With construction of the facility underway, opponents look for new ways to stall or stop the project.
Adrianne Appel
Construction of Boston University Medical Center’s $128 million infectious-disease research facility, which includes a biosafety level 4 (BSL4) lab, began in March in the South End and is scheduled to be completed in late 2008. Scientists at the BSL4 lab will work with dangerous pathogens that cause diseases like Ebola and plague.
But with three legal challenges, ongoing scrutiny by Boston city officials, and continued vocal opposition by South End residents and the local scientists who back them, BU may find it challenging to focus solely on construction issues.
Opponents are concerned about accidental release of BSL4-type pathogens into the surrounding neighborhood, which is densely populated by minorities and largely poor. Scientists opposed to the lab hope to convince officials to downgrade it to a BSL3 facility, which would work with less dangerous pathogens.
“A BSL3 is all you need, as long as it’s properly regulated and inspected. All key infectious disease work can be done in a BSL3,” says Daniel Goodenough, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. He and other scientists assist opponents of the lab by speaking to community groups and helping them interpret scientific documents.
As a result of public outcry over the lab, especially among neighbors, BU Medical Center announced in March that it planned to assemble a community liaison committee, which will communicate news about the lab to the community and “serve as a resource” for the BU administration, says Ellen Berlin, a representative for the BU Medical Center. BU expects to announce this week the people it has chosen to sit on the committee.
Klare Allen of the local citizens group, Safety Net, says churches have joined the coalition of environmental and citizen groups opposing the lab, and a service workers union will soon dispatch field organizers to go door-to-door in Boston to drum up support for downgrading the lab.
“Our main goal is to stop it. If it does move in, then we have safety regulations to focus on,” says Allen, referring to the Boston Public Health Commission, which crafts safety regulations for this and other biological research labs in Boston. It plans on releasing a new set of regulations on June 13, which may affect how the BU lab operates and what it must report publicly.
The commission came up with a first draft of regulations last year, but community members were so concerned with them that the commission is now making changes.
“We received many comments from the public and scientists at labs. We took those comments seriously,” says Tom Lyons, the commission’s representative.
Last month, the New England–based Conservation Law Foundation and other groups filed suit in federal district court against the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded and authorized the project. They’re claiming that the NIH violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not fully assessing the environmental impact of the laboratory.
“The law requires that the government takes special care to do a thorough review when a minority or low-income community is involved,” says Eloise Lawrence, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation. “We are asking that NIH halt the funding until they comply with the law.”
The lab’s principal investigator, Mark Klempner, said in a statement, “The approval process for the laboratory was rigorous and thorough, and Boston University Medical Center complied fully with all federal, state, and local processes and procedures.”
BU faces a similar lawsuit filed early last year in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of 10 residents. And last summer, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights filed a complaint on behalf of residents with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, charging discrimination in the siting of the lab.
Adrianne Appel is a freelance writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts.