Nighttime hearing set on BU biolab
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff
Responding to complaints about the timing of an earlier hearing, a blue-ribbon panel advising the federal government on Boston University's controversial research laboratory will conduct a nighttime public hearing.
The public will have its say from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Oct. 14 at the Roxbury Center for Arts at Hibernian Hall, 182-186 Dudley St.
The panel is advising the National Institutes of Health on how to improve its environmental review of the lab project, being built in the South End on BU's medical school campus.
The board was convened 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 panel visited Boston in May for a public hearing, but the event was scheduled for a weekday morning, drawing complaints that the timing prevented many working people from attending.
The lab, largely underwritten by NIH, is designed to allow researchers to work with the world's deadliest germs, including Ebola, plague, and Marburg. South End and Roxbury residents have taken to the streets and the courts to protest the project.
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Elizabeth Cooney is a former
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I just received a recorded phone message informing me of this hearing. The voice spoke so rapidly that there was not time to write down enough info to know where and when the meeting will take place. Fortunately, I was able to try different scraps of the info that I was able to write down in a Google search and thankfully found this page. Not everyone is able to do this for lack of computer access or skills. This is not fair.
Also, the message was first in English and then in Spanish. One is not able to choose a language and there was no choice to repeat the message. I had to listen to first the English message and then the Spanish message to find out that a repeat was not offered.
It would also have been helpful to have been given a URL (web address) where this information could be found - a simple one that could easily be written down during the phone message, like www.boston.com/biolab.
epk