Connecticut to fight proposal for defense lab
BOSTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Connecticut will fight a proposal to turn a federal laboratory known as the "Alcatraz for animal disease" into a facility to study deadly viruses, the state's attorney general said on Thursday.
New York's Plum Island is one of six potential sites for a new facility that would study lethal diseases transmitted by animals along with biological agents that could harm food supplies.
The facility would be the only biosafety level 4 animal laboratory in the country and could cost as much as $750 million to build.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the proposed laboratory would make his state a potential target for terrorists and put human life at risk.
"Dire public health dangers of leaks or terrorist attacks make this site clearly and completely unacceptable," he said in a statement. His office is preparing formal comments to fight the Department of Homeland Security proposal, he added.
Plum Island is two miles (3 km) off the eastern tip of New York's Long Island and about 8 miles (13 km) south of Connecticut's southern coast.
Plans for the next-generation National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, slated to go online in 2015, include biosafety labs where scientists in outfits resembling spacesuits would research deadly diseases that can spread to people from animals, including those for which there are no known vaccine.
There are four labs that run at biosafety level 4, which calls for multiple safeguards while handling high-risk disease organisms -- in Atlanta, the Washington suburbs, and in Galveston and San Antonio, Texas. By comparison, a college chemistry lab could be level 1.
For more than half a century, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a level 3 lab, has been the only federal lab permitted to conduct research on live foot-and-mouth disease viruses that can spread rapidly through livestock.
The 840-acre (340-hectare) island is sometimes called the Alcatraz for animal disease because research there is done in isolation, similar to the way criminals were isolated in the now-closed Alcatraz island penitentiary in San Francisco Bay.
Other possible sites for the proposed laboratory are Athens, Georgia; Manhattan, Kansas; Flora, Mississippi; Butner, North Carolina; and San Antonio, Texas. A decision is expected later this year. (Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Philip Barbara) (jason.szep@thomsonreuters.com; +1-617-367-4142; Reuters Messaging: jason.szep.reuters.com@reuters.net))
