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CDC Shuts Down Labs Missing Deadly Pathogens
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is conducting a nationwide search of its cold storage units after discovering vials of smallpox in a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cold storage room at the National Institutes of Health facility in Bethesda, Maryland. Along with the vials of smallpox were 327 other pathogens including vials labeled for dengue, influenza, and rickettsia. This news comes as the CDC is under multiple investigations for unsafe practices. In response to the news Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University remarked “It is ironic that the institution that sets U.S. standards for safety and security of work with human pathogens fails to meet its own standards.”
Also this week, the AP reported what is being described as an ‘accident’ saying “A government scientist kept silent about a potentially dangerous lab blunder and revealed it only after workers in another lab noticed something fishy, according to an internal investigation. The accident happened in January at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. A lab scientist accidentally mixed a deadly strain of bird flu with a tamer strain, and sent the mix to another CDC lab and to an outside lab in Athens, Georgia.” This strain of avian flu, known as H5N1, has killed 60% of the roughly 650 people who have been infected with it since 2003 according the CDC and World Health Organization. Read more
#cdc #pathogens