Copyright 2001 The Denver Post Corporation The Denver
Post
December 17, 2001 Monday 1ST EDITION
SECTION: DENVER & THE WEST; Pg. B-01
LENGTH: 958 words
HEADLINE:
Scientists leery of rigid security University labs fear work would be limited
BYLINE: By Dave Curtin, Denver Post Higher
Education Writer,
BODY: As a nervous
nation reels from bioterrorism scares, congressional lawmakers are
proposing tough new security measures for university laboratories
working with biological agents and human pathogens.
But the proposed restrictions are making Colorado
researchers antsy. Scientists say extremely strict regulations
would discourage research on vaccines that could ultimately
protect Americans from bioterror.
'Most
research on pathogens is designed to protect humans against them.
You're making life really difficult for people who would obey the law
anyway,' says Phil Danielson, a molecular-biology professor at the
University of Denver who teaches courses on human infectious disease
and bioterrorism.
Lawmakers want a federal inventory
of potentially lethal agents such as anthrax, the Ebola virus,
smallpox and 30 other bio-pathogens studied in academic
laboratories.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is
calling for a registry and criminal-background checks of all
scientists and lab employees working with potentially lethal viruses
and bacteria.
Additional proposals would bar foreign
scientists from working with biological agents unless they receive a
special waiver, tighter rules around shipping and storage and more
inspections of university labs.
Bush
administration officials want violators to be subject to fines of up
to $ 250,000.
Motion detectors, security cameras and
armed guards also are possibilities.
'There's a big difference between reasonable procedures
meant to contain an agent and trying to prevent someone marching in
with a machine gun and taking it. We're obviously not set up for
that,' said Richard Irons, a toxicologist at the University of
Colorado Health Sciences Center and chairman of the environmental
health and safety faculty committee.
'You
could create a centralized high-security area. But the cost would be
very high. That type of legislation would greatly restrict
research.'
Tony Frank, vice president for research at
Colorado State University, isn't so quick to object to federal
restrictions. CSU is home to a new remote high-security lab regulated
to work with the most dangerous biological agents presently studied
at a Colorado university, including tuberculosis and dengue fever -
an acute infectious disease transmitted by mosquitoes.
'We want to work with the federal government to safeguard
the nation. Our families live in the same society as everyone
else,' Frank says. 'I don't take the 'sky-is-falling' approach to
any regulations. People were worried about the same things
when regulations came in for radioactive material.'
Indeed, federal rules on use of human pathogens aren't
as strict as those governing radioactive materials regulated by
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or animal and plant viruses
and regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Most Colorado researchers contacted by The Denver Post
support a registry of biological agents and some
support criminal-background checks for scientists and lab workers
working with select agents on a government list.
'It's like today's radioactive material regulations. You
want to know where it is and who's working with it,' says Norman
Pace, a molecular biologist at CU-Boulder, who recently won a $
500,000 MacArthur 'genius' grant. 'You can do that without intruding
on academic independence. But the workplace regulation is
(U.S. Attorney General John) Ashcroft running amok.'
Some scientists say the greatest challenge in
improving security could be persuading researchers to forgo the
swapping of vials containing biological agents at conferences.
Universities should alter codes of conduct so that
taking biological agents out of a lab becomes grounds for
dismissal, according to the American Society for Microbiology.
'Swapping organisms and controlled substances is fairly
common at scientific meetings,' says DU's Danielson. 'It's not like a
big narcotics ring. But if you need something that would be hard
to get, in which regulations get in the way, you call someone up.
Now with the anthrax scare, people are a lot more cautious.
Most scientists wouldn't have thought twice about it three months
ago.'
Other scientists say exchanges are much more
common through the mail, which is highly regulated by the
International Air Transport Association and private and federal mail
service.
'I've had requests for genes that make toxins,
from biotech institutions in Baghdad, but I've never sent them,' says
Michael Vasil, microbiology professor at the CU Health Sciences
Center, who has worked with cholera toxin and tuberculosis, among
others. He's not studying them now.
'Some
organisms can be sent through regular mail without much notice,'
Vasil says. 'DNA can be sent on a small piece of paper and then
extracted. You have to know your collaborators.'
Some
scientists bristle at a ban on foreigners in the lab.
'Limiting the ability of foreign scientists to work in
labs would cause significant disruption to science in the
United States,' says Daniel Kuritzkes, an AIDS researcher at the
CU Health Sciences Center. 'There are many more foreign
post-doctoral fellows and graduate students in the sciences than
there are American students because it hasn't been appealing to
American students.
'The influx of foreigners
over the decades has helped fuel scientific progress in the U.S.,
including scientists from Arab and Muslim countries who continue to
contribute importantly to research progress in the U.S. in many
fields,' Kuritzkes said.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Denver Post/Kathryn Scott Osler Molecular
biologist Phil Danielson of the University of Denver prepares DNA for an
experiment, to be followed by a safety inspection.
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