Anti-biolab coalition speaks out on dangers at forum

The Stop the Biolab Coalition campaigns not against a Biosafety Level-4 lab but a ‘bioterror’ lab, members said.

A small group of concerned citizens gathered Tuesday night in Allston to discuss the dangers of the Boston University Medical School’s BSL-4 Laboratory in the South End.

Safety trials with harmless substitutes for real pathogens are scheduled to begin at the biolab in the coming months, The Daily Free Press reported Wednesday. If opened, the lab would handle some of the world’s deadliest pathogens such as ebola, anthrax, smallpox and the bubonic plague.

The forum featured several speeches by Stop the Biolab Coalition members, including Mark Pelletier, an experienced biochemist.

Pelletier said the chance of exposure to these deadly pathogens is too much of a risk for the Roxbury and South End communities.

In lab research, he said, scientists would aerosolize pathogens in controlled chambers to test their effects on animals. These chambers would then have to be vented, a system with dubious feasibility, he said.

‘There . . . are situations where engineering just doesn’t work,’ he said.

National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories Director Mark Klempner told The Daily Free Press in April that despite concerns, lab employees undergo intense training and safety precautions.

‘The mission is to find ways to treat and prevent naturally occuring infectious diseases,’ he said.

However, Pelletier said accidents happen, regardless of how carefully laboratories follow protocol.

‘They don’t take into account reality,’ he said. ‘There is no such thing as zero risk.’

Pelletier also said a BSL-4 laboratory is not needed in order to find cures for diseases. Cures are already being tested on people elsewhere, he said, and these treatments have come out of lower-risk BSL-2 labs.’

He said he thinks the BSL-4 lab would be used to further bio-defense technology, rather than to find cures.

‘We are increasing the threat of bioterrorism,’ Pelletier said.

BU officials and other public figures in support of the lab are ignorant of its dangers, he said.

‘They’re greedy and arrogant and dismissive of the public,’ Pelletier said.

Speaker Laura Maslow-Armand, a pro-bono lawyer and member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, is actively involved in civil lawsuits attempting to fight ‘environmental racism’ that would come with the Biolab.

Environmental racism in this case, she said, is a greater willingness to put a facility such as the biolab in a neighborhood with a higher minority population.

Maslow-Armand said BU officials showed arrogance and contempt for the minority community in their advocacy of the lab.

‘They very clumsily didn’t even try to dialogue with the community,’ she said.

She said the lab is unnecessary and does not belong in Boston’s populous downtown.

The scientific panel that decides whether or not the lab will open must assess risks and determine whether or not it would be better to operate the lab elsewhere, she said.

Klare Allen, a member of the Roxbury community who also spoke on behalf of the Coalition, was an original pioneer of the anti-biolab initiative.

She said her initial concerns about the biolab were dismissed by officials.

‘We were told, ‘Don’t worry about it,” she said.

She said she began attending meetings to learn about what pathogens would be housed in her community. Along with other activists, she said she tried to raise awareness on the issue to Congress members.

‘We informed them . . . this is our community. We are the ones at risk to your dollars,’ she said. ‘We don’t think the damn thing should exist, period.’

Allen agreed with Maslow-Armand’s view that use of the lab is environmental racism and people would be more active in protesting the lab if it wasn’t in a predominantly minority neighborhood.

Deputy mayoral candidate and City Councilor-At-Large Sam Yoon, who is opposed to the biolab, told The Free Press in an interview before the Sept. 22 preliminary election that he thinks the lab would never have progressed as far as it has if it had been proposed for a wealthier or whiter neighborhood.

Mayor Thomas Menino has supported the BSL-4 since the beginning because ‘Boston is moving towards a science-based economy,’ according to spokesman Nick Martin. However, he hears residents concerns, Martin said, and wouldn’t let it go forward without ‘proper testing.’

BU graduate student Galen Mook said BU students have been looking into both sides of the issue.

‘It’s definitely an issue I’ve been following,’ he said.

Mook said the BU administration is not willing to deal with activism and refuses to bring its side of the issue to the table.

But as long as there remains a chance to prevent the lab from operating, the Stop the Biolab Coalition will protest, members said.

‘There are enough things that plague our community,’ Allen said. ‘We are fighting for you and your children and your people.’

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This version corrects an earlier version of this story that incorrectly attributed quotes from Mark Pelletier to Mark Klempner.