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U.S. Response: NIH Prepares for New Biosafety Level 4 Lab A new laboratory for some of the world’s most dangerous microbes that is slated to be added to the Rocky Mountain Laboratories complex in Hamilton, Mont., could become operational within 30 months, American Society for Microbiology News reported earlier this month (see GSN, June 24). Congress has appropriated $66.5 million for the National Institutes of Health to construct the Biosafety Level 4 facility, according to the society. The laboratory would be used for tests involving pathogens that might be used for bioterrorism and other dangerous substances. When the facility is complete, 60 new personnel will probably join the current 250 employees at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. The NIH, which has considered building the facility for several years, received enough funds after the Sept. 11 attacks and last fall’s anthrax attacks to “build it sooner,” said James Musser, chief of the Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. “The facilities at RML are world-class,” he said. The Hamilton laboratories have “a nucleus of scientists who work on bacterial diseases,” and locating the new Biosafety Level 4 laboratory at the site “makes sense, because NIH has needed a facility to study a variety of highly infectious agents for a long time,” said Stanley Falkow, a Stanford University microbiologist and former chairman of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Hamilton laboratories are a division of NIAID. The other federal Biosafety Level 4 laboratories are located at NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md., at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. There is no organized effort of Hamilton citizens to oppose the construction of the new laboratory, but some critics have expressed concern about the possibility of an accidental or intentional release of pathogens from the laboratory (Carol Potera, American Society for Microbiology News, July 2).
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