Hey, City Council: Do You Know What’s Happening in Berkeley Biolabs?

Hey, City Council: Do You Know What’s Happening in Berkeley Biolabs?

Your communities would like to know.

What research will take place in the many biolabs presently under construction or being planned for Berkeley? No one seems to know. It is not a matter of public record who will occupy the new labs or what, if any, microorganisms they will be researching.

There are always lots of dazzling promotionals, though. Take Bayer, for example, who’s been a southwest Berkeley neighbor for decades. In seeking to renew its Development Agreement with the city and expand its square footage, it declared it would be finding treatments for cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s, and other serious diseases. It acknowledged that its new Berkley facility will include biological agents, that it wants to develop biologics, derived from living organisms and recombinant DNA technology. But what microbes are on the table? How will they be manipulated? Do they know now how they’ll be manipulated down the road?

Finding treatments is a laudable goal, but it cannot be used to trump the no less important value of protecting the public’s health. It’s not necessarily a problem that biolabs work with microorganisms. And in most cases, they probably won't be working with pathogens. But how will communities know if there are no binding transparency provisions? (Or, for that matter, accountability should anything go awry.)

In the early 1990s, residents and environmentalists raised alarm over Bayer’s discarding small amounts of radioactive waste into Berkeley’s sewers. More troubling was the 1991 revelation that the company had a $1.7 million contract with the Department of Defense to make a vaccine for the bubonic plague. This came to light only after several employees were almost contaminated with the bacilli. Bayer was under no obligation to share this news with the City of Berkeley or local neighborhood communities.

That was then, this is now? No. Now is still then.

Recently, Biosafety Now! held a discussion about Wisconsin Bill SB401 that calls for an end to the riskiest pathogenetic research and for increased transparency about what labs are doing.

Richard Ebright is Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and Lab Director at Waksman Institute of Microbiology. At the discussion he was asked,

“…currently, if a doctor becomes suspicious about some infection, is there any state website where they can go to see what potentially dangerous pathogens are being worked on in the local neighborhood?”

His answer was direct and disturbing:

“No…that is not something that currently exists in any state in the United States.”

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory quantitative biologist, Justin Kinney later added:

“…no one has any idea how often lab leaks that slip into the general population happen. They just don’t know.”

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See: City Council Tone Deaf: Biolabs Make Unsafe Neighbors

For more information, including how to contact your council member, visit Biolab Watch