Scientists call for expanded safety review of BU biolab

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

An elite panel of scientists this morning urged the federal government to substantially expand its safety review of a controversial research laboratory being built by Boston University.

The recommendation comes from the National Research Council, an independent advisory board of scientists, which sharply criticized the federal government in November for its safety assessment of the BU project, branding the review "not sound and credible."

Leaders of the National Institutes of Health did not have an immediate reaction to the recommendations. But if the NIH embraces the advice, the opening of the BU lab could be significantly delayed. Already, the university had abandoned long-stated plans to open the South End facility by this fall, and a BU spokeswoman this morning said it was premature to speculate about a revised opening date.

BU won a hard-fought competition in 2003 to open one of two new Biosafety Level-4 labs in the country, regarded as cornerstones in the Bush administration's campaign to prepare for possible acts of bioterrorism. The high-security lab, underwritten by the NIH and part of a larger project being built on the campus of BU's medical school, would allow scientists to work with the world's deadliest germs including those that cause Ebola, plague, and Marburg.

Opponents of the project, known as the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory, have taken to the streets and the courts for five years to fight the project. While state and federal judges did not halt construction -- now 80 percent complete -- they did order further review of its risks.

As a result, the NIH conducted an additional safety analysis, and it was that review that sparked the wrath of the National Research Council in November. Clearly stung by that rebuke, the NIH director, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, asked the National Research Council for guidance on improving the risk assessment of the project.

In today’s 21-page letter to Zerhouni, the National Research Council stressed its belief that there is a need for Biosafety Level-4 labs and that they can be operated safely in bustling urban areas. "However," the letter said, "the committee's view remains that the selection of sites for high-containment laboratories should be supported by detailed analyses and transparent communication of the available scientific information regarding possible risks."

Specifically, the council recommended that NIH perform a far more detailed analysis of the risk posed by the potential release of lethal germs into the neighborhood surrounding the lab. And it said the review should include more types of germs than the earlier NIH analysis. Federal analysts should also take into account not only work done in the Biosafety Level-4 lab but also research conducted in lower-security labs that will operate in the project.

The council emphasized that NIH should carefully weigh the impact of the project on the South End, an economically and ethnically diverse neighborhood with a significant proportion of poor residents. "Communities, such as the ... neighborhoods that surround the [project], face challenges that could affect, among other things, the transmission of infectious disease, the health consequences, and the scope and deployment of public health responses."