The Saga at the Fort Continues

As reported in the Frederick News Post recently, now the Frederick City gang may get in on the fun and try to block expansion at Ft Detrick.

This is the skinny:

The story so far The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases plans to expand its labs at Fort Detrick, including the biosecurity level-4 spaces where researchers study agents with a high risk of life-threatening disease for which no vaccine or therapy is available.

Expansion opponents have said USAMRIID’s environmental impact statement downplays public safety concerns and didn’t adequately examine whether the lab should be built elsewhere

Fort Detrick officials have said the report complies with the relevant federal laws.

On Nov. 19, dozens of opponents turned out at a public forum to ask the Frederick County Commissioners to seek court review of the EIS. The commissioners discussed the issue briefly on Dec. 20, but postponed any vote until after Fort Detrick’s annual community meeting on Jan. 17. Commissioners President Jan Gardner is the only commissioner who has not publicly stated whether she would support a lawsuit. In December, she appeared skeptical, questioning Commissioners David Gray and Kai Hagen, the board’s two lawsuit supporters, about what they hoped to accomplish.

The negative impact this fruitless effort would have is potentially devastating to the city, the county and everyone involved in Biotech in the area.  The Labs at the Fort already lead the county in employment of Biotechnology & Bio-research related folks.

As I said before, people just don’t understand how minimal the potential risks of the infectious agents pose to the surrounding community.  The perception that there’s a threat of an outbreak is not valid.  The groups going into Fort Detrick will be using some biologically active agents to try to save lives in the event of some outbreak, not to create one.

There is one facility, namely the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which is off the Northern tip of Long Island, a couple miles off-shore.  This has been a target of all the conspiracy theorists in NYC, holding them responsible of “creating” Lyme disease and West Nile virus, amongst other impossible feats.

We don’t need help from those people here.  What we need are the jobs and opportunities for scientific learning that a facility of the magnitude that has been proposed and is being built at Ft Detrick will present.  It is a competitive advantage and a vital asset for the county, city and state Biotech community moving forward.

We need to do everything in our power to block these boneheads from reaching into our wallets and preventing good things from happening.