Editor’s Note: Interesting how the authors are concerned with safety for biolab workers, and the harmful effects of the dangerous experiments they are exposed to, but they don’t connect that to the massive and dangerous experiment being perpetuated on the food supply of the US and much of the world with the genetically modified crops that were created in these very labs. They do talk about experiments with deadly pathogens that sound even more dangerous than genetic engineering, but fail to make the connection between the health of the lab workers and the public health nightmare that would result if some of these experimental pathogens were allowed to escape into the general population. To learn more visit OCA’s Resource Page on Genetic Engineering.

They are the highly trained, generally well-paid employees in the vanguard of American innovation: people who work in biotechnology labs. But the cutting edge can be a risky place to work.

The casualties include an Agriculture Department scientist who spent a month in a coma after being infected by the E. coli bacteria her colleagues were experimenting with.

Another scientist, working in a New Zealand lab while on leave from an American biotechnology company, lost both legs and an arm after being infected by meningococcal bacteria, the subject of her vaccine research.

Last September, a University of Chicago scientist died after apparently being infected by the focus of his research: the bacterium that causes plague.

Whether handling deadly pathogens for biowarfare research, harnessing viruses to do humankind’s bidding or genetically transforming cells to give them powers not found in nature, the estimated 232,000 employees in the nation’s most sophisticated biotechnology labs work amid imponderable hazards. And some critics say the modern biolab often has fewer federal safety regulations than a typical blue-collar factory.

Even the head of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration acknowledges that his agency’s 20th-century rules have not yet caught up with the 21st-century biotech industry.

“Worker safety cannot be sacrificed on the altar of innovation,” said David Michaels, OSHA’s new director. “We have inadequate standards for workers exposed to infectious materials.”