At biolab forum, divides remain deep
By Justin A. Rice (From The Boston Globe), October 19, 2008
They announced the project in 2003, and BU scientists and officials had initially hoped to be studying the world’s deadliest germs at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University Medical Center by now. Instead, they were cramming into Roxbury Center for Arts at Hibernian Hall Tuesday night for the first locally hosted meeting of the scientific panel charged with overseeing an environmental review of the lab.
After local activists and public interest groups filed a lawsuit in 2006, a federal judge found the original environmental study for the lab to be inadequate, and the state required BU to address the study’s shortcomings. Last November, a 16-member scientific advisory board, called the Blue Ribbon Panel, was charged with independently assessing the lab. The panel’s members – doctors and scientists from across the country – were also tasked with bridging the communication gap between the institutions and the lab’s detractors.
The advisory board, which hopes to make its recommendations to the National Institutes of Health by late 2009, started the meeting by posing questions to the crowd about how best to inform and educate the public on the lab and how the NIH and BU can seek the public’s views about the lab’s operation and oversight.
BU environmental health professor Patricia Hynes took exception to the first question: “How can institutions most effectively reach out to local communities and educate about these laboratories?”
“The way it’s phrased presumes the community is ignorant and the university is the savant, or the more knowledgeable of the two,” Hynes told the assembly. “Education is a two-way street. I’d like to rephrase the question: ‘How can communities most effectively reach out to local universities to educate them?’
“While the crowd of more than 300 shouted down panel members at several points, panel members grew frustrated that some in the community don’t believe biological weapons won’t be created at the lab. Panel chairman Adel Mahmoud of Princeton University reiterated that BU will not work on government classified projects there and that the development of biological weapons is unlawful.
The lab’s purpose “is to reduce damage of biological threats, or better yet, prevent them,” he said. “I really, really plead with you to try to appreciate the definition of the two, because if we continue the same six years of debate we are not going to get anywhere.
“Still, some audience members questioned the panel’s independence.
“We’re not here to rubber-stamp anybody or any organization in this country,” Mahmoud said. “We are here to be honest brokers to understand risk and help bridge gaps within the community involved in this process.
“City Councilors Charles Yancey, Chuck Turner, Sam Yoon, and Michael Flaherty, who had met a few days earlier with a group of biolab opponents, also spoke out against the lab at the meeting. Flaherty called Boston’s evacuation plans “a joke” and said a mere snowstorm can paralyze the city, let alone a biolab emergency. He questioned plans to deliver toxins to the lab via commercial services such as FedEx, and whether future federal funding for the lab would dry up given the economic climate.
In an interview after the meeting, Flaherty, who is rumored to be considering a mayoral run, said he had reversed positions on the lab in 2005 after watching New Orleans fail to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina.
Roughly 300 public and private meetings about the lab have taken place since 2003.
Some believe the opportunity to mend divisions has passed. “They didn’t care what we thought, what our interests were in deciding,” longtime activist Mel King said. “Now you’re saying [the NIH] asked us to come before you with the same institutions that would not listen before. And you’re saying [BU] is going to do the right thing now, and we’re supposed to believe that?
“While some thought Tuesday’s forum was more productive than previous ones, others feel neither side will convince the other.
“There’s nobody neutral to make sure we get the proper information, correct information, not misguided information,” Roxbury resident Donovan Walker said.
Others wonder what the community would do with information on the scientifically complex project, even if it was more consumable.
“We need more than information,” Prasannan Parthasarathi of Newton said. “What are we going to do with this information? What if we object to it, what are we going to do about it? We have no power.”