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| Federal research has vanquished
many diseases, and opposition to an upgraded Montana lab doesn't
wash |
By Carlotta Grandstaff
for Headwaters News |
| Americans of a certain age
may well remember one of the most frightful images of the
1950s, and no, it's not a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert.
It's the iron lung, a ghastly, cylindrical contraption that
pumped air into the paralyzed lungs of the polio victim lying
inside.
The iron lung was used in some instances only temporarily,
and did save lives. But for some polio victims, many of them
children, the iron lung was a coffin in which they lived out
their lives, unable to move, forcibly ventilated, 24/7, year
after year.
Thankfully, the iron lung has vanished from our collective
memory. The dreaded poliovirus that spawned its invention
has been vanquished, and there is no parent in this country
who fears sending his or her child to the city pool this summer,
as parents did prior to the introduction of the polio vaccine
in 1954.
Scientists who study emerging diseases
Once a scourge, polio is only a bad memory
in the developed world. It's being driven from the developing
world as well, one village at a time. In time, polio will
go the way of smallpox, another plague banished by science.
It wasn't long ago that infectious disease was considered
a career dead end for young scientists. Though polio, smallpox,
measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, cholera, yellow fever,
malaria and diphtheria have long ceased to plague American
and European cities, infectious diseases are making a comeback.
Newly emerging diseases – HIV, hanta virus and West
Nile virus, to name but a few - burst into being only recently,
seemingly out of nowhere. While most of us are mystified about
the how and why of this new viral explosion, scientists who
study emerging diseases strongly suspect, and have evidence
to show, that newly emerging diseases are tied to the ways
in which we alter our environment.
A few examples:
About three decades ago, researchers interested in stopping
the spread of the ubiquitous knapweed began collecting the
weed's natural predators from central Europe, where the weed
is native. Knapweed is responsible for huge agricultural losses
in western Montana, and is turning some sections of the Frank
Church River of No Return Wilderness into a weed-choked monoculture.
Ridding western Montana of knapweed was, and still is, considered
an impossible task. Halting its spread, however, was thought
noble, necessary and most of all, doable, not so much with
chemical herbicides, but by releasing gall flies, which feed
on knapweed seed heads, thereby limiting the spread. For some
years it seemed the experiment was successful; though knapweed
has become a permanent fixture on the landscape, it no longer
thrives as it did before the release of the predator gall
fly.
But last year, one Forest Service scientist discovered something
disturbing about gall flies. The insect, gathered from Europe
and bred and released across western Montana for thirty years,
lays eggs which successfully overwinter in the weed seed heads.
The gall fly larvae seems to have become a new and important
food source for deer mice, which would normally die off over
the winter, leaving only small surviving populations in spring.
In test plots, the deer mouse population increased by nearly
three times. And with the increase in deer mice populations
came a corresponding increase in hanta virus, a deadly respiratory
disease carried and transmitted by deer mice and discovered
only a decade ago.
In the arid Powder River Basin area of northeast Wyoming,
60 million gallons of water are pumped out of the ground to
the surface every day, the result of coalbed methane well
drilling. Warm, shallow ponds have formed across the drought-plagued
landscape, creating perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes,
particularly Culex tarsalis, a species widely distributed
across North America west of the Mississippi.
Last summer, researchers discovered that six of eight radio-collared
sage grouse hens at the coalbed methane site near Spotted
Horse, Wyo. died of West Nile encephalitis. At two other nearby
sites, where there is no coalbed methane development, only
one of 42 radio-collared sage grouse hens died of the virus.
At some point
More research is necessary before scientists
can confirm the link between coal bed methane development
and West Nile encephalitis, but it is a fact that Culex tarsalis
is a particularly efficient vector of encephalitis.
Chronic wasting disease has been documented in penned game
farm animals, and the possibility exists that the disease
can be transmitted from penned herds to free-ranging wildlife.
The transmission route is unknown, but it appears likely that
animals must be in close contact for the disease to spread.
Penned elk also have been known to escape into the wild, breeding
with red deer and polluting the gene pool. The long-range
consequences of interbreeding are unknown, but wildlife biologists
fear they could be serious and irreversible.
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever appeared suddenly on the Montana
side of the Bitterroot Range in the late 19th century. The
native Salish were unaware of the disease, as were the Jesuit
priests who established a mission in the Bitterroot Valley,
the epicenter of the pestilence. Capt. William Clark, on his
return trip through the Bitterroot Valley in early July 1806,
when his men could have been expected to come into contact
with ticks, did not report the disease.
What was it that created the conditions necessary for the
sudden appearance of tick fever? Scientists believe it was
the deforestation of the west side of the Bitterroot Valley.
In 1887, one timber mill was cutting 10,000 feet of lumber
a day. Less than a decade later, the Bitterroot Range was
yielding between 60 and 70 million board feet annually. The
scrub vegetation that grew up on the forest in the wake of
so much deforestation created habitat for many small mammals
that harbored the pathogen and the ticks that fed on the mammals.
If we are to keep free of infectious diseases it seems clear
that disease prevention rather than disease cure should be
the goal. In fact, preventing disease is the foundation of
public health in this country.
At the turn of the 20th century, New York City, the birthplace
of public health, was a disease-ridden cesspool. Crowded tenements,
dangerous working conditions and lack of plumbing and sewage
disposal created the perfect conditions for the spread of
contagious diseases. Improvements in housing, occupational
safety laws and proper plumbing arguably did more to improve
the human condition than did the introduction of antibiotics
decades later.
But disease prevention in the 21st century is considerably
more complicated than making infrastructure improvements.
It would mean that humans would have to stop clearing the
forests, cease penning wild game and put an end to burning
fossil fuels, which has been linked to about two dozen recently
identified infectious diseases. But changing human behaviors
and consumption patterns globally is as likely as finding
a cure for HIV/AIDS by tomorrow morning.
The only remaining alternative, then, is scientific research
that will lead to therapies for diseases that only recently
burst on to the world scene: hemorrhagic fevers, tick-borne
encephalitis and others designated Biosafety Level 4, because
of their deadliness and lack of therapies.
And that means public acceptance of more strict containment
research labs.
The National Institutes of Health has made the study of emerging
infectious diseases a priority, and has received funding for
the construction of four Biosafety Level 4 labs.
In one location, Hamilton, Mont., the NIH has proposed a $66.5
million, 105,000-square-foot Biosafety Level 4 lab within
the enclosed perimeter of the 76-year-old Rocky Mountain Laboratories.
The new lab will allow scientists to study the world's most
virulent pathogens in a secure environment. But opposition
groups in Hamilton - and in Boston, Mass. and Davis, Ca.,
two other proposed locations for Biosafety Level 4 labs -
have formed in a shortsighted effort to stop the projects
from moving forward.
Three groups in Hamilton and Missoula forced the government
to expand its environmental analysis of the project, but didn't
stop the project entirely. In June, the NIH announced that
construction of the lab would begin by summer's end.
Opposition to such an intellectually exciting project has
been disappointing, shortsighted and selfish. The arguments
against the lab run the gamut from mundane concerns over noise
and dust during the construction phase to vague worries of
accidental release of deadly viruses into the surrounding
neighborhood to unfounded fears that the lab will shift its
focus from public health research to bioterrorism weapons
manufacturing.
Noise and dust problems affect only a small area, and in any
case will last only a short while. The pathogens that someday
might be studied at the Hamilton lab already exist in many
environments around the world, including in western Montana,
which has experienced hanta virus. And, finally, the U.S.
is prohibited by international treaty from developing bioterrorism
weapons.
It's that last statement, of course, that draws the most contempt
from opponents who doubt whether the duplicitous Bush administration
can be trusted to adhere to the treaty. Said one man: You
can just bet that if the government is going to do it, they'll
screw it up somehow.
That argument doesn't take into consideration the public health
problems created by private companies which, arguably, have
made more people sick than any government screw-up –
Hooker Chemical at Love Canal, N.Y., Northeastern Pharmaceutical
and Chemical Co. at Times Beach, Mo. And, of course, W.R.
Grace at Libby, Mont.
At some point we have to stop being cynical about our government.
And in any case, mankind clearly is not going to stop altering
his environment. There's neither the societal will nor the
political leadership to make us consider the consequences
of our ecological recklessness.
The next best approach, then, is developing therapies for
what ails us.
At its core, the opposition to Biosafety Level 4 labs is selfish
because virtually everyone in the developed world has been
vaccinated against the diseases that in recent memory killed,
scarred, crippled or maimed.
We don't much fear the really scary, science fiction germs
such as Ebola because they don't live in our neighborhoods.
But they live in other people's neighborhoods and those people
deserve the same world-class science that vanquished our own
former public health enemies.
Opponents to the Biosafety Level 4 labs say they fear that
a killer virus will somehow escape into the environment. Those
viruses are already loose in the environment. The point of
these labs is to create a safe place to study them so that
someday they'll be banished entirely from the environment.
Just like smallpox.
Carlotta Grandstaff is a former
newspaper reporter and a freelance writer in Hamilton, Mont. |
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Analysis:
Lab's work could win the West again
By Shellie Nelson, assistant
editor
Headwaters News
July 21, 2004
The scientific research done in Hamilton,
Mont.'s Rocky Mountain Laboratories has real-life implications
to Westerners and to the rest of the nation.
The Rocky Mountain Laboratories' application to become a Biosafety
Level 4 lab was met with criticism and concerted efforts to
stop the National Institute of Health from building a $66.5
million, 105,000-square-foot specifically to study infectious
diseases.
Opposition to the expanded laboratory in Hamilton ran the gamut
from complaints about noise and dust caused by the original
construction process to fears that deadly pathogens may escape
the laboratory, or that the laboratory's focus may shift in
the future from studying infectious diseases to work on developing
biological weapons.
Groups such as Coalition for a Safe Lab, Friends of the Bitterroot
and Women's
Voices for the Earth asked that the environmental study
for the laboratory be expanded to address potential risks to
residents should any pathogens escape and what the laboratory
would do to prevent such escapes or mitigate the harm should
any releases occur.
Yet many of the pathogens studied at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories
are already out and about in the West: Lyme
disease, hanta
virus, West
Nile virus, and chronic
wasting disease.
Work performed at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories has already
unearthed interesting ties between the environment and infectious
disease, two of which may have far-reaching implications on
activities played out on Western lands.
The 30-year battle to stop the spread of the spotted knapweed
across the West using gall flies has had the disturbing side
effect of increasing populations of deer mice that feed on the
larvae of the gall fly. Deer mice have been proven to be carriers
of hanta virus, a deadly respiratory disease discovered only
a decade ago. As deer mice populations increase, so do hanta
virus infection rates.
Coalbed
methane drilling in Wyoming and other western states produces
millions of gallons of water per day, and holding ponds of that
water are breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry West Nile
virus. Last summer, six of eight radio-collared sage grouse
were found to have died from West Nile encephalitis near coalbed
methane development sites near Spotted Horse, Wyo. Scientists
are working to see if they can connect the dots between coalbed
water, mosquitoes and the spread of West Nile Virus.
Chronic-wasting
disease is marching its way through the Western states,
decimating elk and deer populations and shutting down game farms
in some states and leading other states to ban game farms.
Human activity on lands in the West are creating ever-widening
footprints that affect the land, wildlife and humans who live
there. Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories are working
on ways to erase or ease the costs of those footprints.
NIMBYism has no place in the argument against the Biosafety
Level 4 in Hamilton because the work done there ultimately benefits
the residents and wildlife of the West, right in the lab's back
yard. |
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Readers respond
Other agencies need scrutiny
Many of the opponents to the planned Biosafety
Level 4 laboratory in Hamilton, Mont., are environmentalists
with years of experience forcing the federal government to
meet higher standards.
In the case of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories project, they’ve
successfully maneuvered the National Institutes of Health
into producing a more detailed environmental analysis.
It might benefit society if they also turned their intellect,
passion and attention to the U.S. Departments of Agriculture
and Defense.
Earlier this year a Forest Service researcher in Missoula
found that non-native insects released in the early 1970s
to attack knapweed may be indirectly responsible for an increase
in the population of hanta virus-infected mice. And just last
week, another non-native insect was released in six locations
along the Bitterroot River to attack leafy spurge, a noxious
weed that, like knapweed, was inadvertently brought to this
country from Eurasia and is threatening native species and
agriculture.
Eurasian insects – or “biocontrol agents”
- undergo a testing and screening process before they’re
approved for release in this country. The U.S. Department
of Agriculture wants to make sure that before leafy spurge
flea beetles or gall flies are released in Montana, or anywhere
else, they prove incapable of surviving an entire life cycle
on corn or bitterroots or some other desirable native or crop
species.
A group representing U.S. land agencies like the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior gives
a thumbs up or thumbs down before the insects are approved
for importation to the U.S. Collected insects are then quarantined
and checked for parasites before they’re released into
their new environment.
It all sounds pretty thorough until one considers that there’s
no National Environmental Policy Act governing the process
and no public comment period.
Some would argue that we should trust our federal agencies
to make decisions without having the public weigh in every
time. It’s a valid argument until we realize that we
already have some information that releasing foreign insects
may harm public health.
It might be wise, then, to subject future releases to a more
thorough analysis, including a public comment period.
Likewise with the Department of Defense. One $6 billion DOD
project, MUOS, for Mobile User Objective System, was put out
to bid last year. It seeks to create mobile phones for the
“warfighter” (as they call soldiers in the military-industrial
complex).
In the words of one defense contractor, these mobile phones
“will allow the warfighter on the ground to radio the
pilot in the air to drop a bomb on the school below.”
Subjecting the Department of Defense to the NEPA process seems
reasonable, given the potential damage to land and human health
its weapons can cause. Of course, it will never happen.
If NEPA were expanded to include a few large-scale projects,
like MUOS, and smaller ones, like foreign bug release, we
might gain a greater measure of control over government projects
that affect us.
The National Institutes of Health has set the standard with
its scrutiny of, and community input into, the Biosafety Level
4 lab. It would be a good example to emulate. Carlotta Grandstaff
Get off the soap box
Wait a second - I need to stop being cynical
of our government so RML can build their Level 4 lab?
RML has not demonstrated the ability or the focus to even
manage the proper room temperature to support their primates
- that's a basic process and management control issue.
RML can't properly set and control a thermostat - let alone
manage a Level 4 lab.
Fact: RML is totally under-funding and totally lacking on
managing their processes. But this is not an issue unique
to RML, this is typical of US government facilities.
Process management and control is overlooked in almost every
single government facility. You are being foolhardy to trust
the U.S. government to manage a process where Level 4 biohazards
exist.
Have you investigated and talked to folks at White Sands,
Livermore and elsewhere to understand how chronic this process
management issue is throughout our government's most sensitive
labs and research facilities?
Your opinion seems to be null and void of the critical facts
- you have failed to consider the evidence that is already
before us on specific details on the RML proposal.
Get off your soap box and stop talking down to your audience
about how mankind is this and that - look at the level 1 details
and face the fact that the U.S. government is not capable
of properly managing and controlling a Level 4 facility's
process management and control.
How many PhDs does RML have on staff who are solely chartered
with process management and control?
-Steve Barker,
Bozeman, MT
Progress requires some risk
The three citizen groups critical of a
government plan to build a Biosafety Level 4 medical research
lab in Hamilton, Mont., have scored a success in that they
convinced the National Institutes of Health to conduct a more
detailed environmental analysis.
That's as it should be, since citizens should be able to weigh
in on government projects that might affect them.
They've gone too far, though, because it seems the real agenda,
the unspoken goal, is to stop the project altogether.
At the same time, the groupthink they've fostered in the community
at large has resulted in a generally unfavorable, if vague,
opposition to a project which has had few public champions.
Scientists who work at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, where
the Biosafety Level 4 lab will be built, are distrusted because
they have a vested interest. Resident non-scientists who favor
the project for the jobs and intellectual cachet it will bring
to Hamilton haven't mounted a defense.
Biosafety Level 4 pathogens are airborne viruses that can
kill humans and for which there are no known therapies. The
very term has unfortunately become synonymous with Ebola,
that Stephen King-like germ that makes the blood run cold
in people who don't have it, and makes the blood just run
and run in people who do.
Ebola is just one virus of many classified as Biosafety Level
4, and whether it is ever studied at RML remains to be seen,
given the logistics of safe transport from such a remote location
as the sub-Saharan jungle where it lives.
Still, some Hamilton residents fear Ebola might someday exist
in their community, regardless of how well guarded it would
be in a negative-pressure biocontainment lab.
What they're forgetting is how easily the virus could travel
to the community from its African home via travelers. If Ebola
were ever to exist in western Montana, better it be confined
to a research lab than running around loose and undetected
in the Missoula airport.
They're also forgetting that risk is inherent in scientific
research.
Consider the Salk vaccine for polio and the Cutter Laboratory
disaster of 1955. Polio cases had soared from 5,000 cases
in 1933 to 59,000 less than two decades later.
The vaccine was introduced in trials in 1954 and proved so
successful that a mass immunization was underway by the following
year.
In April 1955, some 423,000 people were inoculated against
polio with a vaccine that was improperly formulated by Cutter
Laboratory. About 200 healthy people were inadvertently infected
with polio as a result, and 11 of them died. There was no
public outcry. Rather, the federal government temporarily
halted the polio immunization program in May, fixed the problem
and resumed the program that same year.
The hope for the next generation of scientific research –
research embodied in Biosafety Level 4 labs - is that someday
we'll look back in wonder that Ebola was ever such a threat
to humanity, just as we look back in gratitude now to those
who sacrificed their lives and their health in the search
for a polio vaccine.
Carlotta Grandstaff |
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