WASHINGTON, DC - The House Energy and Commerce Committee today continued its investigation into the handling of select agents at federal laboratories. Committee leaders are requesting further review from the nonpartisan watchdog Government Accountability Office regarding documents obtained from its ongoing investigation of safety lapses reported in July 2014. The letter explains, “The committee’s investigation and its request to GAO for a concurrent review was prompted by several highly publicized reports of federal laboratories experiencing lapses in the management of dangerous pathogens."
Among the incidents from July 2014 was the discovery of potentially live smallpox in cardboard boxes in a cold storage room at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been renting the space from NIH and the vials were found as FDA was preparing to move its materials to its own campus. The storage of smallpox and other pathogens in cardboard boxes raise safety concerns because of the problems of mold and cross-contamination from cardboard stored in cold storage rooms. NIH safety surveys indicated that there was a requirement to prohibit cardboard storage of materials in cold storage rooms.
The letter shares information about documents obtained through the committee’s investigation, including inspection reports that indicate the cold storage room where the vials were discovered on July 1, 2014, had previously been inspected twice in 2011 and again in 2012 and 2013 by NIH officials.
The letter signed by full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-PA) explains, “The NIH conducted two different safety inspections on Oct. 11, 2011, both of which indicated there was cardboard storage in the cold room, 3C16." On one of these two reports, “The NIH inspector wrote the following comment regarding the cold room: ‘Please remove all cardboard from the cold room.’ This statement, taken at face value, was not limited to just cardboard associated with the lab, but all cardboard in the cold room. Given that interpretation, it is unknown why the cardboard boxes containing the smallpox would not have been discovered at that time as part of the removal process."
Inspections and safety reports conducted in 2012 and 2013 both indicated there was no cardboard in the storage room. Therefore, “it must be asked whether the inspectors missed the presumably remaining boxes of smallpox altogether, whether the inspectors saw by ignored the cardboard boxes because they were not connected to the lab, or whether the cardboard boxes containing smallpox were temporarily moved."
Upton and Murphy write, “We believe the information and evidence developed from this investigation provides a basis to believe that there were additional lapses and concerns involved with the retention of the smallpox samples than just the failure to account for undiscovered, and presumably abandoned, materials."
The leaders include several questions for further review by the GAO. Read the complete letter and view the attachments online here.
This request comes on the heels of a separate letter recently sent to GAO requesting a review of the different types and methods of biosafety inactivation and attenuation protocols. This request was sent by Upton, Murphy, full committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Diana DeGette (D-CO). Read that letter online here.
