Pentagon discloses new problems in widening anthrax investigation

[bananas]

Source: Washington Post

The U.S. military disclosed new problems in its handling of dangerous pathogens, such as anthrax, on Thursday, including contamination in a laboratory in Utah from which live anthrax samples were sent across the world.

Anthrax was found “in secure areas located outside the primary containment area but still contained within the special enclosed lab for holding these materials” at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, military officials said in a statement. The commander at Dugway ordered an immediate decontamination of the biosafety area, and it has since been cleaned and found to be clear, the statement said.

Army Secretary John McHugh ordered an immediate safety review afterward of all nine Defense Department laboratories involved in the handling of dangerous agents and toxins in a new memo, military officials said. Each lab must report back to him within 10 days, the memo said.

McHugh also expanded an existing moratorium prompted by the discovery this year of live samples being shipped from Dugway to temporarily ban the handling or shipping of any dangerous substance there and at three other facilities: the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and Naval Medical Research Center Biological Defense Research Directorate at Fort Detrick, Md.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/09/03/pentagon-discloses-new-problems-in-widening-anthrax-investigation/

[bananas]

1. Two days ago: Pentagon Now Says Army Mistakenly Sent Live Anthrax to All 50 States

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/09/01/pentagon-says-army-mistakenly-sent-live-anthrax-all-50-states.html

Pentagon Now Says Army Mistakenly Sent Live Anthrax to All 50 States
Sep 01, 2015 | by Richard Sisk

Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work has repeatedly said the scandal over the military's mistaken shipment of live anthrax spores around the nation and the world would get worse -- and he was right.

The number of labs that received live anthrax has more than doubled to 194 since Work and Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's top acquisition official, released a report in July on the shipments of the deadly pathogen from the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

The number of states receiving live anthrax also more than doubled to include all 50 states and Washington, D.C., plus Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The number of countries that received live anthrax went up from seven to nine -- Japan, United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, according to the Pentagon's updated accounting of the shipments through Sept. 1.

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[bananas]

2. Pentagon launches lab review, widens moratorium after anthrax find

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/03/us-usa-military-anthrax-idUSKCN0R326E20150903

Thu Sep 3, 2015 5:21pm EDT

Pentagon launches lab review, widens moratorium after anthrax find

The Pentagon has launched a safety review at nine U.S. military labs and expanded a moratorium on the production and shipment of deadly toxins after anthrax contamination was discovered in a Utah facility.

The contamination at the Dugway Proving Ground Life

Sciences Test Facility in Utah was in "secure areas located outside the primary containment area," the Pentagon said in a statement on Thursday. The lab conducted a full decontamination and did not detect anthrax during re-testing.

Specifically, the deadly anthrax bacteria was found on the floors of two laboratories, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.

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[DURHAM D]

3. Have they figured out how to tie this to Hillary yet? nt

[Ford_Prefect]

4. Give them a little time for they are slow to understand the mysteries of science...

They'll get around to it. They have nothing better to do now that Congress is back in session.

[jtuck004]

5. They are supposed to be on our side, yes? n/t

[Psephos]

6. Seriously: where did you get that idea?

Even Eisenhower warned us against slurping down that Kool-Aid.

[proverbialwisdom]

7. USA TODAY: Two "similar incidents at the CDC last year."

Last edited Sat Sep 5, 2015, 12:24 PM - Edit history (2)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/28/18-labs-possibly-got-anthrax-shipment/28069017/

Nick Penzenstadler and Alison Young, USA TODAY
11:10 p.m. EDT May 28, 2015

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Richard Ebright, a biosafety expert at Rutgers in New Jersey, called the mistake "gross negligence."

"There is absolutely no excuse. Not for the shipping institution. Not for receiving institutions that failed to confirm inactivation upon receipt," Ebright said. "Both should lose, irrevocably, authorization for work with active or inactivated select agents."

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Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., fired off a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh on Thursday, seeking a briefing about the safety lapse.

Nelson, a member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said the incident "represents a serious breach of trust in the United States Army's obligation to keep our citizens and service members safe."

Similarly, bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to CDC Director Tom Frieden and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

"The Department's inadvertent transfer of live anthrax samples, just like similar incidents at the CDC last year, raise serious concerns about the sufficiency of inactivation protocols and procedures for studying dangerous pathogens," the leaders wrote.

The shipping mistake is the latest example of a lab sending to other labs specimens that were live — yet were thought to have been killed.

Last summer, dozens of workers at the CDC in Atlanta were potentially exposed to live anthrax after specimens were not properly inactivated before being transferred from a higher-containment lab to a lower-level lab that isn't supposed to work with such a dangerous pathogen in its live form.

Then in December, it happened again. A worker in one of CDC's biosafety level 4 labs in Atlanta — where scientists wear spacesuit-like, full-body protective gear that filters the air they breathe — accidentally confused some specimens and sent an un-killed sample from an Ebola experiment to a lower-level lab at the agency with minimal protections.

Nobody was infected in either incident.