Zombies — badly bruised, soaked in blood and decked out in torn and tattered clothing — invaded the streets of Boston yesterday to protest Boston University’s controversial Level-4 Biosafety Laboratory.
With Boston Police Department officers close behind, the horde of protesters began their menacing march at the corner of Albany and East Dedham Streets and snaked toward City Hall, moaning, “We have been infected by the BU biolab” and “The BU biolab has infected me with a terrible pathogen.” During the march — the newest form of protest in a seemingly futile battle to stop construction of the biolab — the zombies stuffed anti-lab flyers under the doors of nearby businesses and into the palms of curious onlookers.
Local activists have protested the biolab, under construction at the BU Medical Campus in the South End, since the National Institutes of Health granted BU $128 million for the project in 2003. The site will house some of the world’s deadliest pathogens, including anthrax and the Ebola virus.
The protest aimed to raise further awareness about the lab’s potential harmful consequences, said Emerson College senior Jake Corman.
“These pathogens are incurable and uncontrollable,” said a 20-year-old Somerville resident who would only identify himself as Pete. “We know these labs have a track record of things getting out, but [those labs] are in isolated areas.”
“I hope to get people to take notice in a creative way,” said Freedom, Maine resident T.S. Rockefeller, who spoke behind Frankenstein-like eye sockets dripping with false blood and cracked black ink-soaked lips. “We dramatize it to get people interested.”
Other protesters said the lab’s location in the densely populated South End is most concerning. The biolab, slated to be completed next year, will be the nation’s only level-4 lab in an urban environment.
An August report released by the NIH stated a level-4 lab would be just as safe in an urban setting as a rural setting, making the completion of the lab seem more likely.
“I’m not opposed to the lab itself,” said Melanie, a Northeastern University bio-chemistry major who would only give her first name. “I’m opposed to the location. It’s in a place with a dense population and an area where there is poor political power. This would not be allowed in the suburbs.”
“I don’t fault BU because it is advancement, and as a science major, I recognize that,” she said. “However, I believe that putting it here is unjust.”
When they were not gawking at the flood of monsters, curious onlookers gave some protesters words of encouragement.
“I’m glad to see someone taking a stand about this now,” said Malden resident Kristin Erekson, 24. “It’s worrisome that they’re trying to put this in our city.”
“The [National Institutes of Health’s] report affirmed and clearly stated that the South End location is the best of all the possible locations for the lab,” BU Medical Center Director of Corporate Communications Ellen Berlin told The Daily Free Press in September.
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