NIH Chief Urges Tough Review of Boston Biolab

National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni told a commission of scientists Thursday to carefully consider potential environmental and safety threats that a $200 million Boston University biological defense laboratory could pose to surrounding neighborhoods, the Boston Globe reported (see GSN, March 7).

“We are not here because we want you to rubber-stamp what we have done,” Zerhouni said of the project, which would include a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory to study anthrax, Ebola, plague and other deadly biological agents.  “We need to do this right, even if it takes a long time.

“Basically, you should be tough,” he said.  “I can't say it in any other way.  There are no foregone conclusions here.”

One lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, which sued to stop the site from being built, said federal officials should have sought out a tough risk assessment of the facility before beginning its construction.  Funded largely with federal dollars, the facility is more than three-quarters completed.

“They should have taken the time before they spent a dime of the taxpayers’ money,” Eloise Lawrence said.

While Boston University could open other sections of the facility while review of the Biosafety Level 4 laboratory is under way, university officials intend to open the site in full operation as it was designed, spokeswoman Ellen Berlin told the Globe (Stephen Smith, Boston Globe, March 14).

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