In the wake of Sept. 11, federal officials said the United States needed a new, state-of-the-art facility to defend against bioterrorism and stop diseases that could devastate the countrys farm economy and threaten human lives. They chose Manhattan, Kansas, as the site of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The plan was to have it up and running last year. But that date has fallen ever deeper into the future. At best, itll open in 2022, at a price that surpasses the original budget by $800 million. This is part two in a three-part series looking at the matter.
II: The Research
In 2001, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease rapidly spread through the United Kingdom. The highly infectious disease causes cattle, pigs, goats and sheep to get high fevers and painful blisters in their mouths and on their feet. Its often fatal.
UK officials had to take drastic measures. Dublins St. Patricks Day celebration? Canceled. Rugby matches? Canceled. Transportation of livestock? Cut off. More than 6 million animals had to be slaughtered, too.
All told, the outbreak lasted more than six months and cost the UK economy between $10 billion and $15 billion.
Researchers in the United States point to that outbreak as a reminder of how devastating an animal disease can be. Its also partly why some experts argued for, and continue to support, NBAF. When its open, it will dramatically increase the number of state-of-the-art labs available to researchers and enhance their ability to develop detection tools and vaccines for deadly diseases such as foot-and-mouth, African swine fever and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a federal research lab on an island off the coast of New York state, is the only place in the United States where scientists are allowed to research live foot-and-mouth disease viruses. Their main mission: prevent it from coming to the U.S. by controlling and checking trade, and if that happens, quickly stop it from spreading.
With current trade and illegal movement of animals, or even people, around the world, the probabilities of foot-and mouth disease entering a free country have increased, said Luis Rodriguez, Plum Islands director of foreign animal disease research. And will probably continue to increase over time.
But its an aging facility, open since 1954, and will be replaced by NBAF, with pretty much everyone from New York relocating to Manhattan. NBAF is the new Plum Island, and then some.
Its a decision that didnt make much sense to Nancy Connell, the senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security whos supervised high-level security labs for 25 years at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
She has been a part of the review process overseeing certification of biocontainment labs around the U.S., and was part of the expert committee that evaluated NBAF ahead of construction.
I remember being disappointed that they couldn’t figure out a way to rebuild Plum (Island) and keep this kind of work … off the mainland, she said. Why, if so much money was going to be spent on a new laboratory, why that money couldn’t be spent on upgrading Plum?
What really worried her was NBAFs actual location, right in the middle of the mainland, in a state where, as one Kansas rancher described it, cattle outnumber people 2 to 1.
It’s a valid concern, especially because Plum Island hasn’t had a perfect record of containing foot-and-mouth disease. Since 1978, there have been three incidents of it spreading to animals and places it wasn’t supposed to. Two of those were in 2004, and in both instances, animals inside of the secure biocontainment area were found to be infected with the disease not purposely, but it illustrates how easily it can spread because of human error.
The U.S. mainland already has more than 1,000 biosafety level-3 research labs (BSL-3) used to study dangerous diseases, including 14 at K-States Biosecurity Research Institute. BSL-3 labs are some of the most secure around, specifically designed to contain the potentially deadly diseases and viruses.
To get inside, a researcher must start in a small locker room, where street clothes are removed and replaced with scrubs. A researcher then must put on a disposable gown and two sets of gloves before moving to the next room. Here, if required, the researcher gets into either a full-body hazardous-materials suit or a mask with a respirator that blows air down and over the face.
Only then can a researcher enter the lab, where air flows in from the outside to ensure any airborne diseases inside the lab stay there.
