want to buy our software?! ;-)
Those religious folk you're worried about are a minority in SLC.
I guess I'll just state the obvious question no one seems to have asked yet. Why don't we just stop doing this? Who are you really scaring when we have hundreds of nuclear weapons, planes, bunker busters, warships, helicopters, drones, etc? Do we really need to be developing new pathogens to wipe ourselves out?
No, Utah totally sucks. It's worse than you imagine. Please move to Denver or Seattle.
Seattle sucks too, they don't even have high-speed internet service.
The suburbs of Seattle might be OK though. And at least they (and Denver) don't have the insane pollution levels that Utah has. Last I heard, SLC has the highest pollution in the US.
How much of a minority? A sizeable minority is still a problem, and has a huge effect on the overall culture of a city. Face it, SLC simply isn't known to be a liberal city in any way, not like Seattle or Portland or SanFran. The kind of people who'd really like to live in one of those cities probably would hate it in SLC.
Edgewood lab is the only place in the country certified to remove level 4 hazards from explosives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4 is your level 4 explosive precaution required, or something your organization uses? And Anthrax was present in BSL-3 facilities (though I don't know the current status). So your comments about BSL-4 are irrelevant to handling anthrax anyway.
Learn to love Alaska
You don't need intelligence to follow procedure, you need to follow procedure to follow procedure. That's why there's a procedure to follow.
Procedures alone don't cut it. You have to understand the procedure, understand when the situation doesn't fit the procedure, etc.
That's why the Navy's nuclear program, for example - definitely no stranger to procedure - also recruits smart people, and trains the heck out of them, not just in procedure but in theory.
It's expensive, highly selective, and therefore deeply unpopular in today's world - yet absolutely necessary if you are dealing with dangerous stuff.
Go to a farm. Rub your face up against a sheep. You now have Anthrax all over your face. Wool shearers are exposed to anthrax continually and there are a even few cases of it every year in the US, but Anthrax is really hard to weaponize. Good that they are going to clean up their procedures, but don't shit yourselves, okay? Same thing with Ebola: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Go to a farm. Rub your face up against a sheep.
I pray the Lord your soul to keep.
And then through gamma, out of sight, but we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion.
You now have Anthrax all over your face.
Beauty to find, in so many ways.
...The Pentagon announced yesterday it is issuing a moratorium on work at nine different bio-defense labs...
Hear ye! A moratorium has been pentagonally squozen. All is frozen, as is in the Frozen River of Orange Stone.
Dark works be done there, just as did Melkor in secret breed the hideous race of the Orcs
in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes,
and so it goes, and so it goes. Naught moves there. Some poised as they write,
centrifuges mid-spin, motionless, critters in dishes paused in the act of division.
One who'd just flicked the wrist to scramble the dial of the safe that holds the documents,
some on onion skin from times long past, Smith Corona letters slapped through carbon paper,
a Directive which establishes the purpose that brings us together to do this Thing.
Whatever that is. Until moratorium lifts, we are statues of stone. Time does not pass.
...after live anthrax was discovered outside containment at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah...
Scorpions trace mysteries in desert sand,
but not only they inhabit this desolate land.
Containment is here also, and when Containment has broke,
we all decide to go outside for a cool evening smoke.
Some greet greet the gritty air with silent cheer,
pondering what progress is made year after year.
Others secretly hoping the whole world goes berserk,
so that more would appreciate our odd line of work.
...The facility was discovered to have been shipping live anthrax specimens --- instead of dead ones --- to other labs...
That spark of life in nature is not easily subdue'd
and from it a live specimen becomes two, then a brood
the brood becomes colonies whose genetics diverge
who might gather to form tentacles if they are struck by the urge
but this tale concerns a vial 'd critter that was simply and sloppily, sent,
in a hand-lettered brown paper envelope not specifying content.
When the vial broke, the cradle did fall,
but the Baby was content to evolve quiet within, after all.
It formed colonies and dynasties that merged with the ink,
until the addressee on the envelope no longer said what you'd think
then it changed. And again. And again, why? Just because
smart life today arose from stupid that once was
and either smart is easier to evolve than you generally perceive
or it is easier to fool the Post Office that folks generally believe.
So here and there across the continent the envelope flew
stamped "Official Government Business" so no postage was due.
For months on end -- neural networks formed --- over eons to us
we formed societies, had revolutions, learned how to cuss
we no longer worshiped the permeable brown paper membrane as sky
and developed space travel to explore, which we did, by and by
we watched the Universe rearrange as our world-envelope traveled within
and figured that ink-address-thing, and how to 'send' ourselves to the bin
that is supposed to be reviewed and opened by trained personnel
whom, we had hoped, we could meet and greet, if all went well.
But the Universe is real tricksy and it was a circular bin
which led to the landfill and we were squashed within
Surrounded by food, we ate and were merry, were many, then more
and assembled new conveyances from discarded meat, plastic and gore.
These conveyances look like you, they are made and controlled by us,
we're that normal-looking gent sitting next to you on the bus.
That strange looking
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I trust corporations about as far as I can throw them, and as a veteran engineer with a background in military contracting I'd tell you to shut the fuck up and quit being smug.