We are writing in response to last Friday’s staff editorial (“Operation: Over, for real,” Feb. 24, p.6) and letters to the editor last week concerning the issue of the Boston University Level-4 Biosafety Laboratory (“A crazy world shouldn’t stop the biolab,” Feb. 23, p.6, and “Biolab protests are rude and immature,” Feb. 24, p.6). We wanted to address what we feel have been several unsubstantiated assertions about the Coalition to Ban the BU Biolab and its campaign efforts.
For clarification, the Coalition is not a rag-tag assortment of disgruntled students; rather, it is a large group of Boston University students and faculty and residents of Roxbury, greater Boston and its suburbs who have garnered the support of over 150 scientists and academics, including the Massachusetts Nurses Association and two Nobel Prize winners. The Coalition has battled the building of the Biosafety Level-4 lab in Roxbury/the South End since its outset three years ago.
Contrary to suggestions made in last Friday’s staff editorial, taking legislative and regulatory action on the municipal, state and civil levels to halt the Level-4 component of the lab has been an integral part of the campaign from the beginning. Many community members and several legislators also believe this Level-4 lab should not be built in Boston.
Apprehensions over safety often polarize the issue, as Coalition members and lab-opposers have been accused of “fear mongering” (as Scott Copley wrote in his letter on Friday, Feb. 24), but safety concerns are legitimate. Discussion on the Boston Level-4 lab is especially significant because other Level-4 labs in the United States are not situated in as densely populated areas. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics of 2000, approximately 2,000 persons per square mile live in Atlanta, while 15,000 persons per square mile reside in Roxbury. City officials have yet to develop a thorough contingency plan, substantiating worry over potential mishaps, such as BU’s tularemia incident in late 2004.
However, uproar over the lab focuses on much more than the lab’s potential safety risks. Opposition, especially among community members, rests with BU’s negligent decision to build in an already environmentally over-burdened area of Boston and circumvent community input. Roxbury has become a virtual “sacrifice zone” for the city of Boston, housing eight of the city’s nine trash sorting facilities, a number of Superfund zones and toxic waste sites, and multiple bus depots — resulting in some of the state’s highest asthma rates. Many community members view BU as perpetrating further environmental injustice against Roxbury residents in the name of scientific reputation.
As for The Daily Free Press’s contention that campaign efforts seem useless at this point, the Coalition finds them anything but futile. In the past, community organizers and legislators pooled their efforts to stop similar labs from being built, even after groundbreaking, within the United States, including across the river in Cambridge in 1976 and more recently in Winnipeg, Canada.
Numerous reasons for our opposition to the lab exist in addition to the aforementioned, including gentrification and falsities about community job growth. Particularly, we, the BU student contingent against the lab, believe that BU must remember academia’s responsibility not just toward the pursuit of knowledge, but to those whom that knowledge serves.
Maura Jacob CAS ’07
The writer is writing on behalf of The Peace and Justice Project, CAUSE: Justice and members of Operation: Over’s Biolab Affinity Group.
