[Peace-discuss] Fw: Thousands of Uncounted Disease Samples Found at Army Biodefense Lab

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Subject: Thousands of Uncounted Disease Samples Found at Army Biodefense Lab


> Thousands of Uncounted Disease Samples Found at Army
> Biodefense Lab
> By Martin Matishak
> Global Security Newswire
> Thursday, June 18, 2009
> http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090618_8179.php
>
> WASHINGTON -- A recently completed inventory at a major
> U.S. Army biodefense facility found nearly 10,000 more
> vials of potentially lethal pathogens than were known to
> be stored at the site (see GSN, April 23).
>
> (Jun. 18) - A scientist analyzes potentially hazardous
> samples at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
> Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. The facility
> found thousands of unrecorded disease agent vials during
> a recent inventory (U.S. Army photo).
>
> The 9,220 samples -- which included the bacterial agents
> that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia; Venezuelan,
> Eastern and Western equine encephalitis viruses; Rift
> valley fever virus; Junin virus; Ebola virus; and
> botulinum neurotoxins -- were found during a four-month
> inventory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
> Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., according to
> Col. Mark Kortepeter, the center's deputy commander.
>
> Kortepeter said yesterday it was "extremely unlikely"
> that any samples were smuggled out of the center's
> laboratories, noting that there are "multiple layers of
> security" that include random exit inspections and a
> personnel reliability program.
>
> "I can't 100 percent say nothing [left the facility] but
> I think the bottom line [is] we did have a lot of
> buffers to prevent anyone who shouldn't be in the
> laboratory from getting in in the first place and then
> preventing them taking something out with them," he
> said.
>
> Most of the samples found were so small -- less than one
> milliliter-- that any amount of pathogen would thaw
> quickly and die once removed from a freezer, according
> to inventory control officer Sam Edwin.
>
> The institute's commander ordered the latest accounting
> after a USAMRIID researcher in January discovered four
> vials of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus --
> considered a possible tool in bioterrorism -- that were
> not listed in the center's database, Kortepeter said
> during a conference call with reporters.
>
> A newly minted Army requirement mandates that any
> identified "overage" result in a "Category One Serious
> Incident Report." That order was handed down in January
> by the Army, USAMRIID spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden
> told Global Security Newswire. Previously, such
> incidents only required the overage be entered into the
> database, without any additional reporting, according to
> Kortepeter.
>
> The institute has been under scrutiny since the Justice
> Department's 2008 assertion that a former USAMRIID
> researcher was responsible for the 2001 anthrax mailings
> that killed five people. The prime suspect,
> microbiologist Bruce Ivins, committed suicide last July
> as federal prosecutors prepared charges against him.
>
> Federal investigators traced the anthrax strain in the
> mailings to a supply developed at the laboratory. Ivins
> stored his own sample of the agent in a refrigerator
> that he alone used.
>
> "Nine thousand, two hundred undocumented samples is an
> extraordinarily serious breach," Richard Ebright, a
> professor at Rutgers University who follows biosecurity,
> told the Washington Post. "A small number would be a
> concern; 9,200 ... at an institution that has been the
> focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that's deeply
> worrisome. Unacceptable."
>
> The number of unrecorded vials is "not too surprising"
> given the physical size of the site at Fort Detrick and
> the number of select agents -- pathogens or biological
> toxins declared to pose a severe threat to human or
> animal health -- studied by its researchers, Gigi Kwik
> Gronvall, a senior associate at the University of
> Pittsburg'hs Center for Biosecurity, told GSN. "It is
> not a security risk, but an organizational problem" at
> USAMRIID, she said.
>
> Gronvall served on a Defense Science Board task force
> that examined the security of select agents at Defense
> Department laboratories and found the institute had
> better security than most. She noted the report
> criticized the site's record-keeping process.
>
> She said the most significant contributions the
> inventory made is to detail what disease agents are in
> the catalog and who has access to those materials.
>
> The inventory lasted from Feb. 4 to May 27. In all, 230
> people, about one-third of the center's work force,
> searched roughly 335 refrigerators and freezers,
> including 100 freezers that contain select agents. The
> Army suspended most of the laboratory's biological
> research studies while the catalog process was under
> way.
>
> About half of the newfound material was destroyed after
> being recorded, Edwin told reporters. The other half was
> deemed worthy for further scientific use, cataloged, and
> stored in the center's containment freezers, he said.
>
> Kortepeter said the "vast majority" of the unrecorded
> samples were "working stock" that had accumulated over
> the decades by researchers who retired or left the
> institute.
>
> "If they were not being actively worked on it's very
> possible they were basically in the back of a freezer,"
> he said.
>
> A typical freezer at the center has 25 cubic feet of
> storage space, with six compartments, and can contain
> about 30,000 one milliliter vials, according to Edwin.
> The center also uses 17-cubic-feet freezers and a few
> walk-in freezers. He said the recently identified
> materials could also be stored -- with space left over
> -- in one 25 cubic foot freezer.
>
> The samples might not have been in active use when the
> center's original database -- dubbed the Agent Inventory
> Management System -- was established in 2005, Kortepeter
> said.
>
> While 9,220 might "sound like a lot ... 13 percent
> wouldn't be unusual for the numbers of investigators
> that have left over" the center's 40-year lifespan, said
> Col. Terry Besch, the site's research support chief.
>
> Previously, departing scientists turned over their
> logbooks to their successors, but records were sometimes
> incomplete, she said. The knowledge of what was in the
> center's freezers was lost as the work force turned
> over. The comprehensive database now ensures that each
> sample is tracked until it is destroyed or transferred,
> Besch said.
>
> In the future, Edwin said, USAMRIID researchers will
> conduct an annual audit of the center's disease
> material.
>
> In addition, whenever researchers use an agent in the
> inventory they must place a "comment" in a laboratory
> notebook on when they took the sample and how the
> material is to be used, he said. Records must be kept on
> how much material is used, and any remaining must be
> returned and logged in the catalog.
>
> The center's Biosurety Office will conduct quarterly
> audit of those notebooks, according to Edwin.
>
> Kortepeter predicted the newly implemented annual
> inventories would take less time than the recent
> accounting because "we're comfortable the database is
> sound now." Future audits would not be as "logistically
> intense," he added.
>
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