Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company The New
York Times
January 25, 2002, Friday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 11; Column
3; National Desk
LENGTH: 989 words
HEADLINE: A NATION CHALLENGED: LABORATORY SECURITY; Bill Would Require Laboratories
to Adopt Strict Security
BYLINE: By DIANA
JEAN SCHEMO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan.
24
BODY: In the months since the
anthrax scare, Congress has hammered out legislation with universities and
researchers to reduce the risk that viruses, bacteria and toxins might turn up
in biological weapons.
It is now close to completing
laws that will require laboratories, at significant expense, to adopt stricter
security measures, inventory lethal agents and deny some scientists access to
the materials altogether.
But except for smallpox, all
of the pathogens that most concern lawmakers, some 40 in all, are freely
available beyond American borders, often in the very regions that terrorists
have come from, and scientists and international organizations that monitor
disease outbreaks say the new laws, despite their time-consuming and expensive
measures to reassure the public, may do little to keep deadly agents out of
terrorists' hands.
Whether Rift Valley fever, found in
Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which appeared last
year in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Ebola, which killed 23 people in Gabon
according to today's World Health Organization report, the agents soon to be
under lock and key in United States laboratories exist in abundance beyond
American borders.
"Anybody trained in the most basic
aspects of health care can go in and take a blood sample from anyone infected
with one of these agents," said Glen N. Gaulton, a pathology professor who is
vice dean for research and research training at the University of Pennsylvania
Medical School. "If it's blood or sputum, feces, body tissue, you'd isolate the
organism, and then you'd just have to have somebody trained in general
bacteriological principles grow it up. It's very simple."
Growing the organism from infected people or animals, scientists said,
is a procedure done routinely in diagnostic laboratories and clinics,
particularly in the third world.
At universities across
the country, researchers said they did not think it was a mistake for Congress
to tighten access to laboratory materials, which they acknowledge has generally
been lax, but they cautioned against presuming the new laws would provide real
protection against a deliberate release of a biological weapon.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said tightening
controls over deadly agents at American laboratories represented only a first
step.
"The next step, clearly, once we get our house in
order, is to proceed to effect some international protocols which govern the use
of these pathogens," Ms. Feinstein said through a spokesman.
Mike Wheelis, a microbiologist at the University of California at Davis
who is involved in the American Federation of Scientists Biological Weapons
Verification Project, said gaping loopholes overseas did not mean that
laboratory security in the United States should be ignored.
"The fact that there are many places in the world that do not have the
resources or intention to institute comparable controls doesn't mean we don't
have to get our house in order," Dr. Wheelis said.
With
slightly different versions of a Bioweapons Protection Act having passed the
House and Senate, university officials and lawyers are analyzing the bills to
gauge just how much laboratories will have to change practices and, in some
cases, infrastructure, to accommodate the new regulations. In recent years, Dr.
Gaulton noted, the trend has been toward large, open space laboratories that
promote collaboration between scientists.
He estimates
that the University of Pennsylvania may have to spend $5 million to $15 million
for security features like special filters and pressurized air for handling the
40 agents that can be used to make biological weapons -- particularly if
Congress rules that researchers working on any genetic or molecular pieces of a
lethal organism must take the same precautions as scientists working with the
organism in its entirety.
The U.S.A. Patriot Act,
passed last November, expands the list of toxins considered highly dangerous,
and requires background checks for scientists who work with them. It also bars
so-called restricted persons -- a category that includes citizens of states
known to sponsor terrorism, convicted felons, people dishonorably discharged
from the United States military, illegal aliens and people caught with illicit
drugs -- from working with the lethal agents.
"If you
think of the 19 hijackers, I don't think any of them were citizens of states
that sponsor terrorism, so they presumably would have been O.K.," said one
Congressional aide.
In addition, the Senate and House
versions of bioweapons protection bills passed last month require laboratories
possessing the potential weapons agents to register with the Department of
Health and Human Services, while the House bill requires labs to register
individual scientists as well. One provision of the Senate bill that could prove
particularly useful requires genetic identification of the strains present in
each lab, which would ease tracking of any material used in an eventual
outbreak. The bills will next go to a conference committee, to iron out
differences between them.
Aside from the availability
of lethal agents overseas, scientists noted other loopholes in the legislation
as passed. While an inventory might prove useful for keeping track of nuclear
materials, they said it provided only the illusion of security for biological
materials, even those only found in laboratories.
"This
is not the same as radioisotopes, where you can account for each one," Dr.
Wheelis added, since a biological material can easily be multiplied.
Before the anthrax-laden letters turned up last year,
laboratory safety measures aimed exclusively to prevent an accidental release of
deadly agents. For the first time, lawmakers are grappling with the threat of a
deliberate release, while the anthrax that terrorized the country last fall
appears to have come from an American laboratory.
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