The discovery of live anthrax outside a containment area at a military lab in Utah prompted military officials to order an immediate freeze on operations at nine biodefense laboratories that work with dangerous viruses, toxins and bacteria, the Pentagon announced Thursday.

The moratorium, first reported by USA TODAY, came after officials took a detailed look at policies and procedures at the labs and found them wanting, according to Defense officials. Labs at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground facility in Utah have been the focus of international concern since May, when the first clues emerged that the facility had been mistakenly shipping live anthrax — instead of killed specimens — to labs in the USA and abroad for years.

An ongoing USA TODAY Media Network investigation has revealed numerous safety problems at government, university and private labs that operate in the secretive world of biodefense research. Federal lab regulators are conducting comprehensive reviews of how they oversee lab safety and security.

Army Secretary John McHugh ordered the moratorium on the laboratories, including facilities run by the Army, Air Force and Navy. The Army is the top agency for the labs. McHugh acted out of an abundance of caution, according to the Army.

Activities at the labs will restart when the Army determines they can be conducted safely, said three military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. McHugh will have the authority to approve work if needed for national security.

McHugh issued his order for the sweeping safety review after lab regulators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered Dugway Proving Ground’s labs on Aug. 31 to suspend work with all types of “select agent” pathogens because of new revelations about sloppy biosafety practices at the Utah facility.

Dugway officials, in testing surfaces in their laboratories, detected anthrax bacteria on the floors of two rooms where staff had worked with the deadly pathogen. “If proper biosafety procedures had been followed, these surfaces should have been free of the agent,” the CDC said in a statement in response to questions from USA TODAY. “Following the suspension, the Department of Defense has begun an immediate safety review at all DoD labs and facilities involved in production, shipment and handling of live and inactivated select agents and toxins.” The CDC said there is “no identifiable risk to the public” from the Dugway incident.

According to a memo issued Wednesday by McHugh, the safety review involves all labs involved in the production, shipment and handling of any live or inactivated pathogens that are designated as “select agents,” because of their potential to be used as bioterror agents and the threat they pose to public health.

The review calls for the military labs to ensure that personnel are properly trained on lab safety procedures and that necessary maintenance is conducted on biosafety level 3 lab facilities that work with some of the most dangerous pathogens. It calls for validating record-keeping and inventories of the military’s “Critical Reagents Program” — including “ensuring that all materials associated with the CRP are properly accounted for.”

The Critical Reagents Program provides biological specimens used as reference materials to other DoD labs and to “interagency partners” for use in research and the evaluation of various biodefense products, according to the program’s website. Pathogens listed in the program's catalog of antigens include the bacteria that cause plague and anthrax and Ebola and Dengue viruses. The catalog says the antigens listed are "an inactivated version of an entire organism or a toxin."

The memo calls for several of the labs to cease production and handling of any materials associated with the Critical Reagents Program.

Labs covered by the expanded moratorium include the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, and the Naval Medical Research Center, which are all in Maryland.




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cobber wrote: Why are the USA playing with Anthrax if they are supposed to be a signatory to the Geneva convention? http://www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/(httpPages)/04FBBDD6315AC720C1257180004B1B2F The Biological Weapons Convention The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, commonly known as the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) or Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force in 1975.