Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
August 28, 2008
Pg. 12
Our View
Scientist’s odd behavior should have triggered greater scrutiny.
In the year and a half before the deadly anthrax attacks in 2001, Army researcher Bruce Ivins seemed to be coming unglued.
He was taking the powerful anti-depressant Celexa and seeing a psychiatrist and a therapist, who concluded Ivins was afflicted with paranoid personality disorder. In e-mails to someone the Justice Department identifies only as "a friend," Ivins confessed he was struggling with "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts." In the days before the attacks, Ivins logged unusual late hours in the lab alone, night after night.
Through it all, Ivins, who worked at the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., retained access to one of the most dangerous substances on earth. The FBI recently concluded that Ivins used that access to process anthrax into a powder, pour it into envelopes and mail it to strangers, killing five people, badly sickening 17 and terrorizing the nation. He committed suicide before he was to be indicted.
Assuming Ivins was indeed the anthrax killer, this tragic tale raises a number of troubling questions about security at weapons labs, perhaps the most important of which are: Why wasn't he stopped, or at least caught sooner? And are controls in place to ensure it doesn't happen again?
Admittedly, it's always easier to judge cases like this in hindsight. Ivins was regarded as a gifted researcher with a good work record. It's unclear how much he divulged before the attacks under rules requiring him to report medications and treatment; at the very least, he told officials he was suffering from "anxiety." But there seem to have been enough red flags about his behavior to have warranted a deeper look.
It's also true that if everyone taking ananti-depressant and receiving therapy were barred from their jobs, either the unemployment rate would soar or many people would avoid treatment. Few people, however, work with the sort of deadly toxins routinely used in labs like the one at Fort Detrick. Given the huge risks of even a single incident, officials should lean in the direction of protecting public safety, even if that means being intrusive in ways that would be inappropriate outside such dangerous workplaces.
Supervisors at the Fort Detrick lab have belatedly tightened their procedures to the point that it seems unlikely an Ivins would escape detection today. Unfortunately, similar strict rules don't always apply to the 14,000 or more scientists at hundreds of other public and private labs around the country.
Rules require all labs that handle highly dangerous substances such as anthrax to register with the federal government. But security requirements are minimal — essentially a lock on the front door and a written plan. Psychological screening that relies on self-reporting is just as inadequate.
If the government were serious, it would mandate strict but simple security steps, such as video surveillance in all labs, a requirement that two people always be present whenever a dangerous substance is handled and unannounced inspections of people leaving a facility.
As it is, you can't buy a Slurpee in a 7-Eleven without being under video surveillance, and you can't get into a bank safe deposit box without two keys. Shouldn't standards be at least as tough for labs that handle anthrax and the Ebola virus?
August 28, 2008
Pg. 12
Our View
Scientist’s odd behavior should have triggered greater scrutiny.
In the year and a half before the deadly anthrax attacks in 2001, Army researcher Bruce Ivins seemed to be coming unglued.
He was taking the powerful anti-depressant Celexa and seeing a psychiatrist and a therapist, who concluded Ivins was afflicted with paranoid personality disorder. In e-mails to someone the Justice Department identifies only as "a friend," Ivins confessed he was struggling with "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts." In the days before the attacks, Ivins logged unusual late hours in the lab alone, night after night.
Through it all, Ivins, who worked at the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., retained access to one of the most dangerous substances on earth. The FBI recently concluded that Ivins used that access to process anthrax into a powder, pour it into envelopes and mail it to strangers, killing five people, badly sickening 17 and terrorizing the nation. He committed suicide before he was to be indicted.
Assuming Ivins was indeed the anthrax killer, this tragic tale raises a number of troubling questions about security at weapons labs, perhaps the most important of which are: Why wasn't he stopped, or at least caught sooner? And are controls in place to ensure it doesn't happen again?
Admittedly, it's always easier to judge cases like this in hindsight. Ivins was regarded as a gifted researcher with a good work record. It's unclear how much he divulged before the attacks under rules requiring him to report medications and treatment; at the very least, he told officials he was suffering from "anxiety." But there seem to have been enough red flags about his behavior to have warranted a deeper look.
It's also true that if everyone taking ananti-depressant and receiving therapy were barred from their jobs, either the unemployment rate would soar or many people would avoid treatment. Few people, however, work with the sort of deadly toxins routinely used in labs like the one at Fort Detrick. Given the huge risks of even a single incident, officials should lean in the direction of protecting public safety, even if that means being intrusive in ways that would be inappropriate outside such dangerous workplaces.
Supervisors at the Fort Detrick lab have belatedly tightened their procedures to the point that it seems unlikely an Ivins would escape detection today. Unfortunately, similar strict rules don't always apply to the 14,000 or more scientists at hundreds of other public and private labs around the country.
Rules require all labs that handle highly dangerous substances such as anthrax to register with the federal government. But security requirements are minimal — essentially a lock on the front door and a written plan. Psychological screening that relies on self-reporting is just as inadequate.
If the government were serious, it would mandate strict but simple security steps, such as video surveillance in all labs, a requirement that two people always be present whenever a dangerous substance is handled and unannounced inspections of people leaving a facility.
As it is, you can't buy a Slurpee in a 7-Eleven without being under video surveillance, and you can't get into a bank safe deposit box without two keys. Shouldn't standards be at least as tough for labs that handle anthrax and the Ebola virus?