B.U. biolab clears another obstacle
Boston Herald
August 24, 2007
By Boston Herald editorial staff
The National Institutes of Health yesterday ruled that the high-security biological research laboratory being built in Boston’s South End does not pose a threat to neighborhood safety and would be no safer if it were located off in a pumpkin patch somewhere.
That should close the book on the Biolab controversy, but it won’t. The stall tactics will continue, delaying important discoveries that will help prepare Americans for a bioterrorist threat.
The NIH report came in response to a judge’s call for further study of the so-called National Biocontainment Lab on Albany Street (the agency had already concluded the lab posed no threat to community health or safety).
Opponents of the Boston University lab have raised fears that the deadly germs to be studied there will escape and threaten the neighborhood. They have also argued it is being foisted unjustly on a minority/low-income neighborhood, and predicted a review of alternative sites would be a slam-dunk against Albany Street.
Not so. A study conducted by researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo for the NIH concluded that even if there were an accident at the lab, “under realistic conditions, infectious diseases would not occur in the community as a result.” Even when the risks were exaggerated to “force” an infection outside the lab, there was no greater likelihood that disease would be transmitted in an urban area vs. a suburban or rural community.
We don’t fault neighbors for raising concerns. The terms “ebola” and “monkey virus” carry a certain fear factor.
But this report and others confirm that such fears are not well-placed. No Level 4 lab researcher has ever been infected with a deadly agent, never mind transmitted it outside the lab. The good jobs that the lab will bring are not sufficient on their own to support its construction. But neither is unfounded hysteria reason to stop it.