“The work they had done was sound scientific work, the scenarios they developed were credible, and the analyses they presented were also sound and credible,” said John Ahearne, a former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission who chaired the 11-member panel of scientists.
The scientific panel convened by the National Research Council to advise the federal government on improving its environmental safety review of the lab issued a report in 2007 sharply critical of the federal government’s earlier reviews of the BU project.
The facility, largely underwritten by the National Institutes of Health, is designed to allow researchers to work with the world’s deadliest germs, including Ebola, plague, and Marburg.
In their final report, the scientists said the government’s study is a “technically complex document” that needs a summary of its key findings written in “plain language” that could be understood by the “lay audience.”
“My committee beat on them so many times over several years that they decided, I think, to do everything they could to ‘satisfy these people,’ so it is an acceptable size for the issues they are dealing with,” Ahearne said in an interview. “But to not distill it down into readable transparent summaries was really missing.”
Other issues raised by the report included recommendations that BU be required to conduct periodic retraining of staff, especially after any accident at the lab. It also said the environmental study lacked enough information regarding the impact of germs being inadvertently carried out of the lab on equipment or clothing.
And it said the government needed to do a better job assessing the “increased susceptibility” of the minority community around the lab to infections.
“That should be discussed,” Ahearne said, “and it wasn’t.”
A public hearing on the NIH’s draft report is expected early next year.
Earlier this month, state enviromental officials granted preliminary approval for biomedical research at the lab using germs less hazardous than those that sparked opposition to the project. A final decision from the state on that level of research is due by the end of the month.
Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKayLazar.
