U.S. Army officials recently suspended all research at the germ warfare laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., because of a rash of problems that came to light last year.
The FBI determined that one of the lab’s scientists, Bruce Ivins, engineered the 2001 anthrax attacks, sending letters filled with spores to Congress and national media outlets. Investigators believe he was able to take anthrax from Fort Detrick because of the lab’s porous record-keeping and oversight. Ivins, who committed suicide last year, had denied involvement and had been allowed to keep working at the lab during the investigation.
Last week the Army commander in charge of its research, John P. Skvorak, halted work because he said there was a high probability that the facility couldn’t account for all of its toxins and biological agents. Skvorak ordered an inventory of all the facility’s freezers and refrigerators, and that could take months to complete — the Army has operated a research facility for more than four decades.
Pro Publica, a nonprofit journalism organization, recently reported that the military may have greater problems on its hands. The nation has spent $20 billion over the past seven years on biodefense research, expanding the numbers of labs and researchers using biological agents. Some terrorism experts fear that such a spread of research increases the risk of the biological agents falling into the wrong hands because of the military’s poor management.
For example, in a 2007 report the Government Accountability Office found oversight of biological programs to be “limited.” Investigators said the oversight that does exist is “fragmented among different federal agencies, and for the most part relies on self-policing.”
In its investigation of the anthrax attacks, the FBI clearly demonstrated the dangers of that approach. The federal government’s extensive efforts to protect the country against bioterrorism will be undercut unless it gets its act together and applies the proper oversight to make sure biological agents stay in the labs where they’re supposed to be.
Copyright 2009 Las Vegas Sun
