WASHINGTON — A recently completed inventory at a major U.S. Army biodefense facility found nearly 10,000 more vials of potentially lethal pathogens than were known to be stored at the site (see GSN, April 23).
The 9,220 samples — which included the bacterial agents that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia; Venezuelan, Eastern and Western equine encephalitis viruses; Rift valley fever virus; Junin virus; Ebola virus; and botulinum neurotoxins — were found during a four-month inventory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., according to Col. Mark Kortepeter, the center’s deputy commander.
Kortepeter said yesterday it was “extremely unlikely” that any samples were smuggled out of the center’s laboratories, noting that there are “multiple layers of security” that include random exit inspections and a personnel reliability program.
“I can’t 100 percent say nothing [left the facility] but I think the bottom line [is] we did have a lot of buffers to prevent anyone who shouldn’t be in the laboratory from getting in in the first place and then preventing them taking something out with them,” he said.
Most of the samples found were so small — less than one milliliter– that any amount of pathogen would thaw quickly and die once removed from a freezer, according to inventory control officer Sam Edwin.
The institute’s commander ordered the latest accounting after a USAMRIID researcher in January discovered four vials of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus — considered a possible tool in bioterrorism — that were not listed in the center’s database, Kortepeter said during a conference call with reporters.
A newly minted Army requirement mandates that any identified “overage” result in a “Category One Serious Incident Report.” That order was handed down in January by the Army, USAMRIID spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden told Global Security Newswire. Previously, such incidents only required the overage be entered into the database, without any additional reporting, according to Kortepeter.
The institute has been under scrutiny since the Justice Department’s 2008 assertion that a former USAMRIID researcher was responsible for the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people. The prime suspect, microbiologist Bruce Ivins, committed suicide last July as federal prosecutors prepared charges against him.
Federal investigators traced the anthrax strain in the mailings to a supply developed at the laboratory. Ivins stored his own sample of the agent in a refrigerator that he alone used.
“Nine thousand, two hundred undocumented samples is an extraordinarily serious breach,” Richard Ebright, a professor at Rutgers University who follows biosecurity, told the Washington Post. “A small number would be a concern; 9,200 … at an institution that has been the focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that’s deeply worrisome. Unacceptable.”