Boston University has tipped its hand with the appointment of scientists Thomas and Joan Geisbert as associate director and director of specimen core processing, respectively, at the new Level-4 Biosafety Laboratory (“Biolab names new associate directors,” Sept. 25, p. 3). While the article states Mr. Geisbert has “19 years of experience in a specialized laboratory,” it doesn’t say which laboratory or what “specialized” research.
Let us be informed that Geisbert’s research was of military nature at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., the lead medical research laboratory for the U.S. Biological Defense Research Program. The laboratory plays a key role in national defense and in infectious disease research. The institute’s mission is to conduct basic and applied research on biological threats and to create vaccines, drugs and diagnostics to protect the soldier. USAMRIID is a subordinate laboratory of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
Geisbert, a civilian, has been working at a U.S. Army lab. We all have heard over and over that the best defense is a good offense. In this case, you must create the weapon to best know how to cure its damage. The National Institutes of Health grant, under which researchers at the Boston lab will be working, is actually funded by the Department of Defense under the orders of George Bush and “homeland security.” BU’s assertions that they will be researching for the general “public health” regarding these pathogens look pretty murky under the microscope of public scrutiny. The murky explanations are actually covering up what will really be going on in that BSL-4 lab.
Biowarfare is against international law. Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, and all our representatives and state legislators, should be ashamed of supporting what they know is purely an extension of the war machine that is trampling the health and safety rights of the Roxbury/South End communities and beyond — communities inhabited primarily by minorities. This is the same war machine that has led us into the death and destruction of this current occupation of Iraq and, yes, Afghanistan — the same wars they all claim to condemn.
We do not need this BSL-4 lab in order to be well known around the world as a welcoming and productive biotech and research community. We already are. Let’s stop this lab and use the research money to find a cure for AIDS, pneumonia and hospital staph infections and fund health care for all.
Sara Driscoll
Jamaica Plain
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