NIH hearing on biolab to be webcast

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

The National Institutes of Health will present a live webcast tomorrow of a blue ribbon panel's Boston meeting reviewing a controversial laboratory being built by Boston University.
The meeting is scheduled to begin at the State House at 9 a.m., and will be available for viewing . The hearing, in Gardner Auditorium, is open to the public.

Members of the public will be able to address the scientists, an independent board of specialists enlisted by NIH after the The blue-ribbon panel of specialists was convened by NIH after the National Research Council, an independent board of scientists, issued a report in November that was sharply critical of the federal government's earlier safety reviews of the BU project.

The lab, largely underwritten by NIH, is designed to allow researchers to work with the world's deadliest germs, including Ebola, plague, and Marburg. More than 80 percent complete, the project is on Albany Street in the South End.