The Black Commentator - Think Piece: What about the Bio-Weapons Labs?

According to the non-profit Sunshine Project of Austin, Texas, some 113 university, government, hospital and corporate laboratories engaged in research tied to germ warfare, have refused to disclose their operations to the public as required by law, a nonprofit watchdog agency says. Despite this, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Md., the government entity tasked with oversight of these laboratories, allows them to continue to operate instead of shutting them down.

From California to New Jersey and from Boston to San Antonio, often in major population centers, biological warfare labs enjoying about $20-billion Bush administration welfare since 2001, are literally crawling with deadly germs like plague, anthrax, smallpox and Rift Valley fever. In these labs, security is lax and safety procedures are inadequate to protect the public from exposure to deadly pathogens.

Under U.S. law, recipients of federal funds in biotech research must publish the minutes of their Institutional Bio-safety Committees (IBC) meetings, which describing lab operations and plans. In a number of instances, these IBC’s never held meetings. In other cases, the minutes are devoid of substance.

A Problem of Secrecy

Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project explains that he had found grave safety problems as the government-funded labs engage in so-called “dual-use research,” where researchers learn how to use pathogens for either offensive or defensive purposes. Francis Boyle, an international legal expert at the University of Illinois, Champaign, puts it more bluntly. Boyle called the in-house university committees “a joke and a fraud” that provide “no protection to anyone.” Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress, states that the Pentagon “is now gearing up to fight and ‘win’ biological warfare” pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted “without public knowledge and review” in 2002.

On November 7th, 2006, Hammond lodged a formal written complaint with Dr. Amy Patterson, director of the Office of Biotechnology Activities at NIH, citing 113 institutions “for non-compliance with the NIH Guidelines,” specifically for refusing to honor requests for IBC meeting minutes.

“Honoring these requests is not only mandatory under the NIH Guidelines that you are charged with enforcing [but] transparency is also a moral duty of institutions that conduct research, such as rDNA and select agent work that could endanger the public,” Hammond wrote. He added, “Failing prompt compliance by these institutions we note that your office must do its duty under NIH Guidelines and terminate funding.”

More War Profiteering

Since 9/11, big name pharmaceutical houses, military laboratories, and State and private universities across America, and others sited in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, have collectively lapped up record sums in Federal spending for R&D. How big is this enterprise? At just one venue, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in San Antonio, Texas, anthrax experiments are being conducted on 6,000 caged chimpanzees, baboons, and other primates at a cost of $6-million a year just for the upkeep. According to the Sunshine Project, SFBR genetically engineers monkeys and harbors some of the world’s most dangerous viruses such as Ebola and Lassa.

As reported by the Washington Post on Christmas 2006, the Battelle National Biodefense Institute of Columbus, Ohio, just received a $250-million, five-year award from the Department of Homeland Security to run the new biodefense analysis center under construction at Fort Detrick, Md. In July of 2006, the Post reported that much of what transpires at the center might never be known by the public as the Bush administration “intends to operate the facility largely in secret.”

“Some of the research falls within a legal gray zone, skirting the edges of an international treaty outlawing the production of even small amounts of biological weapons. The administration dismisses these concerns, insisting that the work ... is purely defensive. The Bush administration has rejected calls for oversight by independent observers outside the [Homeland Security] department’s network of government scientists and contractors,” the Post added.

Milton Leitenberg, a weapons expert at the University of Maryland argues that, if other governments did this kind of research, the Bush administration would view it as an infringement of the bioweapons treaty. You can’t go around the world yelling about Iranian and North Korean programs -- about which we know little -- when we have all this going on.”

Hammond believes there are about 400 bio-weapons agents labs across the U.S., some of which encounter unexpected difficulty complying with federal law. David Perlin, president of the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) of Newark, N.J., told Sunshine that the FBI requested PHRI to enter into an agreement with the Bureau “not to publicly disclose which specific pathogens and/or strains are stored at our facility.”

Who Really Cares?

Those who dismiss NIH’s laxity about enforcing its regulations only need recall the anthrax attacks on Congress and the media in October 2001. The deadly strain released back then most probably came from the U.S. germ warfare lab at Fort Detrick. Further while there is a proliferation in such labs, four employees at Fort Detrick have died while conducting bio-lab experiments.

Lack of transparencey is cause for concern if only because of the history of CIA and Pentagon experiments in germ warfare that used Americans as guinea pigs. In Rogue State (Common Courage Press), reporter William Blum noted that for decades those agencies “conducted tests in the open air in the United States, exposing millions of Americans to large clouds of possibly dangerous bacteria and chemical particles.”

Between 1949 and 1969, the Army tested the spread of dangerous chemical and bacterial organisms over 239 U.S. populated areas including San Francisco, New York and Chicago with no warnings to the public or regard for the health consequences, Blum writes.

Jackie Cabasso, executive director of Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, warned, “[In 2001], the U.S. single-handedly blew apart an international system for inspections of these kinds of [biological] laboratories, a system that would have made great strides toward ensuring that biodefense labs aren’t abused for offensive purposes. Having thumbed our nose at the world, the US is now massively expanding its biodefense program, mostly in secretive facilities.”

According to Boyle, President Bush “sabotaged the Inspection Protocol for the BWC” as it was on the verge of conclusion and success and the U.S. “fully intended to get back into the research, development and testing of illegal and criminal offensive bio-warfare programs.” Critics ask rhetorically, if the operators of the biological laboratories are not engaged in offensive germ warfare, why does the Bush administration keep it all a secret? Suspicion would not be so great if the Bush administration hadn’t opposed toughening the 1975 global ban on germ weapons.

In 2003, the New York Times quoted Elisa Harris, former arms control official under President Clinton, who discussed the wisdom of the government’s plan for a mobile germ trainer. Harris said that the Bush administration plan would raise concerns among other governments in part because the United States has fought tooth and nail to prevent the international community from strengthening the germ treaty.

List of the Culprits

Among pharmaceutical houses in non-compliance with NIH requirements are Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park and Worchester, Agencourt Bioscience Corp.; Antibody Science, Inc.; BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb and its Pharmaceutical Research Institute of Connecticut; Centocor, Inc.; Chiron; Discovery Genomics Inc.; DuPont Central Research and Development; Embrex, Inc.; Genentech, Inc., Genzyme Corp. of Cambridge and Framingham, Mass.; GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Inc. and its Rahway, N.J., research site; Integral Molecular; Introgen Therapeutics; L2 Diagnostics LLC; Merck & Co. Inc., West Point; Merck Research Laboratories, Rahway, N.J.; Meridian Bioscience Inc.; Monsanto Co. Mystic, Conn., research; New Link Genetics; NovaFlora, Inc.; NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals; OSI Pharmaceuticals; Pfizer Inc., and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals of St. Louis, Roche Bioscience, Schering-Plough Research Institute; SelectX Pharmaceuticals; Serono Research Institution; Third Wave Technologies; and Vaxin, Inc.

Federal entities involved include the Center for Disease Control, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, VA hospitals in Stratton, Va.; the Jerry Pettis Memorial Hospital and the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, the Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Plum Island Animal Disease Center of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Navy Medical Research Center.

Other fund recipients include, AERAS Global TB Vaccine Foundation, CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, Inc.; Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Children’s National Medical Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Columbus Children’s Research Institute, Hadassah Medical Organization, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, and Scripps Clinic.

Among universities in non-compliance: Alabama A&M, Albany Medical College, Ball State, Brigham Young, Bucknell, Central Michigan, Drexel College of Medicine, Hackensack University Medical Center, Hunter College, Indiana State University, Purdue University, Loma Linda, Missouri State, New York Medical College, and Queens College of City University of New York, Rider (Delaware), Rockefeller University, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, South Dakota State University, St. John’s University, State University of New York at Binghamton, Brockport, and Buffalo; Towson, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (UMDNJ), and University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, and universities of Arizona, California at San Francisco, Maryland, Massachusetts, Miami, Fla.; Mississippi; Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Southern Mississippi, Texas at Arlington and San Antonio, Tulsa, Utah State, Wake Forest, Washington University in St. Louis, Western Kentucky and Wilkes (Pennsylvania).

Sherwood Ross is an American reporter who has worked for major American newspapers and magazines as well as international wire services. To comment on this article or arrange for speaking engagements: [email protected]. His blog is The Smirking Chimp.