Both CNN and The Guardian are reporting that
Anthrax exposure a risk for as many as 75 US scientists, CDC says. By failing to follow proper procedures the scientist did not "inactivate" or kill the live bacteria before transferring it to a lower security laboratory.
Scientists at laboratories in Atlanta may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria after researchers failed to follow procedure
The CDC says researchers at the Atlanta campus failed to follow proper procedures to inactivate the live anthrax bacteria.
As many as 75 scientists working in US federal government laboratories in Atlanta may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria and are being offered treatment to prevent infection, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.
The potential exposure occurred after researchers working in a high-level biosecurity laboratory at the agency's Atlanta campus failed to follow proper procedures to inactivate the bacteria. They then transferred the samples, which may have contained live bacteria, to lower-security CDC labs not equipped to handle live anthrax.
CNN has also reported that the scientists have been treated with antibiotics.
1:25 PM PT: Marilynn Marchione Chief Medical Writer for the AP writes CDC Probes Lab Workers' Possible Anthrax Exposure, which adds one piece of info we hadn't already heard.
More than a half a dozen media outlets are reporting the same three or four paragraphs. ABC News adds that some of the anthrax may have become airborne last week.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says some of its staff in Atlanta may have been accidentally exposed to dangerous anthrax bacteria because of a safety problem at one of its labs.
The problem was discovered last Friday, when live anthrax bacteria were found on some materials being gathered for disposal. The statement says some of the anthrax may have become airborne the previous week.
3:49 PM PT: Thanks to Siri for highlihting the more important issue here with this article from Evolution and Biology Scientists Have “Resurrected” The 1918 Spanish Flu. Exposing 75 scientists to anthrax is embarrassing but trivial compared to the possibility that with the same kind of error with this resurrected 1918 flu virus we might kill hundreds of millions with today's population. Siri asks why are we taking these kinds of chances? I agree with her.
Heralded as “the mother of all pandemics,” in 1918, the Spanish Flu killed some 50 million people. It all started when an influenza virus that was prominent in birds (known as “avian flu”) was passed to humans. And now, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created an even deadlier influenza virus that is similar to the 1918 strain. This new strain, which is a very similar but distinct influenza virus, was created by mixing together a set of genes taken from viruses of wild birds that are present in the gene pool today.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, one of the authors of the paper, states that the influenza virus that is currently found in birds is not transmittable in humans. However, they mutated it to make transmission possible. The team added adaptive changes like the ones that are selected during virus replication in mammals, and created a virus that is transmissible and virulent in ferrets, which is the best model for human flu.The scientists reported their research in Cell Host & Microbe. ....
Many people have critiqued the scientists for creating this strain. Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, said: “I am worried that this signals a growing trend to make transmissible novel viruses willy-nilly, without strong public health rationale. This is a risky activity, even in the safest labs. Scientists should not take such risks without strong evidence that the work could save lives, which this paper does not provide,” he added. Similarly, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, stated that he believed that governments and funding bodies would not take the threat posed by this kind of research seriously until it was too late, and he added, “It’s madness, folly. It shows profound lack of respect for the collective decision-making process we’ve always shown in fighting infections. If society, the intelligent layperson, understood what was going on, they would say ‘What the F are you doing?’”