Summary: The skyrocketing biodefense budget, now exceeding that of the Manhattan Project (adjusted for inflation), is rapidly increasing research on biological weapons agents, including risky genetic engineering projects. Despite this and the increasingly evident chronic, institutionalized problems with IBCs across the country, the Bush administration maintains that comprehensive laboratory safety and disclosure law is unnecessary. It says that an alleged “culture of responsibility” among institutional biosafety committees will protect Americans, and the world, from its biodefense research.
The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) is a genomics powerhouse located in Rockville, Maryland. TIGR is expanding its biodefense programs, which involve work with a variety of biological weapons agents, and include the creation of novel strains of disease with altered virulence genes. In its entire history, the TIGR Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) has met exactly twice. Averaged over the twelve years that TIGR has existed, this amounts to ten minutes of meeting time per year. The TIGR IBC plainly does not meet to review research projects and does not fullfil any other biosafety responsibilities.
The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), based on Maryland's “biotech corridor” northwest of Washington, DC, is a non-profit powerhouse of genomics. TIGR has led in the sequencing of microbial genomes, particularly of human and animal diseases.
While TIGR continues to devote research to important tropical diseases that are understudied, such as Chagas disease and sleeping sickness, its biodefense portfolio is expanding. Active in biodefense for many years, in late 2001, it jumped in with both feet. It performed genetic analysis of spores from the anthrax letters, fingering a US biodefense lab as the likely source of the strain. TIGR biodefense projects include work with valley fever (Coccidiodes immitis), Q fever (Coxiella burnetti), and brucella (B. suis).
Much of TIGR's genetic sequencing work with potential bioweapons agents involves handling the agents broken into small genetic subunits that are not dangerous. However, TIGR's work is not limited to such studies. In one National Institutes of Health-funded project begun in mid-2003, a TIGR scientist is tweaking the virulence genes Burkholderia mallei, the bacteria that causes glanders, a disease that naturally primarily affects horses; but which is a potent biological weapons agent that can infect humans and has been weaponized in the past. The genetically-engineered bacteria with altered virulence are then introduced into mice and hamsters, which serve as scientific surrogates for humans, in order to observe the changes in the GM types.
With assets of nearly US $200 million and annual revenues over US $40 million, the well-funded and well-connected TIGR scientific team operates without many of the financial and market pressures acutely felt in other academic and commercial labs. While its privileged situation would seem to mitigate for increased attention to its institutional biosafety committee (IBC), the tragic reality is that since TIGR was founded in 1992, the TIGR IBC has only met twice, once in 2002 and once in 2004. Each meeting lasted one hour, for a total of two hours face time in twelve years - or, on average, ten minutes per year that the TIGR IBC meets to perform its duties.
During its entire existence, the TIGR IBC has examined exactly two projects, both in 2002, quickly deciding that each was exempt from full committee review under the NIH Guidelines, and thereupon halting its discussion. When the committee met in 2004, it only came together to review the format of its paperwork. It did not review any research projects, much less any other aspect of biosafety at TIGR.
Despite the requirements of the NIH Guidelines, it was only after the Sunshine Project began sending copies of its correspondence to the National Institutes of Health that TIGR decided to reply at all to the Sunshine Project's requests. The committee meeting of 2004, on April 23rd, at which no real biosafety business transpired, took place almost three months after the Sunshine Project began to request TIGR's IBC minutes; but before TIGR replied to the Sunshine Project's requests.
In correspondence with the TIGR IBC Chair, the Sunshine Project directly raised the question of TIGR research with biological weapons agents that has not been reviewed at an IBC meeting. TIGR's IBC Chair initially said that he could not reply promptly because he needed to file grant applications. He then sent a letter ignoring the question; but which, after six months of Sunshine Project queries, finally clarified that the TIGR IBC has only met twice in its history.
As with other institutions, such as Rockefeller University, the Department of Homeland Security's Plum Island, and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Lab, if the institutional biosafety committee system is effective anywhere, it should be at these kinds of labs. Again and again, as discussed in previous editions of Biosafety Bites, the IBCs of these institutions are nonfunctional or, at best, dysfunctional. At far too many institutions, including institutions deeply involved in biodefense, IBCs do not meet to review projects, nor to review the myriad of other biosafety issues that should be their responsibility. The deep failures of the IBC system, touted by the Bush administration and the National Academies of Science as the primarily solution for the dangers posed by the mushrooming US biodefense program, are becoming more and more apparent.
Sources:
Correspondence with Najib M. El-Sayed, Chair TIGR IBC, January - July 2004.
Minutes of the TIGR IBC, meetings of 6 March 2002 and 23 April 2004.
TIGR Internal Revenue Service Form 990 (non-profit tax return), fiscal year 2002.
NIH CRISP database, grant abstracts for TIGR.
For more Biosafety Bites, please visit the Sunshine Project website, in our Links section or: http://www.sunshine-project.org
Please also see:
U.S. Marine Corps Seeks to Censor Sunshine Project Website
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=1805&blz=1
US Military Operating a Secret Chemical Weapons Program: Sunshine Project Provides Evidence for US Violation of International Law
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=375&blz=1
The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) is a genomics powerhouse located in Rockville, Maryland. TIGR is expanding its biodefense programs, which involve work with a variety of biological weapons agents, and include the creation of novel strains of disease with altered virulence genes. In its entire history, the TIGR Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) has met exactly twice. Averaged over the twelve years that TIGR has existed, this amounts to ten minutes of meeting time per year. The TIGR IBC plainly does not meet to review research projects and does not fullfil any other biosafety responsibilities.
The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), based on Maryland's “biotech corridor” northwest of Washington, DC, is a non-profit powerhouse of genomics. TIGR has led in the sequencing of microbial genomes, particularly of human and animal diseases.
While TIGR continues to devote research to important tropical diseases that are understudied, such as Chagas disease and sleeping sickness, its biodefense portfolio is expanding. Active in biodefense for many years, in late 2001, it jumped in with both feet. It performed genetic analysis of spores from the anthrax letters, fingering a US biodefense lab as the likely source of the strain. TIGR biodefense projects include work with valley fever (Coccidiodes immitis), Q fever (Coxiella burnetti), and brucella (B. suis).
Much of TIGR's genetic sequencing work with potential bioweapons agents involves handling the agents broken into small genetic subunits that are not dangerous. However, TIGR's work is not limited to such studies. In one National Institutes of Health-funded project begun in mid-2003, a TIGR scientist is tweaking the virulence genes Burkholderia mallei, the bacteria that causes glanders, a disease that naturally primarily affects horses; but which is a potent biological weapons agent that can infect humans and has been weaponized in the past. The genetically-engineered bacteria with altered virulence are then introduced into mice and hamsters, which serve as scientific surrogates for humans, in order to observe the changes in the GM types.
With assets of nearly US $200 million and annual revenues over US $40 million, the well-funded and well-connected TIGR scientific team operates without many of the financial and market pressures acutely felt in other academic and commercial labs. While its privileged situation would seem to mitigate for increased attention to its institutional biosafety committee (IBC), the tragic reality is that since TIGR was founded in 1992, the TIGR IBC has only met twice, once in 2002 and once in 2004. Each meeting lasted one hour, for a total of two hours face time in twelve years - or, on average, ten minutes per year that the TIGR IBC meets to perform its duties.
During its entire existence, the TIGR IBC has examined exactly two projects, both in 2002, quickly deciding that each was exempt from full committee review under the NIH Guidelines, and thereupon halting its discussion. When the committee met in 2004, it only came together to review the format of its paperwork. It did not review any research projects, much less any other aspect of biosafety at TIGR.
Despite the requirements of the NIH Guidelines, it was only after the Sunshine Project began sending copies of its correspondence to the National Institutes of Health that TIGR decided to reply at all to the Sunshine Project's requests. The committee meeting of 2004, on April 23rd, at which no real biosafety business transpired, took place almost three months after the Sunshine Project began to request TIGR's IBC minutes; but before TIGR replied to the Sunshine Project's requests.
In correspondence with the TIGR IBC Chair, the Sunshine Project directly raised the question of TIGR research with biological weapons agents that has not been reviewed at an IBC meeting. TIGR's IBC Chair initially said that he could not reply promptly because he needed to file grant applications. He then sent a letter ignoring the question; but which, after six months of Sunshine Project queries, finally clarified that the TIGR IBC has only met twice in its history.
As with other institutions, such as Rockefeller University, the Department of Homeland Security's Plum Island, and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Lab, if the institutional biosafety committee system is effective anywhere, it should be at these kinds of labs. Again and again, as discussed in previous editions of Biosafety Bites, the IBCs of these institutions are nonfunctional or, at best, dysfunctional. At far too many institutions, including institutions deeply involved in biodefense, IBCs do not meet to review projects, nor to review the myriad of other biosafety issues that should be their responsibility. The deep failures of the IBC system, touted by the Bush administration and the National Academies of Science as the primarily solution for the dangers posed by the mushrooming US biodefense program, are becoming more and more apparent.
Sources:
Correspondence with Najib M. El-Sayed, Chair TIGR IBC, January - July 2004.
Minutes of the TIGR IBC, meetings of 6 March 2002 and 23 April 2004.
TIGR Internal Revenue Service Form 990 (non-profit tax return), fiscal year 2002.
NIH CRISP database, grant abstracts for TIGR.
For more Biosafety Bites, please visit the Sunshine Project website, in our Links section or: http://www.sunshine-project.org
Please also see:
U.S. Marine Corps Seeks to Censor Sunshine Project Website
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=1805&blz=1
US Military Operating a Secret Chemical Weapons Program: Sunshine Project Provides Evidence for US Violation of International Law
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=375&blz=1