Boston biolab: Panel urges review of possible lab threats

Published 23 May 2008

As community opposition to the almost-complete Boston University biolab continues, a panel of experts says neighborhood’s concerns — and safety — should not be excluded from consideration of final approval for lab opening

Federal health officials should conduct a rigorous review of potential threats posed by a controversial Boston University laboratory and make sure the surrounding neighborhood is not excluded from the process, a panel of top scientists said Wednesday. The chairman of the board, Dr. Adel Mahmoud of Princeton University, exhorted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to operate transparently, saying “this is essential for credibility and public trust.” Another member of the committee, Vicki Freimuth of the University of Georgia, said it was clear from the fractious five-year history of the project that “problems with trust” had clouded the relationship between the community and the leading forces behind the project, BU and the federal government. Stephen Smith writes in the Boston Globe that Mahmoud and ten other members of a panel commissioned by the NIH traveled to Boston to conduct their third meeting regarding the high-security lab BU is building on its medical school campus. The director of the NIH formed the advisory board after his agency’s earlier safety review of the project came under withering criticism.

In addition to releasing their preliminary findings, the scientists ventured to the State House on a community fact-finding mission. Before the hearing started, a dozen protesters framed by the building’s golden dome - some wearing white lab suits — staged street theater, serenaded by an accordion player. Inside, the panel heard from more than three dozen speakers who overwhelmingly opposed the lab, which is designed to work with the world’s deadliest germs, including Ebola, plague, and Marburg. Heather Spurlock Kennealy, an attorney representing lab foes, said the panel of scientists should consider advising NIH to abandon the centerpiece of the project, a Biosafety Level-4 lab. The project, underwritten by the federal government, includes lower-security labs as well, but it is the Level-4 lab that has stoked neighbors’ fears. “We don’t have to go blindly and say we have to have this lab,” the lawyer said. “The laboratory will not serve the public health needs of this country.” Backers of the project, primarily representatives of the building trades and higher-education associations, said the $200 million facility would create jobs and burnish the state’s reputation as a hub of biotechnology research. “There is an urgent need in this country to conduct research aimed at finding causes, diagnoses, and cures for the alarming number of recently emerging and reemerging infectious diseases,” said Robert McCarron, senior vice president for government relations at the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts. Several speakers criticized the panel for holding its meeting on a weekday, making it impossible for many working residents to attend. Maryann Colella, who lives in Cambridge, labeled the session “a public health charade.” “All we need is trapezes and dancing ladies,” she said.

Wednesday hearing was the latest chapter in the saga of BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, which sits more than 80 percent complete on Albany Street. The university won a hard-fought competition in 2003 to open one of two high-security lab projects that are cornerstones in the Bush administration’s campaign to prepare against acts of bioterrorism. The facility encountered opposition from the start, however, as foes took to the streets and the courts. After a judge in 2006 ruled that previous environmental reviews of the project were inadequate, the federal government last year conducted another analysis that concluded the lab would present no threat to the neighborhood. It was that report that elicited a scathing assessment in November from the National Research Council (NRC), a board of independent scientists. The federal review, the National Research Council said, was “not sound and credible.” In response, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the NIH director, created the blue-ribbon panel to advise his agency as it carries out further safety reviews. The panel’s interim findings call on the NIH to evaluate what would happen if germs escaped from the lab into the South End. That was done in previous safety reviews, but critics said the wrong germs had been chosen, rendering the analysis moot. This time, Mahmoud said, the federal analysis should include viruses or bacteria easily transmitted person-to-person as well as agents spread by mosquitoes and other carriers. In an interview, Mahmoud said this would be his message to the NIH about involving the neighborhood: “Make the community part of the discussion, seek their input before you start, continue their input as you are talking.” Klare Allen, another opponent of the lab and a leader of the community organizing group Safety Net, asked the panel to “please keep talking to us. “It’s on your head,” she told them. “If this thing is approved and then something happens, can you sleep at night?”