US disregarded experts over biolab

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US disregarded experts over biolab
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department swept aside evaluations of government experts and named Mississippi — home to powerful U.S. lawmakers with sway over the agency — as a top location for a new $451 million, national laboratory to study some of the world's most virulent biological threats, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Mississippi's lawmakers include the Democratic chairman of the department's oversight committee in the House and the senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is expected to approve money to build the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at one of five sites being considered. The two lawmakers said they were unaware of the Homeland Security evaluation system that scored the Mississippi site so low.

The disclosure is the latest example of what critics assert is the Bush administration's politicizing of government decisions, such as efforts to steer science over global warming at the Environmental Protection Agency and hiring and firing practices at the Justice Department.

"It is very suspicious," said Irwin Goldman of the University of Wisconsin, a leader of the unsuccessful effort to build the lab in Madison. His community's offer was among nine sites rejected even though the government scored it more highly than Mississippi's. "We wondered how everybody else did. It's interesting to know that we came out ahead of one that was short-listed."

The states where locations were eliminated despite earning scores higher than Mississippi include California, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin.

Government experts originally expressed concerns that the proposed site in Flora, Miss., was far from existing biodefense research programs and lacked ready access to workers already familiar with highly contagious animal and human diseases, such as foot-and-mouth virus, that could devastate the U.S. livestock industry. They assigned the site a score that ranked it 14th among 17 candidate sites in the United States.

But a senior Homeland Security official, Undersecretary Jay Cohen, overruled those concerns under the theory that skilled researchers would move to Mississippi if it were selected for the new lab, according to a July 2007 internal government memorandum, marked "sensitive information" and obtained by the AP. Cohen accepted the argument that, "When built, they come."

A former Navy officer, Cohen is a political appointee, nominated by President Bush in June 2006.

For Wisconsin, Cohen determined that community opposition to the new lab was too great despite the area's highly respected researchers. Some local officials had threatened to withhold sewer service from the lab.

"It raised my eyebrows a bit when Mississippi was selected," said George Stewart of the University of Missouri, another rejected location that also earned a score higher than Mississippi's. "Obviously, there were factors other than what they were looking in the site visits. The group that did the site visits were scientists and know what they were looking for. I don't know what DHS was looking for."

Stephen Schimpff, who led unsuccessful efforts to bring the lab to Beltsville, Md., complained that the government's analysis seemed confusing. The department said there were too many skilled researchers near Beltsville, just outside Washington, and the agency worried about competing to hire them.

"We were surprised when some of the things we felt were our strengths were turned back on us as weaknesses," Schimpff said.

Under the department's own rules, it was free to disregard the recommendations of the government experts it appointed. But it said it selected advisers who were experts and were screened carefully for any conflicts of interest, working through seven stages of recommendations over 18 months. Cohen personally made the choices for the five sites in the eighth and final stage of the decision.

Mississippi's lawmakers include Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Sen. Thad Cochran, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the subcommittee that oversees Homeland Security money. Each said he was not aware of the department's deliberations.

Thompson said he never spoke about the subject with Cohen. But the department said Thompson met with Cohen at least twice and discussed plans for the new lab, once in February 2007 in Mississippi and again a year later in Washington.

"You told me more about the process than I know," Thompson told the AP. "I haven't talked to anyone about it, not to Jay Cohen or anyone."

Flora, Miss., is not in Thompson's congressional district. But the consortium of public and private organizations working to attract the lab includes Tougaloo College, where Thompson received his bachelor's degree, and Jackson State University, where he was awarded his master's degree.

A spokeswoman for Cochran, Margaret McPhillips, denied that the department relied on the scoring system described in the documents obtained by the AP. She dismissed it as rumor.

"Our congressional delegation doesn't know about a scoring system," McPhillips wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "Mississippi's governor does not know of one. DHS is in Mississippi right now for a site visit and just confirmed with us that there is no scoring system.

"Mississippi has put forth a compelling application and it does not surprise me that someone might be trying to diminish the strength of our proposal by spreading this rumor," McPhillips wrote.

Some lawmakers already skeptical over the department's plans said Cohen's intervention on behalf of Mississippi appears improper.

"It appears that the undersecretary responsible for this program may have corrupted the site selection process by putting his thumb on the scale in favor of a particular site and its contractor, in violation of his own rules and over the objections of his own advisers," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. "This raises the question of whether DHS is interested in bioresearch or just shameless empire building."


Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, held oversight hearings in May examining the risks of building the new lab on the U.S. mainland near livestock herds. The facility would replace an existing 24-acre research complex on isolated Plum Island, about 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound.

Besides foot-and-mouth disease, researchers also would study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever and the Hendra and Nipah viruses. Construction would begin in 2010 and take four years.

"If any of the five finalists scored lower than those eliminated from the process, we've got a big problem on our hands," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Her state's proposal also scored higher than Mississippi's, but Homeland Security rejected it over "growing negative community feedback."

In his memo, Cohen acknowledged the government evaluation committees graded Mississippi's site as merely "satisfactory" with scores of 72 and 75 in its research and work force categories, respectively. The Mississippi site's overall grade was 81, or "very good," which still was lower than nine other rejected U.S. sites.

"While I take the committees' concerns to heart, I do not concur with the low scores," Cohen wrote.

A department spokeswoman, Amy Kudwa, said the agency's internal committee reviews "did not appropriately consider the unique contributions certain consortia committed to make in their proposals." Mississippi, for example, promised to work closely with Battelle Memorial Institute, a Homeland Security contractor that already manages some national labs elsewhere for the Homeland Security and Energy departments.

Besides Flora, Miss., the U.S. locations under consideration for the new lab are Athens, Ga.; Manhattan, Kan.; Butner, N.C.; and San Antonio.

The nine sites rejected as finalists that also earned high scores than Mississippi's location were: Leavenworth, Kan.; a different location in Athens, Ga.; two other sites in San Antonio; the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo.; Beltsville; College Station, Texas; Madison; and Tracy, Calif., near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

AP Exclusive: US disregarded experts over biolab - Yahoo! News

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Replacing Plum Island?

Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, held oversight hearings in May examining the risks of building the new lab on the U.S. mainland near livestock herds. The facility would replace an existing 24-acre research complex on isolated Plum Island, about 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound.

Besides foot-and-mouth disease, researchers also would study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever and the Hendra and Nipah viruses. Construction would begin in 2010 and take four years.


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Also this......................Devastate the US Livestock industry????

Government experts originally expressed concerns that the proposed site in Flora, Miss., was far from existing biodefense research programs and lacked ready access to workers already familiar with highly contagious animal and human diseases, such as foot-and-mouth virus, that could devastate the U.S. livestock industry.

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Then we have this...........Our Bush Administration

The disclosure is the latest example of what critics assert is the Bush administration's politicizing of government decisions, such as efforts to steer science over global warming at the Environmental Protection Agency and hiring and firing practices at the Justice Department


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[niecy]

Tug of war over new bio lab - USATODAY.com

Tug of war over new bio lab
Updated 14h 49m ago

WHERE SHOULD IT GO?
Critics say the Homeland Security Department's animal disease resarch lab should stay at its current location on Plum Island so that highly contagious viruses can't be easily spread.
Enlarge ARS-USDA via AP
Critics say the Homeland Security Department's animal disease resarch lab should stay at its current location on Plum Island so that highly contagious viruses can't be easily spread.


By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
Kathy Prescott was scared when she heard about plans for a huge, new animal disease research lab in her hometown of Athens, Ga.

When she found out that Athens landed on the short list based in part because of her city's eagerness to host the government-run lab, she got angry.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, the community doesn't even know anything about it,'" says Prescott, an artist who has launched a campaign with her husband to keep the lab out of town. "We were sold down the river before anybody even knew what this thing was."

Five states are vying for the Department of Homeland Security's nearly $500 million lab that will study the world's deadliest and most contagious animal diseases.

The lab's current location is Plum Island, an off-limits 840-acre government-owned island more than a mile off New York's shores.

Homeland Security says the lab is outdated and needs to be replaced with a facility that can develop vaccines and antidotes to some of the world's most exotic and dangerous foreign animal diseases. Such viruses, if released, could cause billions of dollars in damage to the economy and force the slaughter of untold numbers of cattle, sheep and pigs.

The worst of those diseases is known as foot-and-mouth disease; the world's last major outbreak occurred in Great Britain in 2001. It caused $16 billion in losses, and 7 million animals had to be killed and burned.

The five states angling for the lab — Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas — say it will create jobs, economic development and cachet.

"It brings prestige in a very dynamic (biotech) industry," says Duane O'Neill, president of the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership, which wants the lab in Mississippi.

Site screening scrutinized

But some lawmakers are questioning the selection process.

An internal review conducted by a panel selected by Homeland Security officials ranked the Mississippi site in Flora 14th out of 17 sites originally considered, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen overruled the city's low score and placed it in the top five.

"It appears that the undersecretary responsible for this program may have corrupted the site selection process by putting his thumb on the scale in favor of a particular site and its contractor, in violation of his own rules and over the objections of his own advisers," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., whose House Energy and Commerce Committee held oversight hearings in May examining the risks of the new lab.

However, under the department's rules it was free to disregard the recommendations of the government experts it appointed. Homeland Security said it selected advisers who were experts and were screened carefully for any conflicts of interest, working through seven stages of recommendations over 18 months.

A department spokeswoman, Amy Kudwa, said the agency's internal committee reviews "did not appropriately consider" certain important aspects, such as Mississippi's plan to work closely with Battelle Memorial Institute, a Homeland Security contractor that already manages some national labs elsewhere.

Safety concerns

Critics say the lab is better situated on the island, where highly contagious viruses can't be easily spread.

"The risk-reward ratio is something that needs to be discussed in more detail," says Republican congressional candidate B.J. Lawson of North Carolina. "I'd be happier if it stayed offshore."

Plum Island has captured the imaginations of novelists and filmmakers over the years. Author Nelson DeMille set his 1997 thriller of the same name on Plum Island; Clarice Starling tried to entice Hannibal Lecter with the promise of annual trips to the island in the 1991 horror film Silence of the Lambs.

Because it would cost more than $750 million to build a new, more secure lab on Plum Island, Homeland Security two years ago began looking for less-expensive alternatives.

It now has whittled its list down to five sites: Athens, Ga.; Manhattan, Kan.; Flora, Miss.; San Antonio, Texas; and Butner, N.C.

Elected leaders in all five states consider the lab a boon. It brings the promise of new construction, jobs, ties to research centers and more.

Last month, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, called securing the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) her state's "top bioscience priority."

Homeland Security didn't keep its plans secret from community leaders — officials from Georgia to Kansas have been wooing the lab for more than a year.

Plum Island is still in the running as well, but Jamie Johnson of Homeland Security says a new lab could be built on the mainland for about $500 million — and, he says, it would be cheaper to run a mainland lab year to year and easier to find top-notch workers who wouldn't have to commute by boat.

Homeland Security says it can build a safe, secure lab.

"We can never say it's never going to happen," Johnson says. "But we can build a safe facility."

Contributing: The Associated Press