The DOE/UCB/UCD Planned E.Bay Biotech Synthetic Laboratory & The Dangers To Workers/Public

Over a a billion dollars of US funds is going to develop the largest biotech synthetic laboratory in the world in the East Bay. It is being sold as clean jobs that will benefit everyone but there is an underside of this project that has not be exposed in the media. Author and historian Jim Davis talks about the role of synthetic biotechnology and potential dangers for workers and the public with the development of this technology.
He is interviewed labor journalist Steve Zeltzer for a segment on Flashpoints.net. This is an unedited version of the interview conducted on 10/1/2011 at KPFA.
For the seven years previous to joining ETC Group Jim was a researcher and campaigner on Genetic Engineering and food issues for Greenpeace International - working in Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand and South East Asia. He has extensive experience on issues around transgenic crops and nanotechnologies has written articles, chapters and technical reports in the media and online.
Trained as a historian to look back at the history of technology, Jim is now busy communicating the future of technology. His website is
http://www.etcgroup.org

http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/GeneWatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=346

A SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY LAB IN BERKELEY
By Jeremy Gruber, Tina Stevens, Becky McClain



In April of this year, U.C. Berkeley researchers announced the creation of the U. C. Berkeley Synthetic Biology Institute (SBI), which will ramp up efforts to "engineer" cells and biological systems.1 Part of its research will include experiments that insert manufactured stretches of DNA into existing organisms to create new, self-replicating artificial life forms-experiments that pose implications for worker safety, public health and environmental safety. A collaboration of university and industry, the SBI enterprise is designed to catapult basic research into profit making applications. From a press release, "SBI will be an important link in a constellation of research centers focused on synthetic biology at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), both of which have made the field a research priority. SBI is unique in its planned collaborations with leading companies, designed to translate leading research on biological systems and organisms efficiently into processes, products, and technologies."2

Where this extensive new research will take place is a matter of some speculation. LBNL, managed by U.C. Berkeley but funded by the Department of Energy, is seeking to open a second campus somewhere in the East Bay, across from San Francisco. The new facility hopes to combine three existing facilities presently scattered throughout the cities of Berkeley and nearby Emeryville: the Joint BioEnergy Institute, the Life Sciences Division, and the Joint Genome Institute. Potential sites for a new campus include a number of locations in the City of Berkeley itself.3

What do residents make of this idea? Lawsuits have stymied LBNL's effort to expand into the region's Strawberry Canyon watershed, described by activists as "a rich repository of wildlife."4 Now concern over second campus proposals, which include targeted locations along the west Berkeley shoreline, has centered on issues of job creation, tax revenues, zoning, and predictions of rising sea levels. It remains to be seen whether health and safety issues uniquely associated with this research also will be raised. Do adequate safety protections exist? Or are entirely new safety assessment and reporting methodologies for this research required in order to safeguard worker, public and environmental wellbeing?

Biosafety level (BL) containment labs are ranked from 1-4 according to the risk of harm they pose, with increasing levels indicating increasing danger. Typically, BL1 labs perform research on non-human infectious agents; BL2 labs use biological agents that could infect humans but are assumed to cause only "moderate harm"; BL3 labs experiment with biological agents capable of killing humans but for which there are known antidotes (like anthrax); and BL4 labs conduct research using agents that could kill humans and for which there is no known antidote.

Which safety lab levels will the new campus house? What constitutes "moderate harm?" Will the citizenry of this densely populated urban area know what pathogens are being used for research? Since academic and private interests operate under different safety, liability, and oversight restrictions, which research safety guidelines will apply? What remedies will apply in the event of lab worker injury, or environmental or public safety hazard? Will there be a public safety infrastructure facilitating transparency and accountability? Is the patchwork of voluntary regulatory guidelines from existing agencies adequate?

A brief review of just a few incidents of lab worker exposure to hazards suggests that even current biolab regulation and oversight is not adequate. These include Dr. Jeannette Adu-Bobie, who after visiting a New Zealand lab suffered a meningococcal infection from a laboratory strain causing loss of both legs and an arm; Ru-ching Hsia, a Department of Agriculture scientist who became infected by laboratory E.coli strain and lapsed into a coma for a month;, and University of Chicago scientist Malcolm Casadaban, who died after unknowingly being infected with a laboratory plague bacterium.5 One of this essay's co-authors, molecular biologist Becky McClain, won a whistle-blower suit against pharmaceutical giant Pfizer after reporting public health and safety concerns.6 She fell ill after an untrained lab worker used a human infectious genetically engineered virus, without suitable biocontainment, on McClain's personal workspace. She began experiencing periodic paralysis and spinal pain, a result consistent with the DNA-coded effects that had been engineered within the pathogen. Recently, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that a University of Illinois laboratory worker was infected by a genetically engineered cowpox laboratory virus, one with which she had never worked. CDC investigators not only found cowpox DNA in many areas around the lab, they also discovered that supposedly harmless stocks of viruses had been contaminated.7 Problematically, releases of laboratory bio agents are difficult to track since exposures often are not visible to a worker who succumbs to a mystery illness. Scientists can become ill from dangerous biological exposures without knowledge of having endured an exposure.

Public health also is a serious consideration. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) killed nearly 800 people in 2003. Lab versions of the SARS pathogen are known to have escaped BL 3 and BL 4 labs via infected lab workers.8 And a few years ago, at Berkeley itself, workers handled deadly Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (which spreads in the air) without containment when it was mislabeled as harmless.9 The U.S.'s 2001 anthrax scare10 and the unknown source of the virulent, antibiotic-resistant strain of E.coli that has recently infected thousands in Europe and, so far, killed 27 raise serious questions about the effectiveness of tracking, as well as accountability.11

There is no central authority that coordinates research and planning on synthetic biology. Even though synthetic biology poses serious risks, there are no specific standards for determining threat levels to humans, animals, plants, microorganisms or the environment. Experiments involving the synthesis of completely novel synthetic DNA sequences can make a harmless microbe into a new pathogen with dangerous and far reaching consequences. There are very real concerns that synthetic biology research could result in enhanced virulence, the ability to infect a wider range of organisms, and resistance to antimicrobials, antivirals, vaccines and other treatment or containment responses. As Jonathan Tucker and Raymond Zilinskas explain in "The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology," because synthetic microorganisms are self-replicating and capable of evolution, they could proliferate out of control and cause environmental damage and, if they escape from a research laboratory or containment facility, threaten public health. For this reason, they pose a unique risk unlike those associated with toxic chemicals or radioactive materials.12 Synthetic biology research also raises new issues regarding the degree to which laboratory workers are prepared to engage in such research. Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary field, involving the activities of chemists, engineers, physicists, and computer scientists as well as biologists. Many practitioners in these fields have never had training, let alone professional experience, in biosafety13.

The most recent issue of GeneWatch featured Lynne Klotz's report on Boston University's feeble risk assessment efforts, undertaken to assure Boston citizens that its lab, which is likely to be conducting research on SARS and the deadly 1918 flu virus, is acceptably safe.14 The University and the NIH claimed that emergency simulations supported moving ahead with the desired research. The National Research Council did not agree, concluding that "the model did not appear to recognize biological complexities and reflect what is known about disease outbreaks and other biological parameters."15 In other words, both Boston University and the NIH had conducted a risk analysis that ignored the most basic information actually needed to assess the lab's risks. This cautionary tale should provoke additional public scrutiny of any new biolab facility. Berkeley's City Council, as well as the governing entities of the other Bay Area cities who want the lab, may want to keep track of what unfolds in Boston-remembering that Boston, unlike the San Francisco Bay Area, is not even on a major earthquake fault line. Considering the current limitations of oversight and the problems of accountability of the various public and private partners involved in the project, it is less than clear what steps they are prepared to take in order to ensure the safety of any new facility engaged in synthetic biology research.

Boosters have heavily promoted the theoretical benefits of synthetic biology to the public and local officials. They need now to be much more forthcoming in detailing the very real dangers attendant to such research, including broadly publicizing comprehensive risk assessments. Potential neighbors, and others who stand to be impacted by any facility conducting synthetic biology research, deserve better from the University and its partners, and from government representatives charged with protecting public health and safety.



Tina Stevens and Becky McClain are board members of Alliance for Humane Biotechnology. Jeremy Gruber is President of Council for Responsible Genetics.





Endnotes

1. "Lab, Campus Collaborate in Formation of Synthetic Biology Institute," Today at Berkeley Lab, April 21, 2011. http://today.lbl.gov/2011/04/21/lab-campus-collaborate-in-formation-of-synthetic-biology-institute/; Synthetic Biology Institute, University of California, Berkeley. http://synbio.berkeley.edu/index.php?page=news-events

2. "UC Berkeley Launches Synthetic Biology Institute to Advance Research in Biological Engineering," Agilent Technologies, April 19, 2011. http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2011/19apr-gp11012.html

3. "LBNL Announces Community Meetings on Second Campus at Berkeley Chamber Forum," The Berkeley Daily Planet, June 8, 2011.http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-06-8/article/37958?headline=LBNL-Announces-Community-Meetings-on-Second-Campus-at-Berkeley-Chamber-Forum-News-Analysis

4. http://savestrawberrycanyon.org

5. "A Higher Bar for Pathogens, But Adherence Is an Issue," Andrew Pollock, NY Times, May 27, 2010. ttp://http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/business/28hazardside.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Casadaban&st=cse

6. "A Roach in the Kitchen: Interview with Becky McClain," GeneWatch March/April 2010, vol 23, Issue 2, http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=248&archive=yes

7. "First U.S. Cowpox Infections: Acquired from Lab Contamination," by Sarah Reardon, Science Insider February 17, 2011. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/02/first-us-cowpox-infection-acquired.html?ref=ra

8. "SARS in the City," by Lynn C. Klotz, GeneWatch April/May 2011. http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=337

9. "Texas A&M Bioweapons Accidents More the Norm than an Exception," Sunshine Project July 2007. http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr030707.html . (accessed 3rd of July 2011).

10. "Amerithrax or Anthrax Investigation" US Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/anthrax-amerithrax/amerithrax-investigation

11. "German E. coli death toll rises further," CNN World June 9, 2011. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-09/world/europe.e.coli_1_ecoli-sprouts-sign-of-e-coli?_s=PM:WORLD

12 "The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology," Jonathan B. Tucker, Raymond A. Zilinskas, The New Atlantis, Spring 2006. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-promise-and-perils-of-synthetic-biology

13 "Diffusion of Synthetic Biology: A Challenge to Biosafety," by Marcus Schmidt Systems and Synthetic Biology Journal (June 2008).

14 "SARS in the City," by Lynn C. Klotz, GeneWatch April/May 2011. http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=337

15 National Research Council (2007). Technical Input on the National Institutes of Health's Draft Supplementary Risk Assessments and Site Suitability Analyses for the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory, Boston University: A Letter Report, Washington, DC: National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12073. (accessed 3 July 2011).

16. The authors acknowledge helpful comments from Stuart Newman.

Could Berkeley Lab Bring Health Risks?
One reader wonders about the science that will happen at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's second campus.
http://albany.patch.com/articles/letter-could-berkeley-lab-bring-health-risks

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While issues relating to job creation and environmental impacts of building have dominated the debates around proposed lab sites for the much discussed LBNL lab expansion, scrutiny around the type of research actually to be conducted at the lab has been minimal at best.
I am very concerned that this issue isn't being raised (let alone addressed) because there are serious public and environmental health and safety threats arising from the synthetic biology research to be conducted at the new lab.

Research involving the synthesis of new kinds of synthetic DNA sequences can potentially transform a common microorganism into an infectious agent with dangerous and far reaching consequences. There are legitimate concerns that synthetic biology research, as the field continues to enter uncharted territory, will have serious and far reaching consequences if there is an accidental release in the lab.
We need to be very careful whenever novel, self-replicating organisms breach containment and are released into the environment. Synthetic microorganisms could proliferate out of control and cause environmental damage and even impact human health; posing challenges to treatment and containment responses.

Boosters have heavily promoted the theoretical benefits of building their lab to Albany residents without being forthcoming in detailing the very real dangers posed by the type of research they plan on conducting, including broadly publicizing risk assessments and detailing safety plans.

Health and safety are being overlooked and citizens are being kept in the dark. Lab proponents bear the burden of proof that this lab will be safe. We must have a transparent and public investigation into these issues before any local community invites this facility to break ground. Self-regulation cannot be a substitute for real and accountable oversight.
Colin Hamilton
Albany, CA

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