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| Britain |
| Laboratories to tighten security on dangerous biological stocks |
| 2007-01-25 |
| BritainÂ’s laboratories have been ordered to strengthen security on stocks of more than 100 deadly viruses and bacteria after an MI5 warning that Islamic terrorists are training in germ warfare, actively recruiting scientists and students. The biological agents include polio, rabies, tuberculosis and avian flu. Food poisoning bacteria such as E. coli and the sources of a number of rare tropical and Middle Eastern illnesses are also included. Scientists and laboratory staff in universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies who deal with agents will have to be vetted by police, and their laboratories will be checked by government safety inspectors. Stock will have to be regularly audited. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, security at laboratories was stepped up amid new intelligence on the ambitions of al-Qaeda and its allies, and restrictions were placed on 47 agents under the Antiterrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Yesterday the Government announced that the list was being increased to 103, including 45 viruses, 21 bacteria, 2 fungi, 13 toxins and 18 animal pathogens. The additions to the list include many of the bacteria and viruses that strike at animals, such as foot-and-mouth disease. These might not be harmful to humans but could be devastating to the economy, as was the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain in 2001. Others such as Rift Valley fever normally infect animals but have spread to human populations and caused widespread illness and death as the illness did in Egypt in the 1970s. Guanarito virus or Venezuelan haemorrhagic fever can be fatal in a third of cases, while Shigella boydii can cause dysentery. John Wood, of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Controls, said scientists will have to show a valid reason for working with the agents. He said the changes mirrored controls in the US and would probably mean much stricter access to laboratories. Alistair Hay, Professor of Environmental Toxicology at Leeds University, said that the measures were prudent. He said the introduction of the first controls had been accepted by the scientific community. He said that in the 1980s a cult in Orgeon used a bacterium to spread food poisoning and sabotage elections that threatened them. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 He said that in the 1980s a cult in Oregon used a bacterium to spread food poisoning and sabotage elections that threatened them. Your point, perfesser? It was salmonella, no one died, and they didn't get it from a lab. |
| Posted by: exJAG 2007-01-25 08:25 |