BU biolab delayed again
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff
The opening of a high-security laboratory in Boston's South End where scientists would work with the world's deadliest germs is being delayed once again -- until late next year at the earliest.
The federal health agency that is underwriting construction of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories on Boston University's medical school campus told a federal judge today that its latest safety review will take at least a year longer than originally projected.
The National Institutes of Health now estimates that it will not be able to submit the safety analysis to US District Court Judge Patti B. Saris until spring or summer 2010. Saris, overseeing a lawsuit filed by South End and Roxbury residents who want to block the project from opening, then will spend several months more evaluating the findings. If she gives the lab the green light, preparations for opening would still take additional time.
For now, the $192 million building sits complete but vacant on Albany Street. The centerpiece of the project -- which was originally expected to begin welcoming scientists in late 2007 or early 2008 -- is a Biosafety Level-4 lab designed to let researchers hunt for vaccines and drugs targeted at the highly lethal germs that cause diseases such as Ebola, Marburg, and plague.
Residents sued in state and federal courts, arguing that a densely populated neighborhood is no place for a lab that specializes in deadly viruses and bacteria. While allowing construction on the project to continue -- and, eventually, be completed -- judges ordered further safety reviews, declaring earlier analyses inadequate.
Dr. Amy Patterson, acting director of the NIH Office of Science Policy, said in an interview today that the latest safety review will analyze the consequences of an accidental or malicious release of any of 13 infectious agents. Those germs were recommended for evaluation by a blue ribbon panel that the NIH director established to provide guidance.
"What we're looking at is a process that is longer than I think previous risk assessments have taken," Patterson said. "But it's an effort to make sure that we don't leave any stone unturned. We want to get this right, so it's going to take longer."
The saga of the lab, which BU leaders viewed as a coup that would catapult them into the top ranks of medical research institutions, has unfolded for more than six years. Its single most enduring opponent, community organizer Klare Allen, said she believed that this time, there is hope that with this review, the NIH is "finally doing it right."
"Let's hope so, anyway," said Allen, of the advocacy group Safety Net. "After nearly seven years of begging, pleading, they are finally realizing we are not going away."
BU spokeswoman Ellen Berlin said that training for scientists in the building, which also includes lower-security labs, will begin this spring, although no germs will be used. The university, she said, welcomes the further safety scrutiny.
"This is an important process," Berlin said, "and the time is necessary to ensure that it is done appropriately."
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lets thank his majesty the mayor for bringing deadly germs into our neighborhoods...
I am Legend...u r history
lets thank GOD for the delay.........
Why don't we move this lab to Mexico?
GREAT! instead of having such lab constructed in the desert or under water somewhere, NOOOO lets find the most populated area and put it there!!! that makes PERFECT sense!!!! what an idiot of a mayor and governoment we have in this state!
FTA: Its single most enduring opponent, community organizer Klare Allen, said she believed that this time, there is hope that with this review, the NIH is "finally doing it right." "Let's hope so, anyway," said Allen, of the advocacy group Safety Net. "After nearly seven years of begging, pleading, they are finally realizing we are not going away."
In other words: "If this latest review shows that this facility is completely unsafe and should be demolished, then hallelujah for them 'finally doing it right'. If, however, it *still* turns out the facility is as safe as possible then they'll have obviously screwed up yet another review and I'll start kicking and screaming like a 2 year old again."
I hope they require all the employees to live fulltime within 2 miles of the facility.
Has anyone ever noted the fact that airplanes leaving Logan runway 27 (are technically required) to fly over this building less than a minute after leaving the runway? Airplane plus biohazard building plus densly populated area equals potentially catastropic disaster.
Dumb idea from day 1.
A biolab, what is this the Andromeda Strain?
I guess that has to go with the nuclear reactor at MIT, so we have a biolab
with the deadliest germs, a nuclear reactor, and the VAN DER GRAFT
MACHINE AT THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE.
SURELY!!!!!!!
MADDNNNESSSSS!!!!!
Any mayoral candidate vowing to stop the Biolab once and for all will automatically have my vote.
This is clearly a case of NIMBY, and the people of Roxbury need to get over it. If a contagent were released, the entire city would be affected, not just those located closest to BU's medical campus. BU is one of the largest employers in the state, and is at the forefront of research- let them help stimulate our economy!
If this Lab opens, I am moving away from Massachusetts. We are going to regret the day this happened if it happens. J. Robert Oppenheimer once said "the possible is inevitable." Putting the scariest pathogens on earth within a densly populated urban area is madness.
Putting it off until 2010? Isn't telling me it's going away.
Our politicians are failures. These people don't think of the ramifications of some deadly disease being released in the Boston area. A third of the states population is located in a 25 mile radius. I don't want to think of someone being infected by ebola and riding the T!
Boston does NOT need this evil lab. Put it in on a barge. 1000 miles in the middle of the Pacific.
Such a lab has no place in Greater Boston, not to say in the South End. it endangers the population and even the country, should an outbreak occur. Though the possibilities are slim, they can never be zero, but can be greatly mitigated by open spaces and with much more control potential if only a small number of individuals are exposed to an infectious agent. The potential for tragedy, though unlikely, is great. Hence great caution is warranted.
For the very same reasons we do not have nuclear reactors, refineries, or munition depots inside major urban centers.
This lab in the South End is just a monument to the hubris and arrogance of both BU and the major. There are many beautiful and appropriate locations in rural Mass, at lower cost, still within an hour or half an hour from major urban centers. These locales are fully appropriate and would benefit from the development and jobs.
Scientists are in it not for the living quarters, but for the opportunity to do science. They would gladly move to bucolic NE countryside. Science is efficiently and enthusiastically done in far less accommodating quarters such as the South Pole, research stations, caves, or even in the midst of epidemics in the jungle. A few hours commute to BU in Boston is not going to discourage these inquiring souls.
You're right David. I used to live on E Brookline Street right near the bio-lab and it was like living on the runway.
I can see Boston and half of New England being wiped out in a matter of minutes with the bozos at BU and Logan Airport.
Nina123 - good point on your part. Make them go down with the ship if there are any bio accidents; then they'd pay right on the spot for a killer germ that killed half the city. Oh Lord.
Kaz obviously does not reside in the South End.
David -- wouldn't the apocalyptic flames from jet fuel burn up the plague?
Currently, the deadliest plague on earth is AIDS. And yet no one seems to complain about labs working on it? It is a BSL-3 level organism. And, if highly drug resistant strains appear it will be moved up to BSL-4 level.
E
Go to rural Massachusetts, kill the cows, contaminate the milk??? Do we want to do this research at all? Really . . . .
What troubles me the most about this facility is not that it has been built in a dense urban area (which is sheer lunacy), but its very purpose. It is not, as has been touted by NIH, BU, and other supporters of the lab, a research facility intended to eradicate Earth's most deadly diseases. It is our country immersing itself in the Dark Arts. It is a facility and program funded by the Department of Defense, and provides the opportunity for the US to re-create deadly pathogens for use in biological warfare. Were this lab truly for the stated purpose, the funds would have gone to the Center(s) for Disease Control, which already has the facilities and/or authorization to carry out this type of research. Indeed, the secrecy and lack of public oversight that would be in effect were this facility to open is all the evidence we need to know its underlying, sinister purpose. That our Mayor, Congressman and Senators have opened the City of Boston to this blight - both actual and moral - on the basis of "job creation" is just another outrage. (On that basis, why not host a maximum security penitentiary, or a CIA detention and interrogation facility?) Our moral compass has gone awry because our leaders divert us with specious promises of easy pickings, failing to either see or acknowledge the poison at the core of the fruit.
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