New Mexicans Worried by Prospect of Live Anthrax Research Facility at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab

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New Mexicans Worried by Prospect of Live Anthrax Research Facility at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Folks around here are accustomed to having plutonium in their back yard. But neighbors of the Los Alamos National Laboratory are uneasy with a plan to bring in live, deadly germs for research.

Energy Department officials want the lab, known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb, to create a special facility where scientists can work with infectious agents such as plague, anthrax and tuberculosis.

While that would give Los Alamos a more prominent role in the nation's fight against bioterrorism, critics question the wisdom of bringing in another threat to the community.

"It's the public that could be placed in jeopardy if anything went wrong at this bio lab," said Peggy Prince of Peace Action New Mexico, one of several Santa Fe residents who met this week with lab workers at a motel. Santa Fe is about 25 miles southeast of Los Alamos.

There already are more than 200 similar research facilities - called biosafety level 3, or BSL-3 labs - at universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical research centers around the country.

But in New Mexico, heightened concern stems from placing a BSL-3 lab at a secretive nuclear weapons facility - possibly sequestered from public scrutiny.

Critics fear that research might eventually be turned into an offensive military program, with the lab a logical place to "weaponize" germs. The United States ended its offensive germ warfare production in 1972 when it signed a biological weapons treaty.

"The record is replete with hiding the health effects of our nuclear weapons program on our military, our civilians, our workers," said Cathie Sullivan, a Santa Fe silkscreen printer.

Chris Mechels, a retired computer scientist who worked for Los Alamos for 11 years, said biological research work shouldn't be done within the Energy Department "because they don't have an adequate concern for worker safety or the safety of the public."

The lab's Bioscience Division already has done some detective work for the government on recent anthrax attacks, using sophisticated DNA detection technologies.

But scientists currently are restricted to working with less-dangerous vaccine or research strains, rather than live anthrax. Division leader Jill Trewhella complained that relying on other labs for samples is inefficient and heightens the chances for contamination.

"We need to be able to work with small amounts of the live pathogen," Trewhella said.

Proponents also note that BSL-3 labs are designed and engineered for safety. At Los Alamos, special air-handling system would keep air flowing in, and filter it as it left. Biologists in gowns, gloves and booties would work with amounts of pathogens typically the size of the lead visible in a sharpened pencil, they said.

"I know these people. I trust these people to protect me and protect themselves," said Jim Brainard, deputy division leader of the Bioscience Division.

The three proposed locations for the new lab - the site isn't determined - are in areas of the lab accessible to the public, "so people can come and visit, and take the message out that it's really defensive, not offensive," Brainard said.

Officials say they hope to have the lab up and running by spring 2003, depending on whether an Energy Department review team recommends proceeding with the project.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2001


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