The following is a comment that came in on the closing of the Sunshine Project, the only organization in the US that monitored Bio Weapons Laboratories. We walk a fine line these days as laboratories are proliferating and have been federalized.
I would like to propose these biolab discussion points:
1) Pathogens naturally exist (and are evolving) that are most appropriately studied at BSL4 labs.
2) Biotech knowledge and technique are exponentially increasing/potentially improving in direct relationship to IT advances.
3) Such Biotech advances provide significant “expert knowledge” for defining “next generation” quality improvement for biolab process education, measurement, safety, and security.
4) BSL4 labs, like world-class medical teaching programs, are best built, sustained and successful not in isolation, but require the most sophisticated and robust communities & infrastructure.
5) BSL4 lab researchers/employees would function best professionally as indigenous, responsible members of such a sophisticated community rather than as members of an isolated, eclectic, penal/leper-colony-like cult (group-think cell).
6) Any risk of BSL4 lab pathogen exposure in the event of “an incident” is first for a BSL4 lab employee in a contained, appropriate environment, not to the general public.
7) A safe, introverted stance for a local politician concerning any new enterprise with a controversial aspect is to say “not in MY community”; a “the-world-is-flat” responsible position would be to say “if this mission is critical, and my community offers a world-class infrastructure for it, I will ensure that the proper stakeholders to ensure success are engaged and active participants in the development and continuation of this endeavor.”
It is critical that the rapidly expanding BSL3 & 4 labs are not “regulated” and threatened with prospective fines for past deficits by an external, partisan agency.
Instead, these mission-critical labs need a dynamic, state-of-the-art “Commission” defining and sharing “best practices” for world-class process & education support.
Then, instead of concealing deficits from regulators for fear of losing funding, they be will supported to define and implement “the next generation” of industry quality & processes so as to be able secure the most prestigious projects.
Comments anyone?