BU biolab proposal wins federal OK

The federal government today gave final approval to Boston University's plan to build a high-security research laboratory in the South End where scientists hunting for vaccines and drugs will be able to work with the world's deadliest viral and bacterial agents, including ebola, anthrax, and plague.

The long-expected decision from the National Institutes of Health assures that BU Medical Center will receive $128 million in federal money to help pay for the Biosafety Level 4 lab, which will rise on Albany Street. Executives on BU's medical campus said today they expect construction to begin this month and to be complete in the summer of 2008.

"We are proud to be part of the national network of dedicated scientists and researchers who will use this state-of-the-art facility to safely find treatments and cures for some of the most dangerous infectious diseases that threaten Boston, the nation and the world," said Dr. Mark Klempner, lead investigator for the new lab.

The lab is a cornerstone in the Bush administration's campaign to prepare for potential acts of bioterrorism, and BU in September 2003 won a hard-fought competition to open one of two new high-security research facilities nationwide. Today's decision is the last of a lengthy series of approvals from city and federal agencies needed to allow construction to begin.

The lab would be unlike anything Boston's medical community has ever seen, with extraordinary measures taken to assure that lethal agents cannot escape. Despite those promised safety measures, the lab generated opposition from a fervent albeit small contingent of community activists, who said a congested urban neighborhood was the wrong site for such a laboratory.

The controversy escalated in 2004, when three workers at another BU lab became sick after they were exposed to a highly infectious strain of tularemia, or rabbit fever, that they had thought was less harmful.

Although all three of the infected researchers recovered, opponents expressed concern about the university's ability to manage the proposed Biosafety Level 4 lab which, according to the NIH Web site, would "work with dangerous and exotic agents that pose a high individual risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease."

University officials said the 2004 accident was not relevant to concerns about the new lab because it will have more comprehensive safety and security precautions.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.