City health officials were called in to investigate after Boston University reported that a graduate student had come down with a bacterial infection after conducting experiments with meningitis pathogens, The Boston Globe reported. While the officials found no immediate safety problems, the incident added fuel to tensions between some community members and the university over a new infectious-disease laboratory it has built — but not yet opened — to deal with some of the world’s deadliest pathogens.
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2 Responses to Boston U. Researcher’s Infection Raises Concerns About Laboratory Safety
11137962 - October 30, 2009 at 4:21 pm
hype playing on our fears?
skocpol - October 30, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Ignore this CHE snippet completely, unless you follow up by reading the Globe article all the way through to the second page. In addition you could consult this morning’s BU Today article http://www.bu.edu/today/node/9806This was a BSL-2 lab, folks, the kind that occurs in university and corporate labs all over this country. If the opponents of the Boston University Newly Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory hadn’t repeatedly stoked fears and demanded re-reviews, there would already have been safer BSL-3 labs available where this research might have been conducted. (The totally self-contained BSL-4 lab at NEIDEL will be reserved for highest level threats.) Moreover, the grad student researcher has not gotten meningitis – rampant infection of the protective layers of the spinal column and brain. He does have the bacterium that he was working with in his blood, but apparently 5-15% of us “normal people” already have low levels of it in our noses from natural sources.I agree with the previous commenter that if you only read the CHE headline and paragraph, the report is HYPED and serves only to irrationally stoke FEAR. Way to go, CHE.