Anyone know how the 3,700 flu virus samples shipped?

[lonestarnot]

[Sgent]

1. CAP

The College of American Pathologists, which is the physician organization of pathologists, requires quarterly quality assurance (double blind tests) of all their member labratories -- they send out various samples and the labratory is supposed to treat it like a regular patient sample. They hired a company to send out a type of Infulenza Type A.

The company made the selection of which one to send -- in this case they choose poorly.

The samples themselves are usually shipped by UPS, Fedex, or Airborne express, and have to be labeled as a biohazard.

[lonestarnot]

2. Shit! This could have already exposed masses of people... I've seen

biohazardous human samples shipped by UPS and how they break open... This sucks. I'm wondering if they were shipped with tracking and notification of ooopsie daisies reported.

[lala_rawraw]

6. They chose poorly? How often does that happen, does

Anyone know? I have never heard of such negligence before. Are there other examples?

[smurfygirl]

3. the virus was found lying around in a lab in Canada which means

it wasn't in a vial, it wasn't in a sample, it had already gotten out and has possibly been transmitted out of the lab.

[lonestarnot]

4. Thanks smurfygirl... read your other posts also... My experience with

bio med samples shipped by P.O. is that they come in an envelope that is padded, these can rip and do rip and workers are so used to dealing with them ripping that they just ignore the damn rip and send on to next person. If it comes all the way out of the package, they are so overworked and stressed that they don't bother to get gloves and it's rare they call biohazard team that is 'specially trained' in how to put on rubber gloves LOL. What a freakin' ass bunch a crap!

[smurfygirl]

5. I used to work at the lab that recieved samples in Louisville

I'm so glad I don't work there anymore. I too know how easily things can escape and get mixed up, dropped, and even switched on accident.

This whole situation is a wake up call for sure.

[Spazito]

12. It wasn't 'lying around', it was sent for testing to Winnipeg by

a Vancouver lab so it would have been contained in Winnipeg as any sample that had raised concerns, proper safeguards would have taken place. Here is an article detailing more about the incident:

Labs round globe told to destroy unlabelled flu strain seen as pandemic risk

snip

Officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada discovered the problem when an unidentified laboratory in British Columbia alerted the National Microbiology Laboratory that it had turned up a positive test for H2N2 on a flu isolate in its lab.

snip

Initially it was thought to be a case of laboratory contamination, with old stored H2N2 virus coming in contact with new samples. But the lab said it had no H2N2 in storage.

The investigation led to an unlabelled vial of live virus, which had been sent to the lab in February as a "proficiency test" by the College of American Pathologists. The contents of the vials aren't labelled because labs use them to see how good they are at detecting different strains of viruses.

snip

"We're not expecting to see human cases but you just can't guarantee that. If they (the labs) practise good laboratory technique, the risk of that should be I will never say zero but as close to zero as possible."

more

http://www.canada.com/health/story.html?id=afa4780d-6cfe-4f18-b12b-feea4f43de58

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. For those new to this story: here's the original thread and more info

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3477789
Thread title: "3,700 labs worldwide are mistakenly shipped lethal flu virus - MIHOP?

And here's a Guardian Unlimited (U.K) article with an unusually clear and complete description of what happened:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1459207,00.html

Scientists hunt thousands of vials of deadly flu virus sent across world

Strain not seen since 1957 could pose danger to laboratory staff
Sarah Boseley, Luke Harding and Suzanne Goldenberg
Thursday April 14, 2005

(snip)

Yesterday, it emerged that the potentially deadly distribution was discovered only through a combination of luck and human error at a laboratory in Vancouver, Canada. The original mistake was made in October last year in Northfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, home to the headquarters of the College of American Pathologists.

The college sends out standardised flu testing kits to labs around the world, each containing vials of different strains of flu virus to enable technicians to ensure that their own testing equipment and reagents are working properly. This time included with the modern strains of flu virus was the killer Asian flu known as H2N2.

(snip)

John Oxford, a professor of virology at the Queen Mary School of Medicine in London, said this could pose a problem to the labs that received the testing kits: "You tend to give this kit to the youngest, most unqualified person because it is all very simple," he said. "That young person is the most susceptible. Anyone younger than 36 or 37 would have no immunity."

(snip)

[signmike]

8. We had a saying about UPS . . .

I worked as a shippimg clerk for a while - we'd say you can wrap a steel ball in a mattress and UPS will find a way to fuck it up.

[teamster633]

9. And exactly what job do you excel in now?

[signmike]

11. Taking breaks. Napping. I'm a union man now.

ZZZZZZzzzzzz:boring: zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ

[lonestarnot]

10. I think I've heard that before...

[MissB]

13. I've had awful tin-foil-hattish thoughts about this.

It is a big, big mistake.