Earlier this month, I wrote a blog about the potential for a lab accident spawning the Next Plague.  Titled "When Labs Attack," it can be found at: http://www.scottmcpherson.net/journal/2007/10/2/when-labs-attack.html .

Now, an article in the Dallas Morning News rekindles the debate, with an even more impressive (read:scarier) set of statistics, plus a revelation regarding Texas A&M University's lab accident history.  None of this would be common knowledge without the efforts of watchdog group The Sunshine Project (http://www.sunshine-project.org/).  The Sunshine Project was told of several problems at the university's brand-new facility, including the infection of a researcher with bruscella, a potential biological agent.  The researcher was improperly cleaning a container called a Madison Aerosol Chamber (A-ha!  Madison, now where have I heard "Madison" and "lab accident" recently!  Oh yes!  More on that later).  By the way, this happened almost two years ago, and just started coming to light this past Spring.

Anyway, read this nightmare narrative from the Sunshine Project's report:

By April 2006, the researcher had "been home sick for several weeks." Nobody apparently suspected brucellosis, despite the occupational exposure and, presumably, familiarity with its symptoms. Eventually, the researcher's personal physician ordered blood tests and made the diagnosis on about April 10. On 15 April, the infected researcher began a heavy treatment course reflecting the severity of the situation. She received a week of intravenous antibiotics followed by a 45-day course of two additional antibiotic drugs. Just over a month later, new blood tests indicated that the infection had passed. (bold mine)

The full report is available at: http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr120407.html . So a bunch of scientist dunderheads failed to match the symptoms of bruscella infection with the condition of the researcher, who had climbed into the chamber and had been absent for several weeks?  Where did they think she went, Lollapalooza?  And we are funding these brainiacs?

Now, where did I recently hear of Madison?  Oh yes, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's attempt to work with what I call a "fax" of Ebola in a biocontainment facility not rated for such experiments.  I covered that little faux pas in When Labs Attack.  Anyway, the Madison Aerosol Chamber is a joint development of the Baker Company and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's mechanical engineering department, presumably also with the assistance of the infectious disease department.  The PDF file of the Madison Aerosol Exposure Chamber, can be found at: http://www.bakerco.com/lib/pdf/benchmarks/Summer2006.pdf

Anyway, the document details very clearly the risks associated with the use of this device.  Apparently, the Aggies did not read the manual.  Figures, they didn't put 2 and 2 together and almost killed one of their own, so why should we think they would bother to RTFM (a nice acronym frequently used by frustrated computer support people)?

The Houston Chronicle also reported on the matter, albeit in September.  Apparently, the problems did not become public knowledge until the CDC sent a letter to the administration at Texas A&M regarding the multiple hazards.  Here is a digest of the story:

Texas A&M Says It Will Deal With Safety Issues Regarding Research on Pathogens

By JJ HERMES

Texas A&M University at College Station is working with federal officials to allay their concerns about safety and security violations in laboratories at the institution that study dangerous microbes, the university's interim president, Eddie J. Davis, said on Thursday.

A dozen such violations were outlined in a critical letter from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was made public on Tuesday (The Chronicle, September 5). Those violations included the university's inability to account for at least three vials of microbes, which the CDC described as "missing," and instances in which researchers worked with regulated bacteria without having received permission, or entered labs that they did not have permission to enter.

OK, let's cease the attacks on the Aggies and focus on the larger issue. They have a mediocre football team and probably won't finish bowl-eligible anyway,  

Ever since 9/11, with the Japanese Sarin gas attacks and Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons attacks upon his own people both squarely in the rear view mirror of our consciousness -- along with the knowledge that Soviet scientists were up to some diabolical things that could now be sold to the Highest Terrorist Bidders --  the US government set about to do as much research on defeating biological and chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction as possible.  The Peace Dividend would be the ability to protect Americans and our allies from the scourge of such attacks if they came naturally, as well as being cooked up in some Iranian, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or North Korean lab.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that some 15,000 Americans are now licensed to work on these dangerous pathogens.  And like all humans, they are prone to making mistakes.  Except this time, the mistakes can be fatal.  Read this list of boo-boos from the article:

•In August in Great Britain, contamination of foot-and-mouth disease was discovered at several farms near top-security labs working with the live virus. Investigators found leaking pipes and poor drainage at the labs and they believe contaminants got into farm soil.

•In August, a lab worker at St. Louis University was stuck with a needle contaminated with monkeypox, a disease similar to smallpox.

•In June, an hourlong power outage at the CDC's newest top-security lab outside of Atlanta raised serious questions about the safety of the agents inside the facility, after the backup generator failed to deploy.

•In May, a lab employee at the University of Kentucky was exposed to plague bacteria after a protective bag leaked.

•At the University of Texas at Austin in April, a researcher mistakenly came into contact with a cross between the bird flu and human flu. The researcher was put on drugs and the lab was shut down for decontamination. (bold mine)

•In 2006, a lab worker at Texas A&M University was infected with Brucella and later that year, several researchers were exposed to Q fever. A&M failed to report the incidents at the time. Since the news broke this summer, at least a dozen other violations have surfaced. A&M has had its biodefense research suspended while the university tries to clean up the program.

•At the University of Wisconsin in 2005 and 2006, researchers handled the Ebola virus in labs not approved for it.

•At the University of Chicago in 2005, a lab worker punctured his or her skin with a needle contaminated with anthrax.

•A Russian researcher died in 2004 after being exposed to Ebola in a lab. (bold mine)

•In 2004, a researcher at the Medical University of Ohio was infected with Valley Fever. The following summer other workers were exposed to the same agent.

•Three lab workers were infected with tularemia at Boston University in 2004, but the infections weren't immediately reported to authorities.

•Several Chinese researchers working with SARS in Asia in 2003 and 2004 were infected with the disease. One individual died. (bold mine)

Continuing with the story:

The CDC has conducted more than 600 lab inspections since 2003 and referred nearly 40 lab operators to federal investigators for violating "select agent" regulations, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's director of terrorism preparedness.

And despite the fears surrounding biodefense research, U.S. biosafety experts say, public health risks are remarkably low. Of the 105 biosecurity breaches involving select agents reported to the CDC since 2003, only three involved lab worker illnesses.

Those comments are designed to make you feel better.  Let me also throw out these stats, also from the same story.  I intersperse commentary:

Though no official count exists, federal investigators estimate there are between 400 and 1,200 high-security labs operating in private and academic settings, many of them in or around major urban centers.

No official count?  NO ONE in the Federal Government has a handle on how many of these potential incubators of virus are operating?

Fifteen of those labs are Bio-Safety Level 4, or "BSL-4" – the facilities equipped to handle the world's most dangerous pathogens. That's up from just five BSL-4 labs operating in 2001.

So we have increased the number of Ebola-ready biohazard labs by a factor of three.

In a report prepared for lawmakers this month by the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, officials questioned 12 federal agencies involved with biodefense research – from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Defense – to find out whether they tracked the growing number of infectious disease labs in the U.S.

None did, the report said. (bold mine)

Nor were any of the agencies solely responsible for determining how many more labs were necessary, monitoring the research performed there, or analyzing the risks associated with the burgeoning biodefense program. The findings have been confirmed by independent researchers.

Federal officials say while there may not be a single government body that oversees the country's biodefense research, each of the 12 agencies plays a specific, designated role – whether it's reviewing grant proposals, overseeing experiments and results or reporting lab accidents.

I remind you that according to the Pope of Influenza himself, Dr. Robert Webster, the reason why we have H1N1 today is the result of a Soviet lab accident in 1977 that released a derivative of the 1918 Spanish Flu virus upon humanity.  The strain received the nickname "Russian Flu" because it was typed in Russia.  Recall that influenza plays "King of the Mountain" and it is exceedingly rare that two strains of Influenza A exist at the same time en masse among humans.  At least not until 1977, anyway.  That accidental release sparked the "age-specific pandemic" among people who were born after 1956.  Prior to 1956, H1N1 was still the dominant strain of Influenza A.  People born after 1956 had no immunity to H1N1.  So the artificial emergence of H1N1 created pandemic conditions for anyone born in 1957 or later.   

The Sunshine Project's Edward Hammond puts it best: "But we have gone way too far, to the point that I believe that the most likely source of a bioterrorist event in the U.S. is a U.S. biodefense lab."

Hat-tip to www.birdflubreakingnews.com and FluTrackers poster Tropical for pointing out the Dallas Morning News story.