Clockwise from left: Preliminary plans for the biolab call for an eight-story building on what is now a parking lot on Albany Street in the South End; Boston University Medical Center's John R. 'Jack' Murphy will be one of the leading scientists at the new biolab; Klare X. Allen (second from right at table) with members of the Safety Net neighborhood coalition fighting the lab.

When Bioterror Moves Next Door

It will be one of the safest and most hazardous places on earth, right in the heart of Boston, a laboratory to combat pathogens like Ebola, smallpox, and anthrax. Scientists are calling it a biosafety lab, but others warn that it's a bioterror lab. So which is it?

By Daniel Schulman and Adam Smith

August 8, 2004

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Deep within the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland, a maze of hallways, done up floor-to-ceiling in gradations of beige, leads to a wing called "the slammer." The two-room isolation ward on the Fort Detrick base takes its name from the unnerving clank that the reinforced-steel air lock makes as it seals behind you. It ... (Full Article: 4415 Words)