Some 113 university, government, hospital and corporate laboratories engaged in research often with potential to be used for germ warfare have refused to disclose their operations to the public as required by Federal rules, a nonprofit watchdog agency has charged.
Instead of shutting their operations down, however, the National Institutes of Health(NIH), of Bethesda, Md., the government agency tasked with oversight of these laboratories, allows them to continue to operate, a peculiar stance for an entity that describes itself as "the steward of medical and behavioral research for the Nation."
From California to New Jersey and from Boston to San Antonio, often in the heart of major centers of population, biological warfare labs lavishly financed with their share of about $20-billion by the Bush administration since 2001 are literally crawling with deadly germs from Spanish flu to plague to anthrax to tularemia to rift valley fever. Reportedly,in some of the laboratories security is lax and safety procedures inadequate to protect the public from exposure to deadly pathogens.
Under U.S. law, recipients of Federal funds for biotech research must comply with guidelines issued by the NIH. These include making available to the public the minutes of the labs' Institutional Biosafety Committees(IBC)meetings, describing their operations and plans. In a number of instances, these IBC's have never bothered to hold a meeting. In other cases, the minutes they furnish are devoid of substance.
Basically, their operations in many cases are being kept secret, according to watchdog Sunshine Project of Austin, Tex., a nonprofit that attempts to protect the public from the risks of biotechnology experiments. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention(BWC), which the US signed, prohibits research on offensive biological weapons. If the work is performed in secret, however, weapons designed for offensive use could be concealed. In the 1930s, the Japanese military masked its secret germ warfare scheme as a water purification project.
As the government-funded labs engage in "dual-use research," (pathogen research having both offensive and defensive applications), Sunshine's Edward Hammond reports he "has encountered grave problems with the system." These include "risky experiments approved with dubious safety precautions and/or inadequate IBC review,dysfunctional and otherwise noncompliant committees, and other types of biosafety problems."
Francis Boyle, an international legal expert at the University of Illinois, Champaign, puts it more bluntly. He called the in-house university committees "a joke and a fraud" that provide "no protection to anyone." Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress, states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.
Last November 7th, Hammond lodged a complaint with Dr. Amy Patterson, director of the Office of Biotechnology Activities at NIH, citing 113 institutions "for non-compliance with the NIH Guidelines," specifically for refusing to honor requests for IBC meeting minutes.
"Honoring these requests is not only mandatory under the NIH Guidelines that you are charged with enforcing (but) transparency is also a moral duty of institutions that conduct research, such as rDNA and select agent work that could endanger the public," Hammond added. He wrote Patterson, "Failing prompt compliance by these institutions we note that your office must do its duty under NIH Guidelines and terminate funding."
NIH's Patterson apparently had troubles of her own obtaining information from labs on the Federal payroll. On Dec. 6, 2004, she issued a "reminder" to universities engaged in research that stated "compliance with the NIH Guidelines is critical to the safe conduct of research and to the fulfillment of an institutional commitment to the protection of staff, the environment, and public health."
Since 9/11, biotech houses, military laboratories, and State and private universities across America, and others sited in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, have collectively lapped up record sums in Federal R&D dollars.
Sherwood Ross has worked as a publicist for Chicago; as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and workplace columnist for Reuters. He has also been a media consultant to colleges, law schools, labor unions, and to the editors of more than 100 (more...)
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