What's New in Life Science Research is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Next week the FBI will provide my fingerprints to the Department of Justice and begin a background check to review my life activities. All my laboratory personnel will also be checked out. We do not work with anthrax, small pox, botulism or ricin. We are not palling around with terrorists.
We work with a pathogen of rice called Xanthomonas oryze pv. oryzae that is newly listed as a select agent. It has been designated as a pathogen that can be turned into a bioweapon, despite broad scientific consensus that any plant-pathogenic bacterium realistically falls into this category.
Xoo is harmless to humans. So harmless in fact, that components of Xoo are regularly consumed by humans in chewing gum and ice cream. There is no evidence that it can be made into bio weapon to create a disease epidemic on our farmer's fields. If such an epidemic was a serious possibility, it would already have occurred. This is clear because contaminated rice seed has been imported into California for the last 250 years and there has not been a single incidence of pathogen infection. Virtually all experts in the field believe that this pathogen, which is prevalent in humid regions of Asia, cannot survive in our hot, dry climate.
Xoo research, supported by the NIH, NSF and the USDA and published in leading journals, is directed at protecting the nation's rice crop from disease. All available scientific evidence indicates that the current quarantine restrictions are adequate to prevent an outbreak. The scientific evidence is backed by the perfect safety record from over 20 years of research. Yet this research is now crippled, preventing the very service we seek to provide.
Not a single scientist has come forward to suggest that this pathogen poses a threat to US rice production. Why then has this pathogen suddenly been listed as a select agent, a potential bioweapon?
No one knows - not the USDA regulators themselves, not leading plant pathologists in the nation (who provided science-based information to the USDA last year indicating that the current strict quarantine conditions were adequate), not the university of officials who are tasked with ramping up security.
Our research has suddenly become much, much more expensive. The university must pay 5-6 personnel to monitor our lab. The federal government is paying another 5-6 people to carry out inspections. The local government must carry out fingerprinting. The FBI must carry out weeks of background checks. My research staff and myself must spend hours devising procedures to prevent terrorists from stealing our cultures. Tempers are short because there is uncertainty about which seemingly arbitrary guidelines is needed. If we overlook 20 years of research will be destroyed. Some of us may go to prison.
This is an example of how taxpayers are spending millions dollars to strengthen to prevent bioterrorists from accessing laboratory material that is benign.
We urge the Obama administration and our new secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, to return to a science-based decision-making process and delist this pathogen.
Comments
It's not the microbe, it's you. You're one of those strange people with a lab coat, and our Lords and Masters don't trust people like you that they can't understand. Therefore you need to be watched.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | December 18, 2008 4:31 PM
People's brains seem to turn to mush when safety and security are concerned. Other examples: a biology textbook that says that wearing safety goggles is required for counting beans, airport security that forbids nail clippers but allows nylon fishing line and a UK safety requirement for the railways that requires that a particular type of fault occurs, on average, no more than once in 5 billion years.
Posted by: Richard Simons | December 18, 2008 4:49 PM
This is the same administration that said Iraq had WMDs and then couldn't find them. So naturally, you get to go into full lock-down mode at home.
And it's a great opportunity to fingerprint folk! You know, for future reference...
Posted by: minusRusty | December 18, 2008 6:33 PM
Why then has this pathogen suddenly been listed as a select agent, a potential bioweapon?
Finally- answers! Thanks everyone for solving this mystery...
Posted by: Pam Ronald | December 19, 2008 10:25 PM
Brought to you by the same people who discovered the dangers shampoo poses to airplanes, or that Aquateen signs are serious threats to our national security.
Who knows what they will bring up. I met a woman who has been placed under suspicion by Homeland security because she had some nationalist Jewish friends in the early 90s
Posted by: jay | December 28, 2008 5:28 PM
Pamela, you are so wrong about Xoo. Can't you see how the terrorists plan to put it in gum, get us all chewing the gum so the sugar from the gum gets all over our teeth, our teeth go bad and fall out, and then we all starve to death because we can't eat anything?
I can't believe you don't see that!
Posted by: Ian | January 12, 2009 1:12 PM
Big deal. As far as I know, EVERY government worker submits their fingerprints to the DOJ. So you're asked to do it as well? Join the club.
Posted by: TomJoe | January 16, 2009 2:39 PM
If the facts are as you presented, then the most likely answer is that the government has received intelligence from one of our allies that a foreign country has begun research into generating Xoo variants.
I do this for a living (bio/chem defense research) and have seen some of the things our allies and enemies have made. Just because you know nothing about what is going on doesn't mean it isn't going on. Heck, read Mirzayanov's new book for some background info (amazon). As a govt employee, I am not one to avoid finding fault in how the fed gets things done, but I also understand that in a bureaucracy, subordinate groups often doesn't understand why/how requirements are established. There is usually a good reason, albeit one that you'll never learn.
Welcome to the big boy game of biodefense.
And seriously, do you expect those that do 'pal' around with terrorists to volunteer that information?
Posted by: patrick | February 1, 2009 8:41 AM