USA TODAY International Edition
CDC to review lab safety, security
USA TODAY Media Network investigation prompts congressional probes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is launching a comprehensive review of how it regulates safety and security at bioterror labs in the wake of an ongoing USA TODAY Media Network investigation that has prompted congressional probes into the agency’s effectiveness.
CDC Director Tom Frieden ordered the review last week as USA TODAY prepared to report on newly obtained documents showing that the agency’s inspectors have allowed labs to keep experimenting with bioterror pathogens despite failing to meet key requirements on inspection after inspection, sometimes for years. The action also comes as the agency faces a hearing in the House next week.
“This review will be wideranging and includes a review of regulatory authority and the exercise of that authority so that we can identify potential modifications to the methods used to inspect labs,” the CDC said in a statement this week.
The review, which is likely to take 90 days, will be directed by Stephen Redd, director of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, the CDC said.
A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday on the CDC’s oversight of select- agent labs, emphasizing recent shipments of live anthrax from a Department of Defense facility in Utah.
This month, citing USA TODAY’s reporting, the bipartisan leaders of the full committee and its investigations subcommittee sent letters to the CDC and enforcement officials at the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s office demanding they provide the names of research labs that have faced sanctions for safety violations as well as other information about select- agent oversight.
“Select agent” is the federal government’s term for viruses, bacteria and toxins that have the potential to be used as bioweapons or that pose significant risk to agriculture or public health.
A USA TODAY Media Network investigation published in May uncovered hundreds of accidents that have occurred in biological laboratories nationwide in recent years and revealed that pervasive secrecy obscures failures by regulators to ensure research facilities operate safety and don’t unduly put workers and the public at risk. The network’s reporting prompted questions about the CDC’s regulation of labs from the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The network’s ongoing investigation has raised questions about whether lax oversight and enforcement played a role in allowing an Army biodefense lab at the Dugway Proving Ground to mistakenly ship live anthrax for more than a decade to dozens of labs in the USA and abroad.
USA TODAY reported in June that the CDC referred Dugway for potential enforcement action in 2007 for failures to deactivate live anthrax with chemicals and for ignoring tests indicating the kill process was ineffective. No fines were levied, and over the years, CDC’s inspectors apparently never detected that similar failures continued at Dugway in its routine use of radiation to kill anthrax.
More than 100 labs experimenting with potential bioterror pathogens have faced enforcement actions — some repeatedly — since 2003 from the Federal Select Agent Program, which is jointly run by the CDC and the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The government keeps their names secret, citing a federal bioterrorism law.
“This review will be wide- ranging ... so that we can identify potential modifications to the methods used to inspect labs.”
CDC statement