Members of the Roxbury tenants’ rights group Safety Net on Wednesday urged city officials to ban construction of the Level 4 Biolab to be built in the South End, saying that the lab would pose threats to the community.
About 30 people gathered for the rally in City Hall Plaza, holding petitions and signs reading “Ban Biolab, Defend Public Safety with Common Sense.” Some even recited poetry describing alleged dangers that a bioresearch facility of this magnitude would present to the community.
Boston University received federal approval last year to construct a Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory that would perform research on lethal pathogens, including Ebola, smallpox, plague and hemorrhagic fever.
Freda Rebelsky, a former professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, said the lab poses a health and safety risk to Boston area residents. If a disease were to leak from the lab, it would cause widespread illness, she said.
“The chances of human harm are great,” she said.
Rebelsky questioned why the lab is being constructed in such a densely populated area. The community should also be allowed to participate in the regulations being issued upon the lab, she said.
She also said she feared that scientists researching deadly diseases could become inhumane and corrupt.
Citing scientists who conducted research on dangerous substances for Nazi-controlled Germany, Rebelsky said scientists who work at the biolab could also “do things to hurt people.”
Others who spoke at the rally said public funding should be spent on researching cures for cancer, AIDS and asthma, instead of on the biolab.
Eva Skillicorn, a Tufts University student who was an organizer of the rally, said in an interview that the biolab would not improve national security, but it would create the potential for a new arms race.
“Instead of spending money on finding cures for cancer and asthma, we are instigating the creation of bioterrorist weapons,” she said.
Pepe Abola, an organizer with Boston Mobilization’s No Bio-Weapons Campaign, also said the money being poured into the construction of this lab is taking away from research of AIDS and other harmful diseases that are currently plaguing the world.
“We are making more terrorists by making weapons,” Abola said.
BU, Mayor Thomas Menino and other supporters of the biolab claim it will pump $2.9 billion into the city economy over the next 20 years. But the money is not worth the risk to the people, Abola said.
On Tuesday, City Councilor Charles Yancey (Dorchester, Mattapan) joined mayoral candidate and City Councilor-At-Large Maura Hennigan at a rally at the Boston University Medical Campus, also calling for an end to plans to construct the lab.
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