CDC Shuts Down Bioweapons Lab After Infections (Updated) | Danger Room | Wired.com
CDC Shuts Down Bioweapons Lab After Infections (Updated)
* By Noah Shachtman Email Author
* July 3, 2007 |
* 9:24 am |
* Categories: Weapons and Ammo
"The Centers for Disease Control has suspended bioweapons research at Texas A&M University, after the school failed to report four workers’ exposure to biological agents. It’s the first time the CDC has ever forced a research facility to stop work on so-called "select agents." Five labs and more than 120 lab researchers’ efforts have been halted, pending a CDC investigation.
Three researchers tested positive for exposure to the weapons agent
Q fever in April 2006, two months after another researcher fell ill from contact with the another agent,
Brucella, according to
documents obtained by an Austin-based bioweapons watchdog group.
University officials waited one year to report the Brucella case to the Centers for Disease Control. The Q fever case still has not been reported.
Federal law requires quick reporting of incidents.
In a 2005 study, 97 percent of the folks receiving National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases grants for biodefense research
hadn’t touched the bugs before 9/11. Hammond and other argues that inexperience is the Texas A&M flap is only the latest in a series of serious incidents at biolabs across the country in which people have become accidentally infected — or agent-packed animals have escaped."