The bioterrorism threat and laboratory security

safety features found in others, such as double doors and a requirement that two persons must be present.

No national authority is now empowered to mandate a single system of counting or enforce standardization for laboratory security. This lapse is magnified by the fact that even the lowest estimated number of BSL-3 laboratories – 200 – represents a ten-fold increase in the past ten years, and that safety precautions at some BSL-3 facilities are less rigorous than at others.

Similarly, the growing number of investigators with knowledge about select agents has increased the chances that an unsavory scientist could launch a bioattack. This concern was heightened in 2008 with the FBI’s naming of Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Ivins had long worked on anthrax at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Before charges could be brought he committed suicide, so his guilt or innocence can never be established in a court of law.

The Ivins case highlighted questions about the screening of workers with ready access to select agents. The number of those workers just prior to the anthrax attacks has been estimated at about 700.  By 2008, however, the figure had climbed to more than 14,000. As some have suggested, the greater numbers mean that “the odds of one of them turning out to be a bad apple has increased.”

Days after Ivins’ death, a USAMRIID spokesperson acknowledged that officials may have been unaware of any behavioral problems because they relied in part on self-reporting. But in 2011, a mental health review panel concluded that “Dr. Ivins had a significant and lengthy history of psychological disturbance and diagnosable mental illness at the time he began working for USAMRIID in 1980.’’

The Ivins case has raised concerns that other troubled or nefarious individuals might be working in U.S. laboratories. A recent government-sponsored forum on biosecurity called for periodic behavioral evaluations of personnel with access to select agents that include drug testing, searches for criminal history, and completion by selectees of a security questionnaire.

Despite lapses and uncertainties, the U.S. biodefense effort has resulted in substantial advances in understanding of the bio-threat, development and placement of new detection technologies, and expanded provision of countermeasures. The increased number of high security laboratories and their additional personnel do pose potential risks. But claims that these expansions have made the United States less safe overall seem overwrought. Moreover, recent measures to address security deficiencies, though belated, have helped mitigate them.

Enactment of proposed legislation would further enhance the nation’s biosecurity. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2009 would heighten laboratory security, provide for establishing uniform standards for handling select agents, and designate a single coordinator to oversee select agent programs.

Determining if a laboratory, or the country, is secure “enough” will always be debatable. Security can never be absolute insofar as human enterprises are inevitably subject to accidents, miscalculation, and incomplete information. Still, minimizing risks and enhancing the safety of the citizenry must remain among the nation’s highest priorities.

Leonard A. Cole, an expert on bioterrorism and on terror medicine, teaches at Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey