Tri-Valley CAREs
Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Locals Rally to Combat biodefense labs
By: Erika Check
Published In: Nature, the international journal of science
Nature, the international journal of science
30 August 2006
Locals rally to combat biodefence labs
Protests mount against classified research centres.
As the US government picks up the pace of building high-security
biodefence laboratories, community groups and watchdogs are ramping
up their protests.
The latest clash centres on Fort Detrick, an army facility in
Frederick, Maryland, that has long been home to biosecurity labs. The
government is planning to overhaul the existing facilities and build
a new biodefence research complex. Construction has already begun on
one component: the Department of Homeland Security's National
Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC). This is
slated for completion in June 2008.
But critics want to halt work on this facility and others in the
works nationwide. On 30 August, opponents were scheduled to air their
concerns at a public meeting in Frederick about Fort Detrick's
expansion.
"From almost any way of looking at it, this makes absolutely no
sense," says Barry Kissin, a lawyer and congressional candidate from
Frederick, about the planned facility. "This does the opposite of
provide for our security, at great expense and great hazard."
Although local communities often protest about biodefence labs in
their midst, the $105-million NBACC does stand out. Plans
inadvertently posted on the Internet suggest that personnel there
will conduct exercises known as 'red-teaming'. These would involve
creating and testing biothreat agents thought to belong to enemy
arsenals. The Department of Homeland Security is also attempting to
classify the facility, which means activities there would be
off-limits to public enquiry.
The NBACC will include labs operating at the highest biosecurity
level - biosafety level 4 - which handle the deadliest pathogens.
This would be in addition to several biosafety level 4 facilities
already in existence at the Fort Detrick campus. But critics say more
labs will increase the threat to the surrounding community - they say
pathogens could escape or be removed surreptitiously from the labs.
Anthrax that was used in the unsolved mail attacks of late 2001, for
instance, is thought to have come from a research lab.
Opponents also charge that the facility runs the risk of spurring
other countries to ramp up biowarfare activities: unless inspectors
are allowed to investigate the site, some might suspect the United
States of creating offensive weapons.
"It's a really big mistake to classify the entire NBACC facility,"
says Alan Pearson, an expert on biological weapons at the Center for
Arms Control and Non-proliferation in Washington DC. "Clearly there
are going to be some aspects of the work that ought to be classified,
but those ought to be minimal. Otherwise you start generating
suspicions and, frankly, generating excuses for other countries."
The department says that classification is necessary to prevent other
nations from obtaining information about US weak points. "Providing a
secure environment for the handling of sensitive information in this
way makes sense, and will not allow our enemies to gain the advantage
should vulnerabilities be revealed," says Christopher Kelly, a
spokesman for the department.
Critics are also worried that the Department of Homeland Security
could attempt to classify another project it has in the works: a
$450-million complex of high-biosecurity labs and testing grounds
called the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The department is
holding a nationwide competition to determine where the lab will be
located; 12 sites remain in the running. Kelly says the department
has no plans to classify the complex in question. But one site that
has made the shortlist is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in California - which is already a classified facility.
"How will the United States assure the rest of the world that the
research is completely defensive if it's being conducted at a
classified nuclear-weapons laboratory?" asks Marylia Kelley,
executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, a Livermore-based group that
monitors the national laboratory.
NBACC and the bio-agro facility are just part of a recent boom in
biodefence spending in the United States. The federal government has
spent $36 billion to combat bioterrorism since the terrorist attacks
of 11 September 2001, according to an analysis by the Center for Arms
Control and Non-proliferation. Three additional biosafety level 4
labs are in the works, including one at Boston University in
Massachusetts that has been heavily protested. Fourteen new
biosecurity level 2 and 3 labs are also planned.
Pearson argues that the country should spend more on working to
prevent bioterrorism in the first place, by strengthening the United
Nations' biological and chemical weapons conventions, and improving
supervision of its own research. "It wouldn't take much money to
strengthen prevention," he says, "and it would do a lot more to keep
us safe."
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