Okay, I know we’re a bit ahead of June, but we’re within shipping for June, right? And at this point, a rather concerning pattern of “shipping live anthrax” is developing.
Yep! It’s that time again! Er, yet another mishap involving a lab sending a viable select agent to someone who shouldn’t have it. Er, someones. In this case, an unknown number of private commercial labs in nine states. NINE! And that would be alarming in and of itself, without that whole one year ago gift that keeps on giving. Or the previous Oakland Children’s Hospital incident in 2004.
Well. I guess in defense of the CDC, who owns the previous mishaps, this was a Department of Defense lab “mishap.”
Very seriously, it appears there’s an issue here beyond “oh oops, culture of carelessness” – we have three clear and separate incidents of live anthrax being shipped out to people who should not have live anthrax:
- 2004 – Oakland Children’s Hospital (should have received inactivated anthrax from the CDC; never did figure out what they were doing with anthrax)
2014 – Three in-house CDC labs (should have received inactivated anthrax)
2015 – Unknown number of private, commercial labs (should have received inactivated anthrax for “field-based testing to identify biological threats in the environment”)
Can we perhaps maybe finally agree that we have a massive problem with research laboratories, select agents, and oh, I dunno, what’s the word I want? Culture? Accountability?
Oh right!
Safety.
Last night, after I was entirely too tired to edit this post, it came out that not only were multiple labs in nine U.S. states—California, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin—and South Korea. Osan Air Base, which is an American military base, but still. A statement from the base says up to 22 people in a training laboratory were exposed: Five active duty Air Force members, 10 active duty Army members, three civilian officials and four contractors, all of whom are now receiving prophylactic treatment. -KH, 28 May 2015