U.S. military mistakenly ships live anthrax to labs in nine states
By Phil Stewart and Sharon Begley WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. military facility in Utah mistakenly sent live anthrax bacteria to private laboratories in nine U.S. states and a U.S. military base in South Korea, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. It said there was no known suspected infection or risk to the public. But four U.S. civilians have been started on preventive measures called post-exposure prophylaxis, which usually includes the anthrax vaccine, antibiotics, or both. The four face "minimal" risk, said Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has begun an investigation of the incident. But the four were "doing procedures that sent the agent into the air," he said. When anthrax becomes airborne, it can cause a deadly illness called inhalation anthrax. That is what happened in 2001, when anthrax sent through the U.S. mail to government and media targets killed five people. The anthrax sent from the Utah military lab was meant to be shipped in an inactive state as part of efforts to develop a field-based test to identify biological threats, the Pentagon said. "Out of an abundance of caution, (the Defense Department) has stopped the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation," said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren. The CDC said it has launched an investigation of the mishap. "All samples involved in the investigation will be securely transferred to CDC" or affiliated labs "for further testing," said spokeswoman Kathy Harden, adding that CDC has sent officials to the labs "to conduct on-site investigations." The mishap comes 11 months after CDC, one of the government's top civilian labs, similarly mishandled anthrax. Researchers at a lab designed to handle extremely dangerous pathogens sent what they believed were killed samples of anthrax to another CDC lab, one with fewer safeguards and therefore not authorized to work with live anthrax. Scores of CDC employees were potentially exposed to the live anthrax, but none became ill. That incident and a similar one last spring, in which CDC scientists shipped what they thought was a benign form of bird flu but which was actually a highly virulent strain, led U.S. lawmakers to fault a "dangerous pattern" of safety lapses at government labs. In the latest case, anthrax was sent from the Army's Dugway Proving Ground to laboratories in Maryland, Texas, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia, a defense official said. The four civilians receiving post-exposure prophylaxis are in Delaware, Texas, and Wisconsin. "Workers who were not in the same area at the same time are not at risk," the CDC's McDonald said. The sample sent to South Korea was subsequently destroyed, the Pentagon said. On Friday night the Maryland laboratory alerted CDC that it had a live sample; by midday on Saturday, all nine laboratories were notified, the official said. Experts in biosafety were astonished by the latest lapse. "These events shouldn't happen," said Stephen Morse of Columbia University, a former program manager for biodefense at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Scientists working with the most dangerous pathogens follow a "two-person rule," never handling samples alone. The second pair of eyes is meant to insure scientists take proper precautions during experiments. Two people should also vet shipments of supposedly killed anthrax, Morse said: "We can put greater safeguards in place." (Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Sandra Maler, Eric Beech and Andrew Hay)
