Biowarfare and baboons

News item: Biodefense lab needs support of community

The city's top research institutions are preparing to make their case to the Department of Homeland Security later this month about why San Antonio should be the home of a new national laboratory charged with studying the world's most dangerous disease threats.

Well if that doesn't sound delightful, I don't know what could.

Now, it seems, folks are thinking it's a good time to check on community support...or given the opposition mounted in Seattle, Boston and elsewhere, the degree of resistance expected.

For an article about community support, there is surprisingly little content about the community, the experiments already underway, or what kinds of experiments would be undertaken at the proposed facility, i.e. animal experiments. They mention that the new proposal aims to replace the Animal Disease Center in NY, but not much else.

As for what they have to offer, besides a massive collection of chimps, baboons and other monkeys, the project proponents seem to think the social life will be the big draw:

“Jean Patterson, who heads the virology department and BSL-4 lab at Southwest Foundation, said a big selling point for San Antonio will be the community.

"Plum Island is a terrible place to work," Patterson said. "You have to take a ferry. You miss the ferry, you sleep on the lab floor.”

The full article is available online.

Info about SFBR here: