By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – Federal authorities are investigating two cases from last year in which Texas A&M; researchers were infected with biological weapons agents – including the university’s failure to report the exposures when they happened.
New documents obtained by The Sunshine Project, an Austin-based bioweapons watchdog group, show three researchers tested positive for exposure to the weapons agent Q fever in April 2006, two months after another researcher fell ill following contact with the agent Brucella.
In neither case did university officials immediately report the exposures to the Centers for Disease Control, as federal law requires. They filed a report on the Brucella case a year after the initial infection, and CDC officials said Tuesday that they still haven’t received documentation on the Q fever case.
Von Roebuck, a CDC spokesman, said that the agency is still investigating the Q fever exposure, and that it has turned the Brucella infection over to the Health and Human Services inspector general for further investigation or possible financial penalties. Officials in that office could not be reached for comment.
In a written statement, Texas A&M; Executive Vice President and Provost Jerry R. Strawser said the university is awaiting a CDC response on the investigations and would not comment further for now.
“In response to this unfortunate incident, we have greatly strengthened our safety, training and reporting procedures,” he said.
The diseases, while rarely fatal in humans, cause high fevers and flulike symptoms, and both are difficult to cure. There was little danger of a disease outbreak – transmission of one of the diseases between humans is rare, and it’s unheard of with the other – but the breakdown in reporting on the diseases could indicate a broader problem in bioweapons research, say the activists who uncovered it.
“The A&M; problems, I think, are symptomatic of a larger problem, and that’s that we are putting literally thousands and thousands of people behind the wheel of this apparatus to study biological weapons agents,” said Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project. “They don’t have the experience, and we don’t have the proper legislative framework to do it safely. A lot of this is done on an ad hoc, and sometimes even unsafe, basis.”
Texas A&M;’s bioterrorism lab work is part of a Department of Homeland Security and National Institutes of Health research effort – one that has awarded the university millions of dollars to study and seek vaccines for Brucella and Q fever, both of which are considered “terror agents” for biological warfare.
The Brucella incident occurred in February 2006, after an experiment to expose mice to the agent. The researcher who climbed into a chamber to disinfect it – a procedure that documents indicate has since been changed – was home sick for several weeks before her personal physician made the brucellosis diagnosis in early April of that year.
Researchers believe she was infected through her eyes. She recovered after taking antibiotics for nearly two months.
The Q fever exposure came to light that same month, after a health clinic called A&M; health and safety officials to tell them three researchers from the same lab had tested positive for the agent. Records of the phone call don’t indicate how the lab workers were exposed to Q fever. None of the researchers were identified.
But despite e-mail traffic that shows at least one administrator knew the university was supposed to report the information to the CDC, the mandatory report on the Brucella breach wasn’t sent for a year. CDC officials say no Q fever report appears to have been sent.
On the Brucella report, filed in April 2007, almost a year after the infection was confirmed, A&M; officials indicate that one of their researchers tested positive for the agent “several months ago” and that the information “should have been immediately reported to the CDC but was not.” A&M; declined to say why the report wasn’t made.
With regards to the Q fever case, Dr. Strawser, the A&M; provost, indicated in his statement that the university’s occupational health policy at the time didn’t direct them to report the three lab workers’ mere exposure, which was identified taking routine serological samples. He said the university changed its policy in April 2007, and, at that time, told the CDC.
Dr. Strawser’s statement did not address why CDC officials believe they haven’t received such a report.
The late Brucella report and missing Q fever report are “part of what we’re investigating,” the CDC’s Mr. Roebuck said.
The federal “Select Agent Rule” requires those researching disease pathogens to report incidents within seven days of their discovery and file formal reports with the CDC. Fines or penalties for not filing are determined by the Health and Human Services inspector general and could result in lost federal funding.
The Sunshine Project came across the infections while researching universities with facilities vying to host the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. Texas A&M; is one such university hoping to secure the homeland security project.
Much of the bioterrorism work under way at A&M; is part of a partnership with the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. UTMB is one of several NIH “regional centers of excellence for bioterrorism research,” and, according to the Sunshine Project’s estimates, has been earmarked more than $175 million since 2002 to study infectious diseases and biological weapons such as anthrax and smallpox.
Brucella is normally only spread between animals – no human-to-human transmission has been reported. But humans can be infected by direct contact with animals, eating food with the bacteria, or inhaling it in aerosol form. The A&M; research involved aerosols.
Q fever is most often found in domestic mammals such as cattle, sheep and goats. Humans are infected by inhaling contaminated particles. It’s considered one of the most infectious diseases in the world, because humans can be infected by a single bacterium.
The CDC confirmed in April that it was on campus investigating A&M; but indicated there was no immediate health threat.
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