# 6609
A story this morning from Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press on new regulations for working with the SARS virus, but first, a little background.
In May of 1995 a lab technician from Lancaster, Ohio – using a credit card and and a fake letterhead – ordered a quantity of Yersinia pestis (the bacteria that causes plague) from a mail order biomedical supply firm in Maryland.
Although 3 vials were shipped to him, the company grew suspicious and alerted federal authorities. He was eventually convicted of mail fraud – and placed on 18 months probation - since he misrepresented himself as working for a government laboratory.
Around the same time, halfway around the world, a Japanese cult called Aum Shinrikyo unleashed a Sarin gas attack on five subway trains in Tokyo. In all - 13 people were killed, another 54 serious injured – while hundreds more were affected.
When the cult’s headquarters was raided, police reported finding explosives, along with chemical and biological agents, including anthrax and Ebola cultures.
Suddenly, the threat of homegrown biological terrorism had grown very real. In response, Congress passed Section 511 of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty of 1996.
This legislation was the first step on the road to creating the CDC’s Select Agent Program, which today `oversees the activities of possession of biological agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health, or to animal or plant products’
For more, we go to the CDC’s Select Agent Program Brochure.
This Act directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a list of biological agents and toxins that could threaten public health and safety, procedures for governing the transfer of those agents, and training requirements for entities working with these “select agents.”
HHS delegated the authority to implement this Act to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which then established the CDC Select Agent Program. The Division of Select Agents and Toxins in the CDC Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response oversees this program.
9/11 and increased regulation of select agentsFollowing the anthrax attacks of 2001, Congress significantly strengthened oversight of select agents by passing the following acts:
- USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001; Public Law 107-56): Restricted access to select agents
- Bioterrorism Act (Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002; Public Law 107-188): Increased safeguards and security measures as well as oversight of the possession and use of select agents
Essentially, in order to be able to acquire or work with certain toxins and biological agents, you had to be registered and approved entity by the HHS.
Fast forward to this past week – when by chance, a SARS-like coronavirus detected in two patients from the Middle East was making big news – and two years after it was first requested by the CDC, the SARS virus was added to the Select Agents list.
Here is the story from Helen Branswell, that also has details on how Canada deals with these types of biological materials, and some quotes from Michael Osterholm of CIDRAP.
U.S. government names SARS a select agent, restricting labs that work on virus
Friday, 05 October 2012 02:15 Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press
The Centers for Disease Control has added SARS to the list of select agents in the United States, a move designed to try to ensure the virus stays within the confines of highly regulated laboratories.
The addition, which the CDC first proposed over two years ago, was given legal status this week when the revised select agent list was published in the U.S. Federal Registry.
The timing of the move is both ironic and co-incidental.
Although the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 was eventually brought under control, the virus infected roughly 8,000 people, killing nearly 800.
Since then, while there have been no recurrences from the wild, three separate lab accidents in 2003 and 2004 resulted in the infection of at least 13 people.
SARS, or a variation on the SARS-Coronavirus, could wreak havoc were it to emerge once more from the wild, or be accidentally (or intentionally) released.
And many worry that - with the technology of today – cheaper, faster, and more capable than anything that could be imagined back in 1995, the ability of malevolent bio-hackers working out of their basements to create new, and dangerous organisms has never been greater.
While once we only had to worry about nature serving up an occasional biological curve ball, increasingly that ability – by design or by error - is becoming available to human hands all around the world.
Which makes the regulation and control of the most dangerous of these toxins and biological organisms a top priority of many governments around the world.
