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Proposed labs for bioterrorism defense spark fear among neighbors

Posted on: Sunday, 13 July 2003, 06:00 CDT

Proposed labs for bioterrorism defense spark fear among neighbors

By CHARLES PILLER Los Angeles Times

Sunday, July 13, 2003

Hamilton, Mont. -- In the shadow of the snow-capped Bitterroot Mountains, moon-suit-clad scientists soon will begin producing gallons of concentrated death.

Armed guards, a reinforced perimeter and biometric locks will protect a hermetically sealed laboratory -- a "hot zone" designed to trap the deadliest microbes on Earth: Ebola and Lassa viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers, and others that produce exotic scourges for which no vaccines or medicines exist.

The lab's goal is finding cures for these feared bioterrorism agents, but that is little consolation to residents at the Hamilton Senior Center across the street, diners at the Spice of Life cafe downtown or boys scrimmaging on Hamilton Middle School's football field, a few blocks from the lab fence.

"We've got homes and children sleeping 50 meters away," said Jim Miller, a University of Montana research biologist and local resident. "They never consider the possibility that there could be a pathogen breach. It's like at Three Mile Island, saying that there could never be a release of radiation from a nuclear power plant."

The planned high-security lab is part of a federal movement to dot the country with at least six new bioterrorism research facilities designed to the most stringent level of pathogen containment, a standard known as "Biosafety Level 4."

Big money at stake

Universities, research centers and some local officials are clamoring to join the building boom because of the hundreds of millions of dollars in research money that will flow their way.

But the plans have sparked a furious "not-in-my-backyard" movement.

Residents have packed public hearings, questioning officials with angry suspicion. They already have blocked a Department of Homeland Security plan to upgrade its Plum Island Animal Disease Center off Long Island, N.Y., and have sued to scuttle a lab proposed by the University of California-Davis.

"The risk is low, but the outcome is total devastation," Linda Perry, a Hamilton veterinarian, said, gesturing toward the verdant river valley. "If there is an accident, people here are going to lose everything."

'Safety is a non-issue'

John La Montagne, deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, in Bethesda, Md., which operates Rocky Mountain Laboratories, where the new facility would be built, described local critics as intransigent spoilers who don't understand Level 4 precautions.

Sterilized waste from such labs is cleaner than what comes out of any home, he said. "Safety is a non-issue," he said. "These are highly safe facilities."

But for lab opponents, the dispute has long transcended seemingly endless debates over technical safety and costs vs. benefits. The sealed facilities have become a troubling sign that the war on terrorism has intruded into once-routine lives, its shadow stretching into the farthest corners of America.

"In a naive way, I did think that I could move here and escape," said Cooper Neville, an artist who moved from New York to flee the nagging sense of modern doom -- from terrorism to environmental disaster. "You can run, but you can't hide."

The town of Hamilton, population 3,700, lies in a sweeping river valley surrounded by mountains that soar to 10,000 feet. Driving south from Missoula, the landscape is dotted by ranches, the occasional seedy casino and several log-home builders. One of its biggest employers is Rocky Mountain Laboratories, which traces its roots to 1902, when scientists in a log cabin studied a mysterious disease, later named Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Hamilton would seem suitably remote for studying the tools of bioterrorism, the kind of place lab opponents in other towns might suggest as an alternative to their own communities.

The nation has never had an enormous need for such advanced facilities. There are now four Level 4 labs -- the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the Army's Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio and a facility at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda that currently uses only Level 3 organisms.

The CDC soon will open a new Level 4 lab, as will the University of Texas-Galveston. NIAID plans large-scale labs at Hamilton and Fort Detrick. Boston University; the University of Illinois at Chicago; the New York State Department of Health in Rome, N.Y.; Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and UC-Davis are vying to build two other labs.

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