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FROM TERROR TO ERROR
With its quaint brick buildings, wooded parks, and weekend tailgate parties, the campus of Texas A&M University hardly looks like a front in the war on terror. But teams of researchers there have long been part of the government's growing army of scientific soldiers.
Recently they have also become something else: poster children for the dangers inherent in the willy-nilly expansion of the nation's bioresearch program.
It all started when a private watchdog organization, the Sunshine Project, uncovered problems at one of the university's Biosafety Level-3 labs, which can handle "select agents"-dangerous pathogens, such as anthrax and tularemia, that can be aerosolized and used in terrorist attacks and for which a treatment or vaccine may exist. (BSL-4 labs handle select agents with no vaccine or cure, including Ebola and Lassa fever, as well as smallpox, which does have a vaccine.)
Last year, the CDC temporarily halted research on select agents at A&M when it found the school had allowed unauthorized access to contagious pathogens, misplaced vials of hazardous agents, and kept poor records on who entered the labs. Several employees showed signs of exposure to contagious and potentially fatal bacteria. The university, however, failed to report the cases.
In one troubling incident, on February 9, 2006, a PhD lab worker with no training in handling the highly infectious brucella bacteria, and no authorization to do so, was enlisted to clean out a chamber that aerosolizes pathogens. An investigation concluded that she wore ill-fitting protective goggles, a mistake that may have allowed the bacteria to enter her body through her eyes.
It was six weeks before the worker came down with flulike symptoms. It took 62 days to confirm the diagnosis of brucella infection. During much of that time, she "had resumed her normal activities, interacting with many people," the Government Accountability Office later wrote in its report. "It was fortunate that transmission beyond the initial exposed individual was difficult and that there was no risk of spreading the disease to the community," the GAO noted. "Many agents cause diseases that are easily transferred from human to human through coughing or fluid."
Nor is the A&M facility the only federally funded lab where shocking allegations have emerged. The institution's state rival, the University of Texas at Austin, now has two BSL-3 labs. Last June, Harold Davis, the associate vice president overseeing security compliance, resigned, accusing the university of resisting federal security guidelines. The university says it is in full compliance with federal regulations.
In September, a GAO report singled out security problems in two of the nation's BSL-4 labs. According to news reports, a lab at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas, had an outside window looking directly into the room where dangerous materials were handled, and the only vehicle barrier was a gate arm that swung across the road. The other lab, at Georgia State University in Atlanta, lacked complete security barriers and monitored cameras.
Even the CDC is not impervious to mishaps. At one lab a recent lightning storm caused a power outage, and the lab's backup generators shut down. Although no pathogens were on the site at the time, electricity to a critical safety system was cut off. In another case at the same $214 million facility, staffers duct-taped a door leading to a containment area when its lock broke. Even when the lock was repaired, the duct tape stayed on for a year as an "enhancement."
To some public health experts, the growing list of careless accidents and potential disasters illustrates fundamental flaws in a system that was built too fast, has become too big, and still operates with too little oversight. In the wake of 9/11 and the deadly anthrax attack that followed, the government made tens of billions of federal dollars available for bioterror research. And the National Institutes of Health was encouraging labs to expand into this kind of research. Thousands of microbiologists turned to this rewarding new field.
The result was that hundreds of new labs began storing and handling pathogens. "Suddenly there were swarms of people wanting to work on this issue," says Dr. Hamburg, who now serves as senior scientist at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She recalls the frenetic atmosphere when the spending surge began in 2002: "There was lots of money-it was just a frenzy at the feeding trough."
All told, over the last seven years, the number of labs that possess select agents multiplied more than twentyfold, estimates Richard H. Ebright of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. Over 1,350 public and private BSL-3 labs and 15 BSL-4 labs-and some 15,000 scientists-have been authorized to handle these types of disease-causing and often fatal agents.
Many experts defend the proliferation of labs, including Dr. O'Toole of the Center for Biosecurity, who engaged in biological warfare games in the '90s that helped galvanize biodefense. "We can fight about the right number of labs," she says, "but the more researchers you have working on this, the more likely you're going to get effective medicine and vaccines against these threats."
Nevertheless, years after the anthrax attack, federal oversight of many labs still relies on self-policing, according to a 2007 GAO study. The "limited federal oversight that does exist for high-containment labs is fragmented among different federal agencies," the report stated. It went on to say that "no agency is responsible for determining the aggregate risks associated with the expansion of these labs."
All BSL-4 labs and the BSL-3 labs that handle select agents are required to register with the Department of Agriculture or the CDC. But, experts say, more unregistered BSL-3 facilities working with pathogens that are not considered select agents but are still dangerous, such as tuberculosis, HIV, and typhoid, are operating under the radar, increasing the likelihood of accidents and other problems.
It's not even the potential for sloppy lab procedures that worries some scientists the most. It's the lack of effective mechanisms to screen those working in them. For instance, researchers handling select agents are required to undergo checks by the Department of Justice. Among the factors that would disqualify a subject: previous commitment to a mental institution, a federal crime, or association with terrorist groups. But the investigations are nowhere near as stringent as those used for new FBI or CIA hires. It wouldn't be hard, say critics, to slip in through the cracks.
"The simplest, most likely path" for terrorists looking to acquire bioweapons capability "is to obtain bioweapons agents and training by penetrating a U.S. research project," says Rutgers's Ebright. "One well-placed graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, or technician … it's only a matter of time."
The case of Ivins-who committed suicide shortly after the FBI identified him as the 2001 anthrax killer-is a powerful indictment of the system of background checks. Ivins reportedly battled mental health problems and told a therapist earlier this year that he'd experienced homicidal thoughts as far back as graduate school.
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