Three researchers at the Boston University Medical Center fell ill in 2004 after being exposed to a potentially deadly bacterium in a Level 2 biosecurity lab. Yet city and university officials kept the news quiet until after the centre’s application to build a more high-level biosecurity lab (Level 4) in a densely populated part of Boston was accepted by the city this January.University officials blamed careless procedures in their existing Level 2 lab, and say the researchers were studying a strain of the bacterium which causes tularaemia, also known as “rabbit fever”, but had thought the strain was harmless.A spokeswoman told New Scientist that the affected lab has been decontaminated, but tularaemia research has been stopped until staff members are retrained and a new manager appointed - the former head of the infectious disease section was removed from his post.Yet the incident raises warning flags about the proliferation of biodefence labs working with dangerous pathogens in the US, in the wake of the still-unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001. According to the Biosecurity Center of the University of Pittsburgh, US, federal funding for civilian biodefence research rose from $414 million in 2001 to an estimated $5.5 billion in 2004.The US also plans to build six new maximum containment biosecurity Level 4 (BSL4) labs, including the one in Boston, US, and 19 less-stringent BSL3 labs.
