Boston University Wants World’s Deadliest Pathogens

Boston University is planning to construct a $1.6 billion dollar
biodefense facility in a crowded low-income neighborhood in the Boston
area. Neighbors are understandably upset, as the announced facility would
contain live smallpox, Ebola and plague viruses, as well as an additonal
assortment of the deadliest pathogens known to man.

BU announced last February its application to the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to build a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory
in BU’s BioSquare complex in the South End. Staff at the facility would
be first responders to a bioterrorist attack, and they would work in
high-security labs capable of housing pathogens deemed highly transmissible
and deadly.

In typical highhanded community oversight BU has failed to properly
advertise meetings about a lab that would play a key role in the defense
against terrorism, ignoring rising neighborhood and environmental resistence
to the plan.

Full disclosure: I am a full-time employee of Boston University, and
I don’t want the damn thing in MY back yard…..

from
the Boston Globe