Editorial; A valued new neighbor
Boston Herald
April 22, 2004
The national bioresearch lab proposed for Boston University Medical Center has been the victim of a raging outbreak of that most infectious of diseases – ignorance.
It’s one thing to be afraid of that which we don’t know. That’s natural. It’s another to simply ignore the facts. And that’s what opponents of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory (as it is properly known) are doing.
The $178 million project, expected to generate some 660 permanent new jobs, would be largely federally funded and could open as part of the medical center’s BioSquare campus by 2007. An estimated 13 percent of the facility’s space (a nine-story building is planned) would be devoted to a Level 4 biosafety research site with state-of-the-art security, including biometric ID systems and retinal scans.
But when some of the usual suspects on the Boston City Council – Felix Arroyo, Maura Hennigan, Charles Yancey, Chuck Turner – are on record as believing this is a bad idea, well, best not to confuse them with such stubborn facts.
The research in question is essential at so many levels – surely for national security purposes, but also to keep us all safe from future outbreaks of infectious diseases that are a fact of life, of nature and of our jet-paced society.
And while the NIMBY crowd rants on (one genius suggested, “This lab needs to be out in Timbuktu”), we would take this opportunity to remind them that this is OURback yard, too. And frankly, we can’t think of a better neighbor than a clean, secure research lab offering hundreds of new employment opportunities.
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