Re: Biological Warfare Agents

[hdqrs@worldnet.att.net]

I forward this as it came in on a list service I am on. I do not know if
it is true or false. I only post it because of all the questions that have
been posted on BW.

As I have my hands full with SFAAP I did not check this out.

Jim Oyler
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STOP US BIOWARFARE LAB!

Weapons Convention. Why locate this at a facility whose primary function is
development of offensive nuclear weapons?" asks University of Illinois law
professor Francis Boyle, a member of the Council for Responsible Genetics, an
anti-biological weapons advocacy group.

"You can imagine the way the Third World is going to see it: We say don't
do this, meanwhile our own people are putting dual-use research into a known
weapons lab," said Boyle, who authored the 1989 Bioweapons and Anti-Terrorism
Act, which outlaws manufacture of biological weapons....

Copyright 1998 Albuquerque Journal

Albuquerque Journal

November 06, 1998, Friday

SECTION: Pg. A1

LENGTH: 847 words

HEADLINE: Biological-Attack Analysis Lab Proposed for LANL

BYLINE: Ian Hoffman Journal Northern Bureau

BODY:
Nuke Facility Seeks Anti-Terror Funding

SANTA FE -- The federal nuclear-weapons lab in Los Alamos is thinking of
building a lab for genetic analysis of potentially lethal bacteria, among
them organisms intended by terrorists or foreign nations for use as weapons.

Inside the tiny lab, scientists in gloves and surgical scrubs would use
cutting-edge genetics to "fingerprint" the DNA of pathogens such as those
that cause anthrax and botulism.

Executives at Los Alamos National Laboratory think the new lab could help
guarantee Los Alamos a piece of federal anti-terrorism funding, which soared
to $3 billion this year.

"We hope it's going to grow," said nuclear physicist Hans Ruppel, LANL's
acting associate director for strategic and supporting research. "We
recognize what motivates Congress -- national security -- and we'll respond 
to that."

LANL also envisions the new lab hosting joint research into infectious
diseases with the University of New Mexico and the state.

The lab would occupy a windowless, 230-square-foot room inside an empty
aluminum building at LANL's Technical Area 54, not far from the lab's burial
trenches for low-level radioactive waste.

The lab would feature double doors, negative air pressure and full-time
filtered air -- all designed to keep biological agents from escaping.

Disease researchers call this a biosafety level 3, or BSL-3, lab, and
it's a standard facility at major U.S. universities and pharmaceutical
firms. Two are known to exist in New Mexico, both used by UNM in Albuquerque 
primarily for research into tuberculosis and Hantavirus.

"It's good for science in New Mexico to have this capability. I would
urge them to proceed," said virologist Brian Hjelle, who regularly works in 
UNM's BSL-3 labs and developed the leading test for Hantavirus. "The risks 
these facilities pose to the community are about as close to zero as you can 
get."

LANL can work with some live biological agents now but wants the extra
safety of the new laboratory for its workers.

Activists are nonetheless leery of LANL's move toward handling live
biowarfare agents, saying the work could raise suspicions among other
nations and perhaps provide cover for countries seeking bioweapons as an
inexpensive alternative to nuclear arms.

"This creates prima facie problems of compliance with the Biological
Weapons Convention. Why locate this at a facility whose primary function is
development of offensive nuclear weapons?" asks University of Illinois law
professor Francis Boyle, a member of the Council for Responsible Genetics, an
anti-biological weapons advocacy group.

"You can imagine the way the Third World is going to see it: We say don't
do this, meanwhile our own people are putting dual-use research into a known
weapons lab," said Boyle, who authored the 1989 Bioweapons and
Anti-Terrorism Act, which outlaws manufacture of biological weapons.

BSL-3 labs protect workers and the public against exposure to organisms
better than most hospital labs but less than the nation's two biosafety
level four labs, used by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick, Md., and the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to handle the most lethal 
viruses, such as smallpox and Ebola.

LANL's lab is one of at least three that are contemplated by the U.S.
Department of Energy, the others proposed for Oak Ridge and Lawrence
Livermore national labs in Tennessee and California.

They would join the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases as
the nation's only labs performing defense research using live biowarfare and
bioterrorism agents.

Roughly half the lab's work would be in the national-security arena, for
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Defense or other
federal agencies, lab officials said.

"The FBI wants the answer now: Is it a viable organism? What strain is
it?" said biophysicist Scott Cram, director of LANL's Life Sciences Division,
citing an example of the lab's proposed work.

Samples of tissue or dirt -- for example, collected by a United Nations
inspection team -- would be delivered in triple-layered packaging. Molecular
biologists would use LANL-pioneered advances in DNA fingerprinting to
identify any suspected biological warfare and bioterrorism agents.

The rest of the new lab's work would be joint research with the New
Mexico Department of Health and the University of New Mexico, both of which
are eager for help with infectious-disease research.

The number of BSL-3 labs in the United States is unknown because they are
not licensed or regulated by any federal agency. Workers in such labs have
been infected, mostly by tuberculosis, but there are no recorded infections 
of
humans or animals by organisms escaped from a BSL-3 lab in the United States.

LANL molecular biologist Paul Jackson, who would be director of the new
lab, already performs DNA analysis on anthrax-causing bacteria that are dead.

LANL director John Browne will make the final decision on the new lab
after environmental studies are completed early next year.

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, Ill. 61820
Phone: 217-333-7954
Fax: 217-244-1478
fboyle@law.uiuc.edu