Earlier this year, during an audit of the nation's largest Level-4 BioSafety Lab (BSL-4) at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, 9,220 vials of ebola, anthrax, botulinum, equine encephalitis virus, and other deadly germs were discovered in the proverbial dusty old storage area. No one even knew the vials existed and thus no one knows for sure whether any are missing.
But not to worry, according to officials. The vials were old and lost long before new documentation procedures were put in place. Besides, the lab is being expanded and updated with the latest security devices. Such reassuring mantras resound after every oil and chemical spill, radioactive discharge from nuclear power plant (more frequent than generally realized), black-market uranium sale, and mishandled nuclear bomb: "It may seem dangerous, but trust us - there wasn't enough poison to hurt a fly and besides, we're sure we recovered everything."
Very likely - hopefully - at Fort Detrick they did. But the most important question remains unanswered: can any BSL-4, the labs with the deadliest, often highly contagious, bacteria and viruses, ever be truly fail-safe? After all, at some point that old storeroom in Fort Detrick was state-of-the-art. Human error applies not only to daily procedures, but to equipment that always seems so pristine when new. Proponents of BSL-4s argue that without these research labs we stand defenseless against a natural outbreak of disease or bio-terrorist attack. And, they say, the labs are so safe that the chances of a disease-spreading breach approach zero.
The problem is, neither of these assertions is strictly true.
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