Dallas Morning News, June 27, 2007
AUSTIN - Federal authorities are investigating two cases from last year in which Texas A&M researchers were infected with biological weapons agents - including the university's failure to report the exposures when they happened. New documents obtained by The Sunshine Project, an Austin-based bioweapons watchdog group, show three researchers tested positive for exposure to the weapons agent Q fever in April 2006, two months after another researcher fell ill following contact with the agent Brucella. In neither case did university officials immediately report the exposures to the Centers for Disease Control, as federal law requires.
They filed a report on the Brucella case a year after the initial infection, and CDC officials said Tuesday that they still haven't received documentation on the Q fever case. Von Roebuck, a CDC spokesman, said that the agency is still investigating the Q fever exposure, and that it has turned the Brucella infection over to the Health and Human Services inspector general for further investigation. Officials in that office could not be reached for comment. The Brucella incident occurred in February 2006, after an experiment to expose mice to the agent. The researcher who climbed into a chamber to disinfect it - a procedure that documents indicate has since been changed - was home sick for several weeks before her personal physician made the brucellosis diagnosis. Much of the bioterrorism work under way at A&M is part of a partnership with the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. UTMB is one of several NIH "regional centers of excellence for bioterrorism research," and, according to the Sunshine Project's estimates, has been earmarked more than $175 million since 2002 to study infectious diseases and biological weapons such as anthrax and smallpox. Read more ...