OK, let me see if I have this straight. Boston University researchers were working on an unusual but serious and potentially lethal disease called tularemia. Two of them came down with symptoms of — you guessed it — tularemia. But no one thought there could be a problem until a third researcher came down with the same symptoms four months later. Only then did the geniuses running this lab wonder whether something might be amiss.
So they run some tests, and a month later, the results are in: sure enough, these three lab workers had contracted tularemia. At that point, the law required BU to notify public health authorities within 24 hours. But inexplicably, BU waited two weeks to notify the state and local public health departments. And this was all several months ago — the public didn’t know about it until this week.
Oh, and one more thing: the workers appear to have contracted tularemia for two reasons: the supposedly weakened strain they were working with was contaminated with full-strength pathogen, and they were not following proper safety protocols.
There are several lessons here. First: shit happens. There is no such thing as a perfect system — safety protocols are ignored, corners are cut, errors are made in preparing "weakened" strains. This is because people are not perfect, and there is nothing anyone can do to remove that problem. The risk of error can be reduced, but not eliminated.
Second: BU has demonstrated a nasty combination of stupidity and an appalling lack of concern for the public health in this episode. That, coupled with BU’s general insistence on proving itself to be the gang who can’t shoot straight on much of anything (one excellent example being the recent debacle surrounding the appointment of a new president; see here and here for more BU follies), suggests that perhaps BU shouldn’t be operating labs involving dangerous pathogens, at least in heavily-populated areas.
But wait — BU wants to open a new lab to study super-dangerous pathogens! These are the really bad ones — Ebola, anthrax, you name it. And they want to put it in the heavily congested South End, where the second an accidentally infected worker leaves the building we’ll have an epidemic on our hands. But the Mayor is apparently on board. And BU assures us that they’ll take all appropriate precautions, and that they’ll do everything they’re supposed to if something goes wrong.
Why on God’s green earth should we believe them? And how can the Mayor seriously maintain that BU "didn’t bungle it" when they (a) did bungle it (the only reason more people didn’t get sick is that tularemia is not passed from person to person), and (b) didn’t even notify the authorities of the contamination until two weeks after the law required them to? This sounds like a bad idea from top to bottom. I hope there’s time to stop it.
See here for some info on this disease.
Thanks for the pointer, bombadil – I added html to make the link clickable.