AR-News: Lab Disaster Lurks, Book Says

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From: primfocus at waste.org

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-liplum163672597feb16,0,7872293.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

Lab Disaster Lurks, Book Says
Book: West Nile Outbreak Began at Plum Island
Claims Plum Island source of outbreaks

By Bill Bleyer
STAFF WRITER
February 16, 2004

A new book about the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the federal
laboratory off Orient Point that studies foreign animal viruses such as foot
and mouth disease, contends that the first American outbreaks of Lyme
disease and West Nile fever originated at the center.

Michael C. Carroll's "Lab 257 - The Disturbing Story of the Government's
Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory," which is being released tomorrow by
William Morrow, argues that security and biological safety procedures are so
slipshod that it is only a matter of time before there is a serious virus
outbreak or terrorist attack on the facility.

"The laboratory once glorified as the 'World's Safest Lab' is today the
world's most dangerous," Carroll wrote.

But the federal departments of Homeland Security, which runs the island, and
Agriculture, which handles its research, dismiss Carroll's book as fiction.
Elizabeth Lautner, the new laboratory director who took over last month,
said, "It's really not an accurate portrayal of what's going on on the
island."

Carroll, a corporate lawyer who lives in Bellmore and Manhattan, said in an
interview, "Here's Plum Island lying in the midst of some of the most
expensive and exclusive real estate in America and lying on the edge of the
largest population center in the United States, and it holds some of the
most dangerous germs on Earth in a laboratory with virtually no security and
is run and protected no better than a junior high school biology
laboratory."

Although the first-time author said he had no background in science before
beginning research on the island seven years ago, "What I found through
documents and hundreds of hours of interviews with scientists, workers,
journalists and local people is that this place is a ticking biological time
bomb waiting to go off and if we don't do something soon we're going to have
a real problem." At Orient Point one day, he saw Plum Island and became
curious, and began researching it. As the book progressed, he could no
longer keep his commitments to the firm.

Carroll, 31, describes the history of the lab from its founding by the Army
50 years ago with the aid of a former Nazi germ warfare scientist to the
takeover by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. The Department of
Agriculture controlled it previously.

What he paints is not a pretty picture. He describes a 1978 outbreak of foot
and mouth disease among animals penned outside and waiting for testing. All
the animals on the island were killed to prevent the spread of the germ, as
was reported in the media at the time.

And he writes of the loss of biological containment integrity and workers
knee-deep in virus-contaminated sewage when power was lost in one building
during Hurricane Bob in 1991.

He said the terrorist threat is not just the result of his imagination. As
previously reported in Newsweek, "It was on the mind of a suspected
terrorist who was looking into building dirty bombs and putting together
biological warfare for Osama bin Laden." He was referring to Sultan
Bashiruddin Mahmood, former chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy
Commission, who was arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Newsweek
reported that raids on his residence and office in Kabul, Afghanistan,
turned up a dossier on Plum Island. "This is a huge warning signal and
nobody is paying attention to it," Carroll said.

Lautner countered that "there's been significant upgrades to Plum Island
since 9/11. We've increased the number of guards and we've increased patrols
to every part of the island. We've done more extensive screening of
potential employees as well as visitors. We have rigid escorting
requirements for visitors so they must have an escort at all times. We've
installed electronic surveillance in sensitive areas."

Of his theory that Plum Island was responsible for the spread of Lyme
disease, Carroll said, "The first outbreak of Lyme disease occurred in
Connecticut in 1975. Ten miles southwest of Old Lyme you have Plum Island
directly in the flight path of hundreds of thousands of birds." He said
that, at the time, Plum Island was breeding thousands of ticks, which can
transmit Lyme disease and were "impregnated with exotic animal viruses and
bacteria." In addition, Carroll said, government documents show that two or
three years after the outbreak of Lyme disease, holes of up to
three-quarters of an inch were detected in the roof and air filtration
system at the lab and the incinerator where infected animals were burned. He
said that meant that air could escape from the supposedly airtight lab and
insects that transmit disease could enter and exit the facility.

Agriculture department spokeswoman Sandy Miller Hays said, "It's my
understanding that Lyme disease has never been studied on Plum Island." She
said the center studies "diseases that are of importance to animals in
American agriculture," and Lyme disease is not because it does not affect
livestock.

With the West Nile virus outbreak in 1999, Carroll noted that, "Weeks before
the first human infection, very close to Plum Island you had 18 horses on 13
horse farms on the North Fork dying from an unknown condition that later
turned out to be West Nile fever."

Hays said, "The first human case of West Nile was in Queens on Aug. 2 of
1999. That's the other end of Long Island from Plum Island. The wild bird
collection [at the Bronx Zoo that was infected] was in New York City on Aug.
8, again a long way from Plum Island. The first horse case on eastern Long
Island was on Aug. 26. We did not have any West Nile virus at Plum Island
until Oct. 29," when it was transported there for research.

While Carroll admitted he had no direct evidence that Lyme disease or West
Nile came from Plum Island, he said, "When there's this much evidence piled
on top of each other, I don't believe in coincidences."

Reaction on the East End to Carroll's conclusions was mixed.

Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton), whose district includes Plum Island, said
he has not seen the book but was aware of its conclusions. "It raises issues
that, at a minimum, ought to be looked at," he said, and the debate ought to
help in the push by the community and government officials for increased
security and accountability. Bishop said that a General Accounting Office
study last year said Plum Island had made security improvements but more
needed to be done.

Greenport Mayor David Kapell, a longtime defender of the lab, said, "It
sounds to me like sensationalism to play on the largely irrational fears
about Plum Island. ... The community has lived with Plum Island for 50 years
with no documentation that anybody has suffered any health consequences as a
result."

Debbie O'Kane, executive director of the North Fork Environmental Council,
who has served on Plum Island advisory groups, said she couldn't comment on
Carroll's contention that viruses from the island have infected people off
the island. But, O'Kane, a longtime critic of the lab who feels it should
not be operating near a large population concentration, said, "I'm glad that
the book will bring some attention back to Plum Island because we don't feel
the current administration has been responsive to the local community. It's
beneficial to have these issues out there for discussion."

While federal officials have criticized the book, it does have its
supporters. Among them is former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who worked with Carroll
at the law firm he quit to undertake the book. Cuomo offered a publicity
blurb that called "Lab 257" "a carefully researched, chilling expose of
potential catastrophe."

U.S. Sen Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has been a vocal critic of Plum
Island security, said in a written statement yesterday, "I have not read the
book yet, but I continue to have concerns about the safety and security at
Plum Island, and I hope the book helps to further highlight the issues I
have raised ..."

the wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. he is in front of it - axel munthe

"Never doubt that a small group of dedicated citizens can change the world. 
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."      Margaret Mead
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