DOD Fails to Implement Biosecurity Years after Army Lab Mistakenly Sent 575 Anthrax Samples
SEPTEMBER 25, 2018
Years after a U.S. Army laboratory accidentally sent hundreds of live anthrax bacteria samples to 194 facilities around the globe, the Department of Defense (DOD) has not implemented biosafety and biosecurity programs to prevent a repeat of the potentially deadly mistake. The failure has left government labs and the public at risk, according to a federal audit conducted by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The probe was conducted after an Army lab at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah inadvertently made 575 shipments of live Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to contractors worldwide.
A military investigation could not pinpoint the exact cause of the failure, which is hard to believe, but the probe led to the recommendation of specific actions to improve security at facilities that handle dangerous agents and toxins. That was more than three years ago. The DOD even created a special office, known as Biological Select Agents and Toxins (BSAT) Biorisk Program, to oversee the new security measures. Years later, it has yet to carry out the safety measures. The DOD has devised a BSAT Biosafety and Biosecurity Program, congressional investigators found, but hasn’t bothered to put it in place. “DOD has not developed a strategy and implementation plan for managing the program,” the report states. “Without a strategy and implementation plan, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and DOD’s laboratory facilities that currently produce and handle BSAT may be unclear about DOD’s strategy to harmonize BSAT operations to ensure safety, security, and standardization of procedures throughout DOD’s BSAT enterprise.”
The probe further discovered that the DOD has no estimated time frames for when it will adequately secure dangerous biological matter, even though a deadline was set for early last year by federal legislators. Congressional investigators visited six military laboratories in the course of their probe and interviewed staff. Apparently, the Army created a list with dozens of measures to boost security at labs and, though some have been implemented, there is no way to assess their effectiveness. “What’s at stake here is that these labs deal with very dangerous biological materials, in this case, Bacillus anthracis, that could potentially cause anthrax,” said Joseph Kirschbaum, the lead GAO investigator in this case, in an agency broadcast. Kirschbaum, a defense capabilities expert, added that “the assessment of these high-risk bioagents is vital for our own safety and the ability to conduct military options in the future, so it was really important that the Department of Defense continue to take this seriously.” Does the DOD really need a federal audit to remind it of this?
More Sauce @ https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2018/09/dod-fails-to-implement-biosecurity-years-after-army-lab-mistakenly-sent-575-anthrax-samples/