- Summary: As more laboratories begin to handle genetically-recreated
1918 "Spanish" Flu and similar flu strains, the chances that
a lab will be the source of the next global influenza pandemic increase.
The skyrocketing biodefense budget, now exceeding that of the Manhattan
Project (adjusted for inflation), is rapidly increasing research on biological
weapons agents, including risky genetic engineering projects. Despite this,
the Bush administration maintains that comprehensive laboratory safety
and disclosure law is unnecessary, because an alleged "culture of
responsibility" among institutional biosafety committees will protect
Americans, and the world, from its biodefense research. But at the University
of Washington in Seattle, whose scientists are eager to handle 1918 Spanish
Flu, the IBC's judgment is unsound. It has approved experiments by summarily
changing the containment level of a planned lab, using inappropriate safety
benchmarks, and by unilaterally lowering the safety threshold required
for work with the potentially pandemic virus.
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- It's back from the dead. It packs a lethal punch. It's
the 1918 "Spanish" Flu virus. (1) In its heyday decades ago,
1918 influenza killed ten, perhaps twenty million people worldwide. The
1918 flu was recently brought back to life by scientists from the US Departments
of Defense and Agriculture, and private institutions including the Mt.
Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Digging through archives of medical
samples and, literally, digging up the dead, the team's work resulted in
the re-emergence - in the lab - of one of the most dreaded diseases in
human history.
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- The 1918 flu was recreated at a lab at the University
of Georgia. Now, flu strains with 1918 genes are cropping up in other labs
across the country. There are reasons for scientists to study why the 1918
flu was so devastating. A similarly virulent strain could reappear naturally.
But a need to understand why 1918 flu was so devastating doesn't necessarily
justify recreating and widely distributing a very dangerous - and otherwise
eradicated - bug.
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- Because influenza spreads so easily, as the "new"
1918 strain and its lab-created genetic cousins are sent to more facilities,
the risk that the next major influenza pandemic will be man-made is on
the rise. It wouldn't be the first time that an influenza lab accident
made the whole world ill (2) And, of course, scientists in other countries
may repeat the US 1918 experiments, resulting in even wider proliferation
of very dangerous man-made bugs.
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- So then, it is logically the case that responsible labs
that are handling 1918 influenza are taking extraordinary precautions through
their institutional biosafety committees (IBCs), which are charged with
ensuring safety of such experiments. Ideally, that is. But things got
off to a bad start with the 1918 influenza. When it was recreated, neither
the US Department of Agriculture nor the University of Georgia (the institutions
in charge of the Georgia lab) bothered to have an IBC review the experiments.
(3)
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- Still, according to science policymakers, USDA and Georgia's
failure should be an anomaly. That is because while the National Academy
of Sciences and the Bush administration have rejected regulation of labs,
they say that the "culture of responsibility" of institutional
biosafety committees will ensure safety in the brave new world of aggressive
biodefense research.
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- But the rhetoric isn't matched by the realities of the
IBC system. USDA and the University of Georgia aren't the only problems.
In fact, they aren't even the only problem when it comes to 1918 influenza.
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- In Seattle, University of Washington (UW) researchers
are gearing up for some of the most ambitious experiments yet undertaken
with 1918 influenza. UW will work with the previously recreated 1918 flu
and make more types by inserting the critical 1918 virulence-related genes
into a similar (H1N1) but less dangerous type of flu that was isolated
in Texas in 1991. UW researchers' plans include culturing 1918 viruses,
infecting animal cell lines with them, isolating samples after such 'passages'
and, in the course of research, shuffle through the lab with various biological
materials and equipment containing live 1918 flu types.
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- The objective is to develop and research a non-human
primate (Pigtail macaque) model for 1918 influenza infection. In other
words, the experiments will culminate by UW spraying lab monkeys with genetically
engineered 1918/Texas flu and recording the results. The macaques might
rather be home in Southeast Asia; but the hope is that using them as models
for human infection with 1918 flu will provide useful information for managing
flu outbreaks, either natural or deliberate.
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- But the University of Washington doesn't have an appropriately
facility for the studies and its IBC isn't at all clear or vigorous in
implementing necessary safety protocols.
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- The UW IBC's approval of Spanish flu experiments is,
however, critical for the projects to receive federal funding. So, in August
2003, the UW IBC took up the matter. The first problem it encountered was
that the animal biosafety level three (ABSL-3) facility where the experiments
were to take place hasn't been built. Secondly, USDA, which was providing
the 1918 influenza, had classified it as requiring BSL-3ag containment.(4)
BSL-3ag is a more stringent standard than that of existing UW labs and
the planned ABSL-3 lab. BSL-3ag is just one step short of maximum containment
BSL-4, the level that a cautious institution might have assigned the 1918
constructs in the first place. (Neither USDA nor Georgia, however, have
a BSL-4 lab.)
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- Apparently unwilling to hold its researchers back over
biosafety issues, and despite the lack of adequate facilities, the UW IBC
approved 1918 flu projects. It has allowed some activities to go forward
in an existing (non-animal) BSL-3 facility, despite USDA's BSL-3ag designation
of the agent. Remarkably, the UW IBC also decided, on the spot, to change
the biosafety level of the new UW lab. The IBC decided that the new lab,
previously not intended to be BSL-3ag, would meet the more stringent designation
"in principle". This dubious endorsement enabled grant applications
to move forward and for UW researchers to proceed to acquire the 1918 flu
from USDA, with the "in principle" UW BSL-3ag lab.
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- After "resolving" the problem of not having
appropriate containment, the UW IBC then considered the operating procedures
to be followed in the existing BSL-3 lab for 1918 flu experiments. Here,
the "culture of responsibility" of the UW IBC again failed.
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- The benchmark that the UW IBC referred to for 1918 flu
safety were procedures used to handle human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
But the virus that causes AIDS is relatively difficult to transmit, especially
by aerosol, the main cause for concern with influenza. Moreover, the risk
to the community posed by a lab-acquired HIV infection is trivial in comparison
to the threat posed to the world by a case of potentially pandemic influenza.
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- The UW IBC only considered one of the many opportunities
for influenza aerosolization in the studies, that if a tray were dropped.
In such an event, the UW IBC decided that researchers "will be trained
to stop breathing... just as they are taught to do when working with HIV".
An independent microbiologist who the Sunshine Project provided a copy
of the UW IBC minutes called the UW biosafety protocols in the 1918 project
to be "inappropriate" and "risible".
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- The minutes of the UW IBC also suggest - but don't entirely
clarify - that UW researchers, already working at a lower level of containment
than that assigned by USDA, may plan to place cultures infected with 1918
influenza in an unshielded centrifuge. Because their spinning energy can
rapidly aerosolize liquids, centrifuges are a notorious source of laboratory
infections.
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- UW's irresponsible treatment of biosafety in the 1918
influenza project does not appear to bother the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Disease (NIAID). NIAID recently funded the project. Its
formal start date was the beginning of this month, July 1st, 2004.(5)
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- Notes and Sources
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- (1) The 1918 influenza strain is popularly called "Spanish"
influenza, based on incorrect suspicions about its origin at the time of
the outbreak. In fact, to this day, there is no scientific consensus on
the origin of the strain.
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- (2) It is an unpublished; but open secret among influenza
researchers that a global pandemic of H1N1-type influenza that began in
1977 was, in all likelihood, the result of an accidental release from a
lab in China. Public references to the origin of this outbreak occasionally
surface. See, for example, ProMedMail, 1 June 2004 (http://www.promedmail.org)
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- (3) USDA Agricultural Research Service reply, dated 2
October 2003, to Sunshine Project FOIA of 11 August 2003, for minutes of
the IBC meeting that reviewed 1918 influenza experiments. Personal communication
with Daryl Rowe, Institutional Biosafety Officer, University of Georgia,
September 2003.
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- (4) How USDA and/or Georgia determined BSL-3ag containment,
which is stated in the UW IBC minutes and NIH grant abstracts, is unclear.
As indicated in note 3, under FOIA, USDA asserts that no IBC ever reviewed
the project to re-create 1918 influenza.
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- (5) NIH Grant 1P01AI058113-01 to the Mt. Sinai School
of Medicine includes the UW component for 1918 influenza studies.
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- Other sources:
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- Minutes of the University of Washington Institutional
Biosafety Committee, meetings of 2 December 2002 and 22 August 2003.
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- Baskin CR et al. Gene Expression Control in Pigtail Macaques
Infected with Influenza A/Texas/36/91: A PILOT STUDY. Innate Immune Response
and Patterns of Immune Cell Migration in an Uncomplicated Influenza Infection,
online poster submission for the Fifth Annual Northwest Gene Expression
Conference, to be held at the University of Washington, 25-27 May 2005.
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- http://ra.microslu.washington.edu/Website/nwgec/posters/postersubmit.html
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- Patricia A. Doyle, PhD Please visit my "Emerging
Diseases" message board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?
- Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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