Biolab requires further review, panel tells NIH
Boston Globe
Jun 6, 2008
By Christopher Baxter, Globe CorrespondentAn elite panel of scientists recommended today that federal health authorities conduct the most extensive safety review so far of the controversial laboratory being built by Boston University.
The most dangerous germs require further study, the blue-ribbon panel told the director of the National Institutes of Health. Those assessments should compare outbreak situations in urban, suburban and rural environments, according to the group’s report (The full report will be available to the public next week).
The panel also recommended the studies consider a number of emergency situations — rather than one “worst case” scenario — including accidents and attacks, the report said. Those risk assessments should include the likelihood of a germ being released, the risk posed to the public and the resources available to deal with an outbreak, the report said.
Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, the NIH director, created the panel to advise his agency on further safety reviews. The panel will now consider how to improve community relations.
Conservation Law Foundation attorney Eloise P. Lawrence, whose organization sued to block the laboratory, said the analysis of the most dangerous germs is a step in the right direction, but one that should have happened years ago.
“[We hope] the politicians that have blindly supported this project will actually pay attention to these analyses and ask those fundamental questions and not just assume we’re just doing these studies to make the community feel better,” Lawrence said.
The report is part of an ongoing dispute between BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, which sits more than 80 percent complete on Albany Street, and the surrounding neighborhood. BU administrators overseeing the Biosafety Level-4 lab, the centerpiece of the project, had predicted the facility would be open by the fall. It’s now expected to be delayed at least another year.
Ellen Berlin, spokeswoman for BU, said in a statement that the “deliberative approach to this process is necessary and appropriate.”