| kathleen 2005-08-24, 10:49 pm |
| Why, Chuck,
Do you have something in mind that
you want to do to the nuclear power plant?
Should I inform the FBI? Since you
are already known to be a weapons expert,
since you post freely about it?
Tell us more about weapons, Chuck,
since you are an expert on US and
foreign military weapons.
And tell us who the Anthrax Mailer
is, too, okay?
BioCrimes and Misdemeanors Commentary by Edward McSweegan
August 17, 2004
As a graduate student twenty years ago, I had a departmental recruiting
poster tacked up on the wall next to my desk. It read, in part, "If
you are curious, patient, and awfully damned intelligent, consider a
Ph.D. in microbiology." In 1984 a degree in microbiology seemed like a
good idea.
AIDS was just exploding on the scene. Lyme disease was racing through
the Northeast. Evidence was emerging that a bizarre neurologic
disease might be caused by an equally bizarre infectious agent called a
prion. And recombinant DNA techniques, discovered a decade earlier,
were rapidly helping to create a multi-billion dollar industry in the
U.S.
But now in 2004, a degree in microbiology, or even a vague interest in
infectious diseases, might not be such a good idea. In fact, it might
get you arrested by the FBI.
After 9/11 and the October anthrax mailings, a series of laws and
regulations were hastily enacted to discourage future acts of
bioterrorism and misguided hoaxes. The anthrax mailer has not been
caught and no other bioterrorists appear to be lurking on the horizon.
Deprived of new suspects, terrorists, plagues or other insidious acts
of microbiology, the FBI has turned its attention to softer targets.
In the last two years they have used provisions of the 2001 Patriot Act
and the 2002 Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and
Response Act to arrest and prosecute university professors, graduate
students, and at least one New York artist. None of these U.S.
citizens are terrorists, but they have all been run to ground by the
FBI's need to be seen doing something...even if it's the wrong thing.
Two years ago, a university of Connecticut graduate student (Tomas
Foral) became the first person to be arrested under the Patriot Act.
His crime: moving a 35-year-old sample collected from an
anthrax-infected cow from one freezer to another freezer. This spring,
world-renowned plague expert and physician Thomas Butler was sentenced
to two years in prison. His crime: mislabeling a FedEx package
containing plague samples, and getting into billing disputes with Texas
Tech university accountants over his research funds.
In July, a federal grand jury indicted a university of Pittsburgh
genetics professor, and an artist at the State university of New York
at Buffalo. As with Butler and Foral before them, neither man is
charged with any actual acts of bioterrorism. Rather they are charged
with mail and wire fraud. The artist, Steve Kurtz, got two samples of
harmless bacteria from Pittsburg Professor Robert Ferrell who
apparently failed to fill out the appropriate paperwork. Both men are
facing the possibility of 20 years in prison.
The Patriot Act prohibits the possession of "any biological agent,
toxin, or delivery system of a type or in a quantity that, under the
circumstances, is not reasonably justified by a prophylactic,
protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose."
Phrase such as "biological agent," "reasonably justified," and
"peaceful purposes" are open to interpretation; if one is inclined to
be reasonable, especially about criminal intent. Unfortunately, the
FBI and the Justice Department have shown no interest in being
reasonable or responsible defenders of the public's safety.
Last fall, D.A. Henderson, the Johns Hopkins university professor who
eradicated smallpox in the 1970's and advises the federal government
on bioterrorism, declared the FBI has "lost all perspective" and "is
out of control." In June, Dr. Barbara Rosenberg, Chair of the Arms
Control Center's Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical
Weapons, said, "Clearly the Justice Department hasn't the foggiest idea
of what is significant."
Instead of focusing on real terrorists and lone lunatics, they are
using the Patriot Act as a crowbar to pry open the innocuous trivia of
ordinary people's lives, and leveraging Mickey Mouse complaints, sloppy
paperwork and professional disputes to the status of federal crimes
worthy of indictment, prosecution and imprisonment.
The result is widespread fear among scientists. Some researchers have
stopped working on certain dangerous pathogens and some universities
have destroyed valuable collections rather than risk a paperwork mishap
that might attract the FBI. Cornell professor and Nobel Laureate
Robert Richardson noted that before the Patriot Act thirty-eight of his
colleagues were working on "select agents." Now there are two.
Anthrax expert Paul Keim told the Los Angeles Times last October, "All
of us are worried we are going to fall into some trap that we don't
know about."
One of the biggest traps may be the new Material Transfer Agreement
(MTA) people now must sign in order to get specimens from the American
Type Culture Collection (ATCC), a national archive of biological
materials. The Agreement states, "The Purchaser shall not
distribute, sell, lend or otherwise transfer the Material...for any
reason."
That may sound reasonable, but how do teachers and professors hand out
classroom samples and do student experiments without violating the ATCC
decree not to distribute, lend or otherwise transfer? To follow the
letter of the law, every Biology 101 class could generate hundreds of
MTAs. How do researchers and graduate students collaborate if every
test tube and Petri dish must generate a paper trail from person to
person, sample to sample, and experiment to experiment? As University
of California at San Diego Professor Natalie Jeremijenko observed,
"They're going to have to indict the entire scientific
community." Medical research and science education are becoming the
new causalities in the war on terror.
As the arrest of Steve Kurtz suggests, the greatest threat may be to
amateur scientists. The Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS) defines
an amateur as "anyone who wants to do science simply for the pleasure
of finding things out." Unfortunately, that also may be the FBI's
definition of a terrorist.
Shawn Carlson, Executive Director of the SAS and a regular contributor
to Scientific American's monthly amateur scientist column, denounced
the "demonization of citizen scientists" in a 2002 press release. He
noted, "My fellow citizen scientists are very worried right now."
The federal assault on science and scientists is an important issue
that has not been well covered outside professional journals and
science magazines. It should be. When federal agents, backed by
federal laws, come to view classrooms as terrorist training camps,
backyard hobbyists as dangerous lunatics, and professors as domestic
terrorists, then we are all in danger.
Professional and amateur scientists, and the science teachers who first
inspired them, share a common threat and should form a common front
against the indiscriminate use of laws meant to protect us from foreign
terrors. Benjamin Franklin-patriot, rebel and amateur
scientist-once noted, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we
shall all hang separately." So far, the FBI has been hanging us
separately.
Edward McSweegan is a working microbiologist and writes the "Pathogens
& People" column for The Capital newspaper in Maryland.
Kathleen
Chuck P Adams wrote:
> I guess the 20,000 jobs it saved by staying does nothing for you.. I
> know how you care about the working man.
>
> As far as the sub base being a target, you should worry about a little
> nuclear power plant not to far away than some missile attack from
> Russia.
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