Trouble in the air at Fort Detrick

Trouble in the air at Fort Detrick

The Government Accountability Office's chief technologist testified in 2007 that the country's now 1,300-plus "high-containment" germ labs were essentially regulating themselves. Little has changed since then.

Frederick residents have had plenty of reminders lately why they should be concerned about the biodefense facilities in their midst: an ongoing cancer cluster investigation related to past groundwater contamination, an Agent Orange protest, and headlines about the 2001 anthrax attacks —

Little wonder, then, if Frederick residents are troubled about the latest risky biodefense facility at Fort Detrick: a 460,000-square-foot Medical Countermeasures and Test Facility, which, it appears, will aerosolize large numbers of monkeys with bioweapons agents.

Even without deliberately floating its germs in the air, USAMRIID has had trouble keeping track of them. In 2009, it discovered 9,200-plus vials (one-eighth of its stock) weren't logged into inventory. In 2003, while cleaning up a leaking Detrick chemical dump, employees found 100-plus vials of buried live bacteria. "The documentation for where this came from doesn't exist," Detrick's safety director at the time, Lt. Col. Donald Archibald, stammered.

Lab-acquired infections are a particular concern now that researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Wisconsin and elsewhere have brought the 1918 flu back to life, and developed deadly bird flus that transmit easily between humans.

The CDC also allowed USAMRIID researcher Peter Jahrling to conduct experiments trying to infect monkeys with smallpox. Currently, smallpox does not infect animals other than humans. That's why world health authorities were able (they thought) to eradicate the disease. Risking the establishment of an animal reservoir for smallpox makes about as much sense as resurrecting the 1918 flu.

The CDC's reputation for "safety" rests on its secrecy, and on the fact that it hasn't killed anyone in Atlanta since two janitors died of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in 1976.