- WASHINGTON -- Ebola outbreaks.
Mad cow disease. Now the huge effort to contain the highly contagious foot-and-mouth
plague sweeping across England, infecting cattle, sheep and other cloven-hoofed
animals.
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- These are a few of the biological battlegrounds here
on Earth. But they also offer insight into future projects designed to
bring to Earth samples from Mars, asteroids and comets.
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- NASA has had a long-standing effort underway in planetary
protection.
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- Not only is there an effort to make sure Earth biology
isn't clinging aboard spacecraft bound for such places as Mars. The space
agency is also looking into ways to assure extraterrestrial samples don't
introduce any virulent and deadly alien life into our planet's biosphere.
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- That is called "back contamination," so frightfully
detailed in the book and subsequent movie thriller, The Andromeda Strain,
in which microbial misfits from space spark a biological crisis.
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- NASA scientists are hoping that a robotic Mars return-sample
mission may be lofted in 2011. A large soup can-sized helping of prime
Martian soil and rock would be snagged and sent back to Earth. The canister's
contents would then undergo detailed lab work.
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- Lessons learned
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- Recent worries over the spread of mad cow and foot-and-mouth
show how tough containment of diseases can be.
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- Mad cow disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)
-- is thought to have originated from Britain, then moved to other spots
in Europe. The disease was spurred by the use of diseased livestock ground
up, then used in cattle feed. BSE-infected beef caused the death of nearly
100 people by the end of March.
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- While considered not deadly to humans, foot-and-mouth
disease is easily spread via contaminated food, water and soil, or even
through the air. Quarantine, slaughter and complete disposal of infected
animals are prescribed as the way to curb the virus.
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- "When you are bringing things back from space, there's
every reason to be cautious about it." -- Margaret Race, the SETI
Institute
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- As Britain grapples with foot-and-mouth disease, the
nation's livestock industry is being severely crippled. Imports of used
farm equipment from infected locales are banned here in the United States.
Measures are also being taken at airports in the hopes of containing the
disease within infected countries.
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- There are a number of lessons learned in how governments
handle disease outbreaks and communicate these health issues to the public,
said John Rummel, NASA's planetary protection officer here at the space
agency's headquarters.
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- "Public appreciation of the issues associated with
back contamination are heightened by these sorts of things," Rummel
told SPACE.com. In terms of communications, the British government has
already been criticized for mishandling the BSE problem, he said.
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- NASA strategy
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- Recent blue-ribbon study groups of the National Research
Council have helped the space agency flesh out planetary protection standards
not only for Mars, but for Jupiter's Europa, as well as different classes
of asteroids and comets, Rummel said.
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- NASA itself has an ongoing series of studies on handling
Mars samples. Groups of experts have focused on preventing uncontrolled
release of Mars sample material into the terrestrial environment, ways
to examine a Martian sample for evidence of live organisms and steps to
determine if the sample poses any threat to terrestrial life forms and
Earth's biosphere.
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- This work is leading to a set of guidelines and protocols
for returned-sample containment and quarantine analysis, said Margaret
Race, an ecologist with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
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- "When we are bringing things in from space, we are
doing the same kind of interception. Not at the airport, but with the canister.
It will be sealed up, totally contained and in maximum containment, even
when we don't think there's a need for it," Race said. "When
you are bringing things back, there's every reason to be cautious about
it," she said.
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- Here and now problems
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- Race has served on various NASA working groups looking
at the issues of planetary protection. "In my opinion, NASA is doing
a very credible and thoughtful job of it" and has adopted an open
communication policy between the agency and the public, she said.
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- While foot-and-mouth and mad cow diseases are a "here-and-now
problem," Race said, Mars return-sample remains a long way off. "It's
not as pressing," she said.
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- Furthermore, between now and Mars return-sample time,
strides in science and technology will enable scientists to better study
Martian soil and rock. "We can do it now with what we have, but our
ability to find things smaller and at lower doses will be better."
Race said.
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- Maximum containment
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- Progress is being made on blueprinting facilities capable
of studying future extraterrestrial samples, said Jonathan Richmond, director
of the Office of Health and Safety at the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.
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- Richmond also serves on a NASA working group looking
into Mars sample protocols.
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- "We're going to need facilities that will both retain
as much as possible the pristine conditions on Mars and, at the same time,
maintain absolute maximum biocontainment," Richmond said.
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- "We are, right now, probably more capable of building
good containment labs than we ever were in the past," Richmond said.
"If we were to pick a time where we'd want to be talking about the
design and ultimately construction of such a lab, I think this is a perfect
time," he said.
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- Richmond said the more we look on Earth, the more we
detect life forms in niches once thought far too hostile. "In terms
of doing any kind of biomedical work, we are clearly entering an era of
where you can have higher levels of detection with smaller sample sizes,"
he said.
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- NASA's Rummel said that diseases are not the only biology
that can wreak havoc. "Even species that are not pathogenic per se
might not fit neatly into our environment," he said, such as the invasion
of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes and the spread of the gypsy moth that
destroys trees.
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- In regards to bringing back samples from space to Earth,
Rummel said NASA's strategy "is very much consistent with doing all
the right things."
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