Sparks fly on Boston lab plan
Local residents say Boston University BSL-4 lab would be in too
densely populated an area | By John Dudley
Miller
Plans to build a high-security bioterrorism research laboratory
at Boston University (BU) have split the local life sciences
research community, pitting hundreds of scientists against one
another.
Last September, the National Institutes of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded about $120 million for BU to
build the $178 million lab in Roxbury, a poor, densely populated
part of the city's South End. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney support the project, which awaits
the completion of state and federal environmental assessments and
the approval of the Boston City Council.
Penn Loh, executive director of Roxbury's Alternatives for
Community and Environment (ACE), told The Scientist the
lab should not be built in Roxbury, because the area is more densely
populated than that around any comparable US site already housing
biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) labs.
A March report from the inspector general of the
Department of Health and Human Services concluded that lab security
in US universities is unsatisfactory, following on a September report by the US Department of
Agriculture with similar conclusions. Construction of
bioterrorism research labs has been a tough sell in other areas of the country as
well.
Opponents to the BU lab cite a December 2000 memo written by NIAID's director of
its division of intramural research stating that one important
reason why a lab for NIAID employees should be built in Hamilton,
Mont., was its sparsely populated location.
On April 18, 146 Massachusetts
university professors sent a letter to the mayor and BU's trustees
opposing the lab, claiming that the risk that human error or
terrorist attacks might spread fatal bioweapon diseases outside the
lab was too great to accept. Two days later, the
university took out full-page ads in the Boston Globe and the Boston
Herald, giving 10 reasons to support the lab and listing 330
supporting scientists.
Sheldon
Krimsky of Tufts University has proposed that an independent
panel of scientists and citizens be appointed to examine the
scientific evidence and make a recommendation about building the
lab. He has served on two such panels in neighboring Cambridge in
the past, investigating the safety of DNA research in 1976 and
examining the safety of a proposed chemical warfare research
facility in the mid 1980s. Both worked extremely well, he said, the
DNA panel allowing research with oversight and the chemical panel
rejecting the weapons lab as too dangerous. �Boston should have
brought together� such a group in this case, Krimsky told The
Scientist.
Scientists who oppose building the lab have additional concerns
beyond the density of the population. Robert Lamb, of the University of Chicago, said it
is a bad idea to locate any high-level lab on a university campus,
because they typically won't invest as much money as federally
operated labs at places like the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention do in running them. �Universities are always cutting
corners afterwards to save money, because they're always broke,� he
told The Scientist. �It's complex and it's cumbersome, and
you need a huge support staff.�
David Ozonoff, a public health professor at BU,
said he opposes the lab because it will steal from the public health
research agenda. �The bioterrorism initiative is like a cancer,� he
told The Scientist. �It's hollowing out pubic health from
within.�
Loh said BU officials have been unresponsive, not releasing their
NIAID proposal to opponents and city council members until mid
April, more than a year after ACE began asking for it. The lab's
principal investigator, associate provost Mark Klempner, told The Scientist that that
BU had planned to release the 1500-page document �within a few days
of the notice of the award� last September 30, but couldn't because
of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by ACE.
It is unclear when the lab-building dispute will be resolved.
Three members of city council have introduced an ordinance that
would ban BSL-4 facilities citywide. According to Loh, the council
should take up and vote on the ordinance next fall, while the
environmental reviews should go through the summer and perhaps
longer.
Links for this article�NIAID funds construction of biosafety facilities,�
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases press release,
September 30, 2003. http://www2.niaid.nih.gov/Newsroom/Releases/nblscorrect21.htm Alternatives for Community and Environment http://www.ace-ej.org Inspector General, Department of Health and Human
Services, Summary Report on Select Agent Security at
Universities, March 25, 2004. http://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region4/40402000.pdf M. Anderson, �USDA: lab security too lax,� The
Scientist, November 26, 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031126/02/ Adam Rankin, �Western BSL-3 labs face fight,� The
Scientist, February 18, 2004. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040218/02/ Director, Division of Intramural Research, National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Memo of December 2000,
enclosure to letter from Paul Marshall to James Miller, December 15,
2000. http://www.ace-ej.org/NIAIDmemoRMLsiting.pdf Sheldon Krimsky http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/ Robert A. Lamb http://www.biochem.northwestern.edu/ibis/faculty/lamb.htm David M. Ozonoff http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/webph/index.php?index_id=X6904 Mark S. Klempner http://www.bumc.bu.edu/Departments/PageMain.asp?Page=5608&Depar
tmentID=348 | 
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