They’ve scheduled this meeting at the Copley Sq. Marriott. First, we must tell NIH and BU that it’s a contradiction in terms to schedule a community meeting outside the community in a high-end shopping mall. Then, we must tell them that they long ago lost all credibility and we can’t trust them with our lives and our children’s lives. We have done a miraculous job of putting a hold on this perilous lab. But the battle is not over. This meeting will require a big turnout, to convey our views back to the Panel.
There is a considerable amount we could say about recent items in the news and how well our safety and well being is protected by the government, but this is now a case of NIH and BU swinging and missing three times. They have already struck out, but want to swing again. How many more times are we going to have to go through this? How much longer is the endurance of the community going to be tested?
Additional Sources are:
http://www.stopthebiolab.org/
and
http://www.mysouthend.com/inde…
Let them have the bio-weapons lab. But, as there is lots of traffic congestion in the South End, insist that the lab be put in the western suburbs, near Mass Pike, Rte 128/495/9. Dover or Westwood might be ideal. What of all those empty buildings in Needham or Newton office parks? Make it convenient.
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p>If the powers that be say it is safe, it must be so everywhere.
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p>(“Anthrax!? — Is it safe to open the mail, Mommy?”)
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p>(Hmm…. ‘Pose that will kill the idea forever?)
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The folks who will be doing the advanced research in the building have professional ties to the research hospitals, universities, and bio firms in Boston and Cambridge. They don’t live out in the western suburbs. Furthermore, the advanced hazmat emergency infrastructure is located in Boston/Cambridge, not out there — so if there is an emergency, Boston/Cambridge is far better equipped and trained to deal with it.
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p>Nothing is perfectly safe. The risk of a major catastrophe is extremely low, but non-zero. The risk of a disaster short of major catastrophe (many sick, a few dead, hugely expensive to deal with) is higher than extremely low, but perhaps lower in Boston/Cambridge than in the western suburbs because despite the density of nearby civilians, there’s also a density of professionals who can mitigate the disaster.
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p>I’m no expert in any of the variety of fields involved in determining the public health benefits vs. risks in putting the lab in the middle of an urban center, along the perimeter, or out in the middle of a rural area. I do get frustrated that folks try to paint it in very simple strokes, despite the complexity. It just isn’t a simple thing.
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p>You’re telling me there aren’t doctors in Wellesley? No one who works at the Harvard Medical area lives in Newton? Come on.
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p>Of course some of the folks who would work at this facility live and/or work in the western suburbs – there are lots of research firms on Route 128, for example. Furthermore, even of the ones who do live in Boston/Cambridge, I doubt that very many of them live particularly close to the South End, so commuting to work will require them to deal with rush hour traffic, whereas a western-suburb site would give them a delightful reverse commute.
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p>I have long thought that the siting of this project sucks. I still do.
I used to work in Lexington. Route 3. Terrible. As for going more westerly and less northerly, dunno.
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p>There are doctors in Wellesley — but it’s not about doctors. It’s about high level researchers. Currently, there’s a large population of them working in Boston and Cambridge, and almost none elsewhere nearby. Why? Harvard, MIT, BU Medical, etc. Throw in the Genzyme et als and there you go. Do they all live in the South End? Of course not. But there’s a reason why the LMA is so successful — you put folks nearby each other and there’s more collaboration, there’s better sharing of expensive capital resources, etc. This is really no different.
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p>Really, what it comes down to is the assessment of risk of a major disaster. People have a visceral concern that the risk is high enough that putting it in a large population center matters. My understanding (of this specific risk, and of risk in general) is that putting it in an urban area isn’t particularly problematic because the risk is quite low and the resources to mitigate a problem are much much higher in an urban area. Double edged sword.
Around 25% of the bio-tech companies in Massachusetts are located in Boston or Cambridge. That’s a lot, but clearly it’s not almost NONE, elsewhere.
So I’m really quite surprised to see this line of argument from you. You’ve cited no info — none, zip, zero, zilch, nada — on where these “high level researchers” live. And the Albany St. site certainly isn’t very near the LMA, so this “collaboration” you’re talking about won’t happen there, nor is it near Harvard, MIT, etc.
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p>Furthermore, people who work in the LMA – docs, researchers, etc. – live all over the damn place. People who want to work in a Level 4 lab will find a way to get there, wherever it is. It’s an unusual opportunity for folks in that field.
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p>Yes, the risk assessment is critical. But the point of this whole debate is that they keep screwing up the risk assessment in their rush to cram this thing into Albany St. If it hadn’t been for the activists that Menino et al. keep deriding, this would’ve been done long ago without a proper assessment ever having been conducted.
so I can only go by anecdotes.
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p>As you know, I live very near the LMA, BU, and within a few miles of BC, BU, NEastern, Harvard and MIT. The neighborhoods with higher-than-median housing prices are absolutely loaded with professors, doctors, technicians, and scientists. I live within a 3 wood of the LMA, and of the 11 units on my floor, there are at least 10 people who go to work wearing blue pajamas. There’s no way in hell that the density in this area is maintained outside of the polygon formed by BC, Hvd, MIT, BUMC, LMA, etc.
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p>The commute to and from work isn’t the big issue, and I’m sorry if I implied that it is a major one. It’s an argument which I think has merit when people propose putting the Level 4 lab in Pigsknuckle Idaho. I do think that siting it within the polygon described above would be advantageous from an HR standpoint because it’s easier to attract employees with experience, because many of them are currently working at a job nearby and therefore are likely to live nearby (all relative, of course).
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p>In addition to daily commute, there’s also a matter of collaboration. Getting people in the same place matters, particularly when that place is a single limited access building. The farther away from those institutions listed at the top of this post, the less collaboration you’ll get with the folks who work at those institutions. That’s a clear negative. How much less? Dunno. Furthermore, there’s the matter of the equipment itself. For any researcher who could use that equipment to further science or medicine, the easier the access to the equipment, the more research will get done, plain and simple. Collaboration is awfully hard to put metrics on, but we do know that you’ll get more of it if people can easily interact with each other. Every barrier you put in the way reduces the collaboration. Obviously the facility can’t abut every institution, so it abuts one (BUMC) that happens to be quite near a number of others, accessible by public and private transit (unlike putting it out in the ‘burbs). Given that a massive number of employees at the universities and hospitals don’t drive to work, this is somewhat substantial for any of them who will go to the Lvl 4 lab.
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p>I agree that the risk assessment is critical, and it’s not as simple as a single probability. I don’t have the expertise to judge the quality of the assessment, nor have I been paying close attention.
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p>The fact is, getting that risk assessment is essential, and ought be done before any discussion of siting. I do think that it’s knee-jerk and not clear that the risk of a catastrophe is higher in Boston than in the ‘burbs though — contagion vectors are complex, and a function of population density but also of the ability for containment, response time, etc.
The scientists live in Cambridge? We’re talking about a lab that is going to be dealing with anthrax and Ebola, how simple the commute is shouldn’t be part of equation at all… but if we’re going to, do you really think that these people don’t live in the western suburbs? Have you noticed the biotechnology corridor we have? It’s called 128 and it defines the western suburbs…
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p>There are only 15 level 4 labs in the US – the Boston Fire Department is not equipped to deal with this yet. In fact, MEMA, the agency that would likely be responsible on the state level is located in Framingham, so if you’re looking for a density of professionals who could coordinate the response of a disaster on the scale of let’s say a nuclear explosion at a power plant you’d want to look to Route 9, not Mass Ave.
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p>While I’m not convinced of the reasons for this lab at all, you’ve not raised any credible reason to support its placement in the South End.
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building a lab in a place where you can’t get people to staff it isn’t very useful. Building a lab sufficiently far away from all the other related work means there’s much less collaboration — of people and of equipment. As for where they live, some live in the Western suburbs, and quite a few live in Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Newton — if you can afford it, a nice home and a shorter commute is quite desirable, as is access to the cultural stuff the city provides.
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p>As for the BFD — who do you think will have an easier time preparing for Level 4 protection — BFD/CFD or a western suburb? Who can afford the equipment, training, etc? Clearly BFD (and to a lesser extent CFD) are in a much better position to deal with the protection necessary — as are the BPD and CPD, etc. Boston’s emergency management team is orders of magnitude larger, well trained, and resourced than a western suburb.
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p>MEMA is located in Framingham, but that’s headquarters — their equipment isn’t staged there by and large.
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p>So lets look at where the other Level 4 labs in the USA are located (according to wiki):
* CDC, Atlanta GA
* GSU, Atlanta GA
* IRF, Fort Detrick, Fredrick MD
* USAMRID, Fort Detrick, Fredrick MD
* NBACC, Fort Detrick, Fredrick MD
* NIH, Bethesda, MD
* NIAID, Hamilton MT
* Galveston NL, Galveston TX
* Shope Lab, Galveston TX
* SW Found, San Antonio TX (the only private Lvl 4)
* DivConLab, Richmond VA
* NBAF, Manhattan KS
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p>What’s the common thread? It’s actually not city size, it’s college towns or military presence. CDC is in Atlanta, but it’s also got Georgia Tech and GSU. Bethesda is where Johns Hopkins is located, Galveston has UT Medical, Richmond has some colleges with med schools and is nearby a few military sites, and Manhattan is where the U of Kansas is located. As for population — San Antonio is twice the size of Boston, Atlanta’s population is close, and Richmond is about 1/3 of Boston. The other locations all have populations of about 60,000 — and Bethesda is about 8 miles from Washington DC.
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p>There is clearly “prior art” for locating a Level 4 biolab in an urban area.
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p>Comparing a biolab disaster to a nuclear explosion is pure silliness. The time scales, ramifications and mitigations of the two disasters have just about nothing in common. That’s just fearmongering.
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p>As for credible reasons, look… you don’t have to like the reason for it to be credible. I gave a number of valid reasons why putting it in the South End (or elsewhere in Boston adjacent to a major research center or hospital) makes sense. Now, those reasons may not be sufficient to overcome legitimate objections, but that doesn’t mean they’re not credible.
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p>As for whether or not there’s a need for the research to be done at all, anywhere… that’s a totally different debate that really shouldn’t be mixed with the debate about location. I’d just point out that Belarus, Czech Republic, Gabon, India, Singapore, China, and South Africa all have Level 4 labs, and they’re not quite on the level of ally that UK, France, Germany, or Italy are. Not doing level 4 research could very well expose tUSA to avoidable military and economic risk. Dunno — beyond my pay grade.
Your points aren’t credible because you weren’t saying there are good reasons to put it in the south end, you were saying it doesn’t work to put it anywhere else… There are good reasons to put it in the South End, but there are also good reasons to put it somewhere else – that’s what I was responding to.
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p>You say we have to locate the lab in the proposed location because 1) people won’t commute to a suburb, 2) the ability to deal with an accident is best handled by the BFD.
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p>As I pointed out, roughly 75% of biotech companies are not located in boston or cambridge, yet somehow these companies are staffed every day – well heeled scientists live in Concord, Weston and Lincoln as well as Brookline and Cambridge – people drive up 128 to get to technology jobs.
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p>A concentration of professionals who deal with major disasters as extreme as nuclear explosions are located in Framingham. This isn’t meant to monger fear, but rather to point out that the BFD isn’t central to a response plan for a major catastrophe – therefore, it’s not necessary to locate the lab in Boston simply because they already own hazmat suits.
I’m not arguing that the South End is the best place — merely making a case that it’s a reasonable place. There are advantages of it being located there, and I listed some of them. There are certainly disadvantages as well. I find it incredible that you’re claiming my points aren’t credible.
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p>Since you seem to have numbers, how many jobs at the high levels of research comparable to Level 4 are in that corridor, vs. Boston + Cambridge. There’s lots of jobs out there, but it’s not clear to me that they’re the kind of research jobs that correspond with the Level 4, as opposed to the academics at the unis and hospitals. I don’t know the answer either — I’m just exploring the question. Given that all but one Level 4 are owned and operated by public institutions and given that the best medical and scientific research in the world happens at LMA and in Cambridge (not the ‘burb corridor) leads me to suspect that far more collaboration and use would come from folks who already work in Bos+Cam than those who already work in 128land. Again, without numbers it’s speculative on both our parts. The 75% number you cited isn’t particularly helpful though.
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p>No. A concentration of professionals who manage dealing with major disasters are located in Framingham, because the location of the managers is largely irrelevant, and because you don’t want the central control to be located within the radius of the disaster (9/11 is a brilliant example of what happens when it is). The boots on the ground for a disaster have nothing to do with Framingham — they’re not in Framingham waiting to be dispatched, they’re already in some other municipality where they’re already working as emergency response professionals — firemen, cops, ambulatory folks, hazmat folks, and on and on. So long as the speed of light is damned fast, the location MEMA is irrelevant except to point out that the Level 4 lab should not be located too close to the MEMA location.
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p>As to Framingham, I think I made it clear that my point was only MEMA manages a plan for nuclear accidents without the central role of the BFD, therefore, there are options outside of Boston…
In your post, you list 12 sites where Level 4 labs already exist. At the public hearing in October 2008, someone with NIH stated that there are 12 to 18 to 20 labs, depending on if you count operating labs, or labs scheduled to come on board, or sites with more than one lab.
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p>I would suggest that stopping this one idioticly placed lab from doing level 4 research will not stop ALL LEVEL 4 RESEARCH. On the contrary, it will mean that there are only 12 to 18 to 20 other labs to continue doing the Level 4 research, resulting in a “loss” of about 5% to 7% research capacity nationwide, which is not really a “loss” since the Boston lab has never started doing the research anyway, allegedly.
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p>Finally, the BU officials that appeared in court to defend this made it clear (and to which I was an eye witness (this is not hearsay)), that if they are never allowed to do Level 4 research in the “Needle”, the lab will NOT GO TO WASTE. BU will still be able to do Level 3 research, and they will have the most expensive level 3 lab ever built, but the lab will definitely NOT GO TO WASTE.
My post was meant to go one level higher, in response to STOMV. Don’t know what happened.
I have no idea just what special equipment is necessary for the research interests of the Boston lab, but I do know that the equipment is highly specialized, which is to say, even if there were tens of thousands of square feet of Level 4 lab space going unused in another location, it’s not at all clear that the work that is proposed to be done in Boston could be done there without insanely expensive renovations — so insanely expensive that it would be cheaper to build new.
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p>That does introduce a different question though: why not build the new Level 4 space adjacent to an already existing Level 4 Lab? After all, that lab area already has the hazmat plan, the security, the licensed vendors, etc. To me, that seems to be the most sensible plan, unless the scientists and researchers needed to work in this particular area of Level 4 research only exist in sufficient numbers in Boston, a prospect I find rather unlikely. In my mind, it makes far more sense to build it in Bethesda or Atlanta or Manhattan KS than anywhere in MA.
The alternate sites were Tyngsboro and Peterborough NH. Surprisingly, in one of the earlier risk assessment reports, Peterborough NH was not chosen because if there was a breach in the system, it would farm animals that would most likely become infected first, and since farm animals can’t speak, and so on and so on.
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p>I have also heard that there is a decommissioned military base in upstate New York that is interested, and would have many miles of empty buffer zone to protect any surrounding population from an outbreak.
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p>In short, there are plenty of viable alternative sites, besides Albany Street, that make more sense.
Thanks to everyone who showed up. The community was in force and better represented than I feared, given the lack of notification and the location and time.
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p>Thanks again.