- HAMILTON, MONTANA--Surrounded
by majestic mountains, this small, friendly Western town seems far removed
from the terror that struck East Coast cities in 2001. Yet Hamilton, population
3705, has been selected to become a new outpost in the war against bioterrorism.
Next year, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
hopes to add a biosafety level (BSL)-4 facility to its Rocky Mountain Laboratories
here. It will be the first of several new labs the agency plans to build
and the first in the western United States--that is, if local residents
don't derail construction.
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- If the high-containment facility is built, it promises
to add a new chapter to the long and colorful history of the lab, which
has deep roots in this town and the picture-perfect Bitterroot Valley that
surrounds it. Researchers first descended on the valley in the early 1900s
to study a fatal disease that plagued early settlers. Black measles, as
it was called, had an 80% mortality rate, making other endemic diseases
such as smallpox look benign. In 1906, Howard Ricketts showed that the
disease (later renamed Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever) was caused by a small
intracellular bacterium, today called Rickettsia rickettsii, and transmitted
by ticks. From then on, researchers would check their entire bodies for
ticks several times a day while in the field; nonetheless, several got
infected--and paid the ultimate price--before a spotted fever vaccine,
made from ground-up ticks, was developed at the lab in 1916.
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- The lab made tick-borne disease history again in 1982,
when entomologist Willy Burgdorfer discovered the causative agent of Lyme
disease, a spirochete subsequently named Borrelia burgdorferi. A Swiss
native who joined the lab in 1951, Burgdorfer still lives in Hamilton and,
now 77, frequently visits the lab.
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- Originally owned by the state of Montana, the lab joined
the federal research establishment in 1948. Today, most of NIAID's intramural
bacterial research is done here; the biggest research group, led by James
Musser, studies the molecular biology of bacterial pathogenesis, still
with a focus on insect-borne diseases such as Lyme. Other researchers work
on such viruses as rabies and HIV and on prion diseases. At more than 3000
kilometers from NIAID's headquarters in the northern suburbs of Washington,
D.C., the lab always has been the odd one out within the agency, and the
costs of its separate location were closely scrutinized during the Reagan
years, when a special commission hunted for wasteful government spending.
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- Today, the location has turned into an advantage. The
government wants to spread its biocontainment labs so that there's one
reasonably close to wherever an emergency may strike, says Marshall Bloom,
the lab's associate director. And currently, the Hamilton lab is on a major
expansion course. To give researchers more space, a new BSL-3 lab opened
behind its historic central building last year. The proposed new building,
boasting more than 600 square meters of prized BSL-4 space, will enable
researchers to study the most dangerous pathogens known.
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- Initially, the remote location also seemed to offer another
plus: NIAID did not expect to run into the not-in-my-backyard sentiment
that has bedeviled many planned BSL-4 labs elsewhere (Science, 26 May 2000,
p. 1320). After all, the lab had been sitting in an upscale residential
neighborhood, and working safely with killer bugs, for decades.
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- But that proved to be a miscalculation. As NIAID unveiled
its plans at local meetings last year, residents started raising objections.
Former police officer Mary Wulff, who squarely opposes the plan, founded
the Coalition for a Safe Lab, which is rallying the opposition. Among other
worries, Wulff says she's concerned that pathogens could escape from the
building or that terrorists might target it.
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- Although the opponents are in the minority, says Jenny
Johnson, a reporter who has followed the issue closely for the Ravalli
Republic, a local newspaper, they certainly have made it a hot issue. In
response, NIAID is taking the tack that has proved successful at several
other biocontainment labs. It has put together a Community Liaison Group--which
includes the mayor and many other prominent citizens, as well as critics
such as Wulff--to keep the population abreast of its plans. NIAID has also
agreed to complete a full Environmental Impact Statement, rather than the
more limited version required, a measure that has delayed construction
by at least a year. Still, Bloom is confident that the lab will eventually
be built.
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- What's still lacking for the new lab is a scientific
agenda. Just over a
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- dozen viruses currently fall into the BSL-4 category,
and they all deserve more attention, says Bloom, but NIAID hasn't picked
any candidates. He notes, however, that, in keeping with the lab's history,
tick-borne viruses such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and Central
European encephalitis might be good candidates. There's also a group working
on Ebola and related viruses at the NIAID main campus that could do experiments
here--they currently borrow BSL-4 time at other labs.
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- To develop a flourishing research program, NIAID will
have to attract dozens of new scientists to Hamilton. "That could
be a challenge," says David Walker, a microbial pathologist who helped
make Galveston, Texas, a hotbed of infectious-disease research. The nearest
major city is an 8-hour drive away, for instance, and spouses with careers
of their own may have trouble finding jobs.
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- But Bloom is optimistic. The stunning natural setting
and the low-stress lifestyle help attract new people, he says--of late,
the valley has become a magnet for rich and retired Californians and Texans.
Nor has the lab had much trouble filling vacant slots recently. "That
might have been a problem 15 years ago," says Bloom, himself a 30-year
veteran of the lab. "Today, people like to move here."
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