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The
Scientist / January 28, 2003
Bioagents
in the Backyard
Putting secure labs in cities: universities seek to avoid
PR problem now facing NIH
By Peg Brickley
Boston
University School of Medicine has joined the list of schools
seeking to build new bioterrorism research laboratories, and
the University of Maryland School of Medicine is weighing
its chances in the contest for federal lab funds.
Like
universities in California, Illinois and Texas, the Boston
school is waging a public relations campaign in advance of
filing its bid for a grant from the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The Baltimore-based
medical school has kept its deliberations quiet, so far. But
spokesman Larry Roberts confirmed that University of Maryland
is considering
entering the competition for a share of $275 million in federal
grants to build one or two Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories.
The ability to enlist public opinion in support of research
on the most dangerous microbes in major population centers
is one of the criteria NIAID will use to evaluate applicants
for BSL-4 lab grants. University of California, Davis, University
of Illinois at Chicago and the University of
Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have all gone public with
their intentions to bid. Each has sent school officials out
to stump for the BSL-4 labs, courting local politicians and
the press.
"It was very important for us to hear the community's
concerns," said Ellen Berlin, spokeswoman for Boston
University School of Medicine. "The community is a very
important part of the process."
But on the National Institutes of Health's home turf, citizens
say the agency has been unresponsive to public concern over
its decision to build a Biosafety Level 3 lab on its campus
in Bethesda, Maryland. Construction on the new NIH BSL-3 space,
dubbed "Building 33," is expected to start in the
fall despite fears expressed by the agency's Community Liaison
Council.
"They're just using us as some sort of announcing forum,"
said Jack Costello, a retired military man and a member of
the body that consults regularly with NIH. "They give
a lot of lip service to us, but at the end of the day, when
we disagree with them, they do what they want to do anyway."
"I imagine there are always folks who feel they are not
listened to," Tom Gallagher, NIH's director of community
liaison, told The Scientist. The agency will announce plans
to conduct a risk assessment of the Building 33 project
at its Jan. 30 meeting, he said. "A number of the people
who have been opposed, verbally opposed, some of them scientists,
will be asked to be
on the risk assessment group," Gallagher added.
The scenario playing out in Bethesda may be replayed across
the country in the coming months. In addition to new university-based
BSL-4 labs, as many as a dozen new BSL-3 labs are in planning
stages at universities as part of the national anti-bioterrorism
infrastructure build-up. Also sprouting are the sort of citizens'
groups which in the past have stopped or stymied bioresearch
lab expansion from Utah to Plum Island, New York.
NIH's Community Liaison Council members have met regularly
with the agency for years. If the issue is non-controversial,
the lines of communication stay open, Costello said. But when
it comes to Building 33, some council members told The Scientist
that they are not getting all the facts from officials, that
their questions go unanswered and their concerns unheeded.
For example, Costello said, NIH officials refuse to explain
why they need a new BSL-3 lab in Bethesda or why they selected
a site close to the entrance of a Metro station, a grammar
school and two major highways.
"Nobody is disputing that the work needs to be done,
and that it needs to be done soon," Costello said. "But
we asked way back in June what alternative sites had been
looked at. No answer. I asked what criteria were used to decide
the site of the building. No answer."
Eleanor
Rice, a long-time member of the council and a retired NIH
employee, also worries that NIH is promising a level of security
that it cannot deliver.
"None of it can be foolproof and NIH was never meant
or intended to be a secure facility," Rice said, adding,
"I'm a supporter of NIH, but I'm not a sycophant. I approach
them with great skepticism. There is no long term accountability
except for us."
This site constructed and maintained by the Council
for Responsible Genetics
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