Members of Boston’s City Council, public health officials, and members of the community gathered Friday morning at City Hall to discuss the proposed level four biolab at the Boston University Medical Center. The lab, to be built in the South End, will test dangerous viruses including the Plague, Ebola, and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
The biolab has been supported by many members of local and state government including Senator Ted Kennedy, Mayor Thomas H. Menino, and soon-to-be City Council President Michael Ross. The National Institute of Health, the federal institute supporting the lab, and spokespeople for the Boston University Medical Center have been largely opposed to discussion of the lab’s safety, according to community members present. Supporters describe the lab’s safety as a ‘submarine in a vault.’ City Councilor Ross said, “I think the lab gives us a competitive edge. I have greater responsibility to make sure this lab is safe, especially since I’m supporting it.” Other arguments in support of the lab cite the convenience of location for scientists and the proximity to several colleges and universities.
Several members of the Roxbury-based group Safety Net were present and spoke out against the lab to be built in their neighborhood. Mel King, a long time community activist called the lab ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ He countered the supporters’ argument that the new lab will provide much needed jobs for Boston saying, “Yes, it’s jobs. At who’s expense? Yeah, you could’ve built the gas chambers too. Money is the reason we’re going to put a lot of people at risk.” Safety Net has been working with city officials to issue a moratorium in response to the lab. The moratorium would end plans for construction.
City Council member Charles Yancy also spoke, saying the lab presented a ‘clear and present danger’ to the Boston community. He questioned why the lab needed to be built in Boston, especially in a residential, low-income neighborhood. Yancy said, “I think it’s an entirely inappropriate location. Just conceptually this is something that makes no sense.”
BUMC is currently operating a level three biolab which has previously had an outbreak of the Tulerimia virus. The lab waited two weeks to alert public officials. Many question the competency of BUMC to create a safe environment for dangerous experiments and the city’s ability to respond to a potential outbreak.
Current city council president Michael Flaherty and Dr. David Ozonhoff, the professor of environmental health at Boston University’s School of Public Health stated that they will no longer support the lab in light of recent public safety findings. “I’ve not always been opposed to this lab. I actually spoke on its behalf. However, as I learn more it became very clear that public safety will not be served,” said Flaherty.
“The study of biodefense has made us less safe in almost every way. No one in this community is sick from the organisms being studied. This is not theoretical or hypothetical,” said Ozonhoff.
Others present included Mary Crotty, a representative of the Massachusetts Nurses Association who said that the Boston hospital system is not prepared to handle the consequences of a contamination and Mark Pelletier, a Senior Science Fellow at the Center for Arms Control in Washington, DC who expressed concern at the lack of cooperation by BU and the National Institutes of Health and that quarantine in the case of contamination would be almost impossible. Laura Maslow-Armond, a representative of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association called the lab a clear example of environmental racism.
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