The ScienceMag site has the following story:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has closed two labs and halted some biological shipments in the wake of several recent incidents in which highly pathogenic microbes were mishandled by federal laboratories. The cases include an accidental shipment of live anthrax; the discovery of forgotten, live smallpox samples; and a newly revealed incident in which a dangerous influenza strain was accidentally shipped from CDC to another lab.
The two cases involving CDC mistakes reveal "totally unacceptable behavior" by staff, said CDC chief Thomas Frieden at a press conference today at CDC headquarters in Atlanta. He announced several actions that CDC is taking to step up safety and security, including a moratorium on shipping highly risky pathogens. "I'm disappointed by what happened and frankly I'm angry about it," he added.
Frieden also revealed that two of six vials of smallpox discovered last week in a cold storage room in a Food and Drug Administration lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, have tested positive for live virus when grown in culture. Some smallpox experts had predicted that the 1950s-era samples would no longer be viable. Four samples have yet to be tested; all will then be destroyed, Frieden said.
(Score: 2, Troll) by egcagrac0 on Monday July 14 2014, @08:12PM
Surely this is an argument for "smaller government" and "the market will correct itself."
</sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 14 2014, @10:04PM
No, seriously, even in this case it would. What the worshipers of the "free market fairy" don't mention is the cost of the correction (which may well be the total wipe out of the market, problem solved).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Monday July 14 2014, @10:33PM
How about an argument for humans building systems that will never fail? That argument is always worth a smile, or rolling of the eyes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday July 14 2014, @08:52PM
This comes as no surprise to me. People work at these places and as the old saying goes "nobody's perfect". Paperwork gets mixed up all the time and this smacks of fouled up or mixed up paperwork. You think there would be an extra layer of security or two in there that makes moving something around as deadly as Anthrax or Smallpox anything but a trivial task. But I bet that there were extra layers, probably paperwork and more paperwork. And probably so annoying or bothersome that people just rubber stamp whatever is in their inbox so they can go home. A few shipments had paperwork mixed up, noone double checked and the wrong samples were sent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday July 14 2014, @09:17PM
How did they find out? Its kind of important.
If its a whistleblower bravely risking his career and security clearance and maybe his freedom and life by reporting this, then the "solution" will be to crack down on whistleblowers.
If its BAU process improvement where the QA/QC guys found a problem and used it to improve processes but the political backlash was intolerable, then the "solution" will be to eliminate process improvement QA/QC.
Crazy suicidal people? Maybe sec clearances need some work? Or just boring human error, maybe they need a process improvement QA/QC team, or one that works anyway?
Any discussion of trends is intentionally absent. Donno if this kind of stuff went on all the time but not reported, went on all the time but never public, or never happened before. That makes the story really weird, kind of ambulance chaser-ish or local TV news infotainment-ish.
There's not enough info to be anything other than "scary agitprop" for the general public and anecdotal infotainment at best for those in involved in lab work in general.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday July 14 2014, @09:23PM
What if the suicidal people are the sane ones?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Informative) by Joe on Monday July 14 2014, @11:47PM
For the most part it seems like "boring human error".
It might be a breath of fresh air to know that the CDC has higher standards for dealing with potentially embarrassing issues than some of other parts of the government. Here are two nice infographics from the CDC about the anthrax case (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0711-lab-safety-infographic.html/ [cdc.gov]) and the H5N1 case (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0711-lab-safety-infographic2.html/ [cdc.gov]). They also published a 25 page report on the anthrax case (http://www.cdc.gov/od/science/integrity/docs/Final_Anthrax_Report.pdf/ [cdc.gov]) and it seems that the H5N1 case is still being investigated.
- Joe
(Score: 2) by redneckmother on Monday July 14 2014, @10:16PM
I have long thought that the decision to cease smallpox vaccination in the US was misguided. Who knows where the scary stuff will turn up next?
From time to time, anthrax resurfaces in West Texas, because the bacteria lay dormant in the soil until some unfortunate animal kicks over the wrong cowpie.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday July 14 2014, @10:28PM
The thing is, currently the vaccine carries more risk than the disease. It is worth maintaining the capability to quickly do mass vaccinations though.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Joe on Monday July 14 2014, @11:33PM
Here is a brief description of the threat-level of each of the pathogens mentioned in the story.
Incompletely inactivated anthrax - Bacterial spores present in samples that were sent for protein analysis.
Health threat - Disease can be cured with antibiotics, but needs to be recognized early if the infection route is inhalation (~1 week for disease progression).
Spread - No person-to-person transmission.
The problem - The samples were handled under Biosafety Level-2 (BSL-2) conditions (live samples are BSL-3) which would minimize potential exposure. The BSL-2 researchers may not have been vaccinated if they did not regularly work with non-pathogenic (lacking its three main virulence factors) anthrax.
H5N1 contamination of H9N2 influenza stock - Virus was sent to the USDA and found to kill chickens (H9N2 doesn't normally kill chickens).
Health threat - H5N1 is not very infectious for humans, but the case-fatality rate is high (if you do get infected ~50% of death). Unclear if influenza antivirals would improve disease outcome.
Spread - No person-to-person transmission (the receptors are deep within the lungs) observed. The virus is endemic in chickens in some countries.
The problem - The virus was not handled under the appropriate biosafty level.
Freeze-dried smallpox - Multiple vials of freeze-dried smallpox, from the 1950s, found in a FDA research laboratory freezer.
Health threat - High (30%) case-fatality rate. There is a government stock-pile of a smallpox antiviral that works in animals, but has not been tested in humans.
Spread - Very infectious (when spread person-to-person). There are very effective vaccine strategies and there are stock-piles of vaccine.
The problem - The lab didn't destroy or give the CDC their virus stocks ~50 years ago, so they were not stored under the current (incredibly strict) biosafety/security required at the present time.
At the end of the day, none of these cases is really anything to worry about - the anthrax and H5N1 were only a potential danger to those in direct contact with them and the freeze-dried smallpox wasn't about to jump-out of the vial.
The smallpox case did confirm that the WHO's planned destruction of the "final" stocks of smallpox would only be symbolic and not actually make the world a safer place.