Pentagon discloses new problems in widening anthrax investigation

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7. USA TODAY: Two "similar incidents at the CDC last year."

Last edited Sat Sep 5, 2015, 12:24 PM - Edit history (2)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/28/18-labs-possibly-got-anthrax-shipment/28069017/

Nick Penzenstadler and Alison Young, USA TODAY
11:10 p.m. EDT May 28, 2015

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Richard Ebright, a biosafety expert at Rutgers in New Jersey, called the mistake "gross negligence."

"There is absolutely no excuse. Not for the shipping institution. Not for receiving institutions that failed to confirm inactivation upon receipt," Ebright said. "Both should lose, irrevocably, authorization for work with active or inactivated select agents."

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Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., fired off a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh on Thursday, seeking a briefing about the safety lapse.

Nelson, a member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said the incident "represents a serious breach of trust in the United States Army's obligation to keep our citizens and service members safe."

Similarly, bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to CDC Director Tom Frieden and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

"The Department's inadvertent transfer of live anthrax samples, just like similar incidents at the CDC last year, raise serious concerns about the sufficiency of inactivation protocols and procedures for studying dangerous pathogens," the leaders wrote.

The shipping mistake is the latest example of a lab sending to other labs specimens that were live — yet were thought to have been killed.

Last summer, dozens of workers at the CDC in Atlanta were potentially exposed to live anthrax after specimens were not properly inactivated before being transferred from a higher-containment lab to a lower-level lab that isn't supposed to work with such a dangerous pathogen in its live form.

Then in December, it happened again. A worker in one of CDC's biosafety level 4 labs in Atlanta — where scientists wear spacesuit-like, full-body protective gear that filters the air they breathe — accidentally confused some specimens and sent an un-killed sample from an Ebola experiment to a lower-level lab at the agency with minimal protections.

Nobody was infected in either incident.