Laxity: this is what caused the sending of poorly inactivated anthrax to 194 laboratories in 9 countries. At issue: an American military laboratory. The Pentagon names 12 culprits.
The report is damning. A year after the scandal which revealed the sending of badly inactivated anthrax to 194 laboratories around the world, the US Department of Defense delivers its conclusions. In the spring of 2015, the Dugway military laboratory, located in Utah (United States), was noticed by a major error: it exported the bacillus responsible for anthrax, highly pathogenic, officially inactivated. But anthrax was indeed active. The report published by the Pentagon highlights an organized laxity.
For the past ten years, the Dugway laboratory has been sending partially inactivated anthrax bacilli. It was a laboratory located at the American air base in Osan (South Korea) which launched the alert in the spring of 2015. The investigation quickly revealed that in total, 194 other structures, located in 9 countries, suffered from the same shortcomings, without causing any victim.
The flaws highlighted by the Pentagon report are major: the Dugway laboratory’s monitoring and control system suffers from laxity. 12 people were implicated, including General William King. This manager from 2009 to 2011 systematically declined any responsibility.
Lack of knowledge
“The atmosphere of complacency has resulted in an organization plagued by errors and unable to identify systemic errors in the high-risk universe, which leaves no room for error, selective biological agents and toxins”, denounces the report revealed by USA Today.
The other 11 people simply suffer from a lack of scientific knowledge and are criticized for not respecting the safety rules imposed during the management and delivery of this type of high-risk material. The structure therefore did not have a program to verify that pathogens were not transmitted from one secure laboratory to another. More worrying: some members of the staff would have “regularly manipulated data”, in order to certify that the anthrax bacilli sent were inactivated and handled without protective equipment.
Another Pentagon report sets out the lessons to be learned from this incident. Dugway Laboratory should no longer be allowed to produce biological substances for outdoor use. On a larger scale, the control over American laboratories exploiting potential biological weapons must be harmonized, he recommends.
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