DHS Looking To Bring Level 4 Pathogens To A Town Near You

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The Department of Homeland Security is looking for a new home for a National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. They are taking over the work of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center which the scientists, farmers and government officials for 80 years have kept off the U.S. mainland.

This decision reminds me of the movie by Stephen King called “The Stand”. In the movie, the escape and spread of a human-made biological weapon, a superflu (influenza) virus known formally as “Project Blue” and colloquially as “Captain Trips.” The epidemic leads to the death of most of the human population in North America.

The virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease – a highly contagious killer of livestock such as cattle-our government is planning to bring the virus to the mainland on purpose. The DHS is looking at five inland sites, all in agricultural regions. Though foot-and-mouth is not fatal to humans–DHS plans to work with–Nipah and Hendra viruses and those that cause African swine fever, Rift Valley fever and Japanese encephalitis, can kill humans as well as livestock.

What that means in laymen terms is; that Nipah and Hendra virus is classified as a Hazard Group 4 pathogen, requiring the highest level of biosecurity procedures. Nipah virus, for example, has a 40% mortality rate in humans.  Just like in “The Stand” human error can never be eliminated. This is why, where the facility is currently located protects all of us from that factor.

The waters surrounding Plum Island provide a relatively secure barrier against spread of pathogens. DHS has the option of building the new lab there, and that would be the sensible thing to do.

But government and university officials in five states with big, vulnerable agricultural economies have bought their tickets in the terror lab sweepstakes, vying for a chance to play host to the deadly microbes. The prospect of federal grants and jobs is leading them to put their states’ farms and ranches, and possibly their residents, at risk.

DHS brushes aside charges of recklessness. Its own environmental impact study concluded that the likelihood of escape — which it estimated would cause $2.8 to $4.2 billion in economic damage nationally — is “extremely low,” given appropriate attention to design, construction and operation.

The DHS did a study, they released in June, which basically said that they have faith in the technology that guards us from accidents that may occur. What was missing from this report was that human make mistakes and that was not figured in on worse case scenerios.

In May, the U.S. Government Accountability Office told Congress that DHS has not shown foot-and-mouth can be studied safely on the mainland. It noted that a 1978 escape from containment on Plum Island was kept in check only by the surrounding waters. Citing many past releases worldwide, it argued that technology and procedures alone don’t fully protect against escape, because human error can never be eliminated. The subsequent DHS report made no claim that the problem of human error could be solved.

In those heartland communities being examined as possible homes for the viral zoo, residents’ concern goes far beyond “not in my back yard.” They stress that a gamble with such virulent pathogens imperils the whole nation.

In August, Rep. John D. Dingell a Democrat from Michigan, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, wrote a plea to the White House urging them to stop construction of bio-terror-oriented labs. Dingell’s committee had already found that dangerous pathogens had escaped due to failures in labs around the US.

The US has the largest stock of these deadly viruses of human mass destruction. If we don’t speak out against this, it could end up in your state next. I don’t want to play Russian Roulette with my life or that of my families–hoping that the wind is blowing in the right direction or-thinking that we are ever going to eliminate human error from the equation when dealing with a Level 4 pathogen.

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Tags: Chemical and Biological Weapons, Department of Homeland Security, freedomrebel @ TPZoo, George W. Bush, John Dingell, Politics