Slip-ups at bioterror labs fuel fear in Congress
MAY 12: FERRETS INFECTED WITH DEADLY STRAIN OF AVIAN FLU VIRUS ESCAPE MAY 16: DANGEROUS BACTERIA SHIPPED BEFORE THEY HAD BEEN KILLED MAY 16: MOUSE INFECTED WITH VIRUS SIMILAR TO EBOLA ESCAPES
Scientists wearing spacesuit-like protective gear searched for hours in May for a mouse — infected with a virus similar to Ebola — that had escaped inside Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, one of the federal government’s highest-security research facilities, according to newly obtained incident reports that provide a window into the secretive world of bioterror lab accidents.
During the same month at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, a lab worker suffered a cut while trying to round up escaped ferrets that had been infected with a deadly strain of avian influenza, records show. Four days later at Colorado State University’s bioterrorism lab, a worker failed to ensure dangerous bacteria had been killed before shipping specimens — some of them still able to grow — to another lab where a worker unwittingly handled them without key protective gear.
Nobody was sickened in the incidents, and the mouse was caught the next day. Yet in the wake of serious lab mishaps with anthrax and bird flu at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that prompted an uproar, these additional incidents are further fueling bipartisan concern about lab safety.
“As long as we keep having an
“As long as we keep having an ad hoc system of oversight in this country, we’re going to keep seeing more and more incidents.”
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.
ad hoc system of oversight in this country, we’re going to keep seeing more and more incidents,” said U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight subcommittee that held a hearing in July on the CDC incidents.
Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said, “These incidents underscore why the committee has been investigating the safety of high-containment labs.”
The CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture jointly run the Federal Select Agent Program that oversees laboratories working with dangerous viruses, bacteria and toxins called “select agents” because they’re deemed
to pose serious threats to people and agriculture and could potentially be used as bioweapons.
Citing bioterrorism laws, the Federal Select Agent Program doesn’t publicly release details about accidents occurring in regulated labs. The details of the incidents in May were revealed in minutes of those labs’ institutional biosafety committees and related reports obtained by Edward Hammond, former director of the Sunshine Project, an independent lab watchdog group that operated from 1999-2008, until it lost funding.
Hammond said it’s difficult for policymakers and the public to judge the safety of labs. “We need to require reporting and for reporting to be public,” he said.
COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
At Colorado State University in Fort Collins on May 16, a researcher in a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) lab boiled tubes containing specimens of Burkholderia pseudomallei, records show. The bacteria, which can cause symptoms including pneumonia and life-threatening bloodstream infections, are classified as a Tier 1 select agent – a designation given to a handful of pathogens deemed to present “a severe threat to public health and safety.”
As a check to ensure the specimens had been deactivated by boiling, the worker put a sample from each tube into an incubator to see if the bacteria would grow, the records show. Before the results of that safety check, the tubes were sent the same day to a lower-level lab at the same facility where another lab staffer – whose only safety gear noted in the report was a pair of gloves – transferred them to new tubes.
Colorado State’s vice president for research, Alan Rudolph, told USA TODAY that it had been standard procedure not to wait for confirmation of inactivation because the process had been 100% successful in the past.
But on May 19, two of the 20 supposedly sterile safety-check samples showed signs of growth. The researcher without proper protective gear received antibiotics and never showed signs of infection, the university said. The lab now requires a 24- to 48-hour wait time to check for any growth, Rudolph said, and some researchers wait 48-72 hours.
“We have a great track record of safety. This is an incident, as we reported, and we should learn from it.” Alan Rudolph, Colorado State’s vice president for research
“We have a great track record of safety,” Rudolph said. “This is an incident, as we reported, and we should learn from it.”
ST. JUDE HOSPITAL
At St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, which has an internationally recognized influenza research facility, a worker in an enhanced BSL-3 lab discovered on May 12 that five ferrets had escaped their cage. The ferrets had been inoculated a week earlier with the deadly H7N9 avian influenza virus but didn’t show any symptoms, according to the hospital’s incident report.
H7N9 is a strain of bird flu that was first identified in 2013 as having seriously sickened some people in China. Most people sickened by the strain have suffered severe respiratory illness, and about one-third have died.
As the worker at St. Jude corralled the ferrets and put them back in their cage, she noticed a tear in her double gloves and a small cut to her right index finger. Although her risk of exposure to the H7N9 virus was deemed “very low,” the worker was offered an anti-viral drug and underwent blood tests to look for signs of infection, and none was found.
According to the hospital’s incident report, the research was overseen by Richard Webby.
In June, St. Jude’s biosafety committee approved a new project proposed by Webby to do a controversial type of research that the minutes say has the “high likelihood of conferring enhancements” – in other words making more dangerous – strains of avian influenza virus that have a low ability to produce disease.
In August 2013, Webby was among several co-signers of a letter in the journal Nature argu- ing that controversial “gain of function” experiments are needed on the H7N9 virus to understand its potential to cause a pandemic if it were to mutate naturally. Other scientists oppose the work as too dangerous.
Officials from St. Jude did not answer many of USA TODAY’s questions. In an e-mailed statement, St. Jude said, “We have a robust biological safety program that meets and exceeds all federal standards.” The hospital did not answer questions about Webby’s new research but said, “The project has not been started at St. Jude.”
ROCKY MOUNTAIN LABS
Around 11 a.m. on May 16, scientists in one of Rocky Mountain Laboratories’ Biosafety Level 4 labs in Hamilton, Mont., thought they had fully anesthetized several mouselike rodents called Mastomys. The animals had been infected with a strain of Lassa virus 21 days earlier, according to the lab’s incident report.
Lassa virus causes a type of hemorrhagic fever that has symptoms similar to Ebola, such as bleeding from the gums, eyes or nose and repeated vomiting. According to the CDC, 100,000 to 300,000 people are infected with Lassa fever each year in West Africa, and about 5,000 die from it.
Rocky Mountain Laboratories is operated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health.
The spacesuit-clad scientist reached into the cage to remove a sedated mouse that would undergo a procedure. That’s when another of the rodents jumped out of the cage and dropped to the floor. It was last seen running behind the table before it disappeared. For “1-2 hours,” the scientists in the bulky, pressurized protective suits searched for the mouse – but couldn’t find it, records show.
Live traps containing food were placed around the room, and staffers were instructed “to visually make eye contact with the floor surrounding the door to ensure the rodent did not attempt to leave the room,” records say. The next morning, workers captured the animal in the necropsy room, where dead animals are dissected. “The animal was disposed of,” the records say, and surfaces were decontaminated.
In a statement to USA TODAY, the agency that runs the lab said, “The animal could not exit the BSL-4 laboratory and, as expected, was found the following morning. At no time was there a hazard to other parts of the facility or to the surrounding community.”
Because 21 days had passed since the rodent was infected with Lassa virus, researchers say it would not have been shedding virus. “Regardless, the risk of virus exposure to laboratory workers is extremely low because of the protective, positive-pressure suits they wear,” the agency said.
Despite such assurances from all the labs, some in Congress remain wary. “It used to be we only had a few labs doing this very high-level and risky research. Now we have them at places like St. Jude and academic research institutions like CSU and other places,” DeGette said. “It appears none of these breaches have lead to any kind of infection. But it’s only a matter of time.”