My concern started about 4 years ago: Insanity of the almighty dollar short cuts. imagine a breech with a world class port just a few miles
away...
from source:
www.rense.com...
Apparently unwilling to hold its researchers back over biosafety issues, and despite the lack of adequate facilities, the UW IBC approved 1918 flu
projects. It has allowed some activities to go forward in an existing (non-animal) BSL-3 facility, despite USDA's BSL-3ag designation of the agent.
Remarkably, the UW IBC also decided, on the spot, to change the biosafety level of the new UW lab. The IBC decided that the new lab, previously not
intended to be BSL-3ag, would meet the more stringent designation "in principle". This dubious endorsement enabled grant applications to move
forward and for UW researchers to proceed to acquire the 1918 flu from USDA, with the "in principle" UW BSL-3ag lab.
After "resolving" the problem of not having appropriate containment, the UW IBC then considered the operating procedures to be followed in the
existing BSL-3 lab for 1918 flu experiments. Here, the "culture of responsibility" of the UW IBC again failed.
The benchmark that the UW IBC referred to for 1918 flu safety were procedures used to handle human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). But the virus that
causes AIDS is relatively difficult to transmit, especially by aerosol, the main cause for concern with influenza. Moreover, the risk to the community
posed by a lab-acquired HIV infection is trivial in comparison to the threat posed to the world by a case of potentially pandemic influenza.
The UW IBC only considered one of the many opportunities for influenza aerosolization in the studies, that if a tray were dropped. In such an event,
the UW IBC decided that researchers "will be trained to stop breathing... just as they are taught to do when working with HIV". An independent
microbiologist who the Sunshine Project provided a copy of the UW IBC minutes called the UW biosafety protocols in the 1918 project to be
"inappropriate" and "risible".
The minutes of the UW IBC also suggest - but don't entirely clarify - that UW researchers, already working at a lower level of containment than that
assigned by USDA, may plan to place cultures infected with 1918 influenza in an unshielded centrifuge. Because their spinning energy can rapidly
aerosolize liquids, centrifuges are a notorious source of laboratory infections.
UW's irresponsible treatment of biosafety in the 1918 influenza project does not appear to bother the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Disease (NIAID). NIAID recently funded the project. Its formal start date was the beginning of this month, July 1st, 2004.(5)