Bio lab disease list issued

The opposition and supporters of a biological defense laboratory in Columbia will not let a list of diseases to be studied at the lab dissuade them from their goals.

Jay Lindner, who started a petition in support of the lab, said the diseases on the list released by the Department of Homeland Security would not change his mind no matter what they were.

“It still has the same safety features,” he said.

In fact, he said he expected dangerous diseases to be studied in the lab, and seeing the list only reinforced the need to find cures.

“We all knew there would be these diseases,” he said. “It adds to the importance of the facility.”

His petition, which can be found at ipetitions.com under the search word “helpcolumbia,” states the lab will help Columbia’s economy grow and remain competitive. More than 400 people have signed the petition.

Lindner said he started the petition so that the supporters of the lab in Columbia could be heard as well.

Residents of the Woodlands neighborhood, which is near the proposed site for the lab, created their own petition opposing the lab. The petition may be signed at nodeathlab.org.

Karen Onofrio, a Woodlands resident, said a group of about six to eight Woodlands residents organized the petition. More than 100 people signed the petition in one night last week at the Twilight Festival, where the group has been gathering to spread information about the lab, she said.

Onofrio said the list of diseases did not change her position on the lab, and neither did Marion Mace Dickerson, a Columbia resident who lives off New Haven Road.

“Just because they released a list that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things they could study in the lab,” Dickerson said. “And they could change it at any time.”

Homeland Security released a list of diseases that could be studied at the National Bio- and Agro- Defense Facility. The list includes foot and mouth disease, classical swine fever, African swine fever, Rift Valley fever, nipah virus, hendra virus, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and Japanese encephalitis.

Larry Orluskie, a Homeland Security spokesman, said the list came from the diseases that were studied at Plum Island, a level-three lab in New York. The new level-four lab would be its replacement. Orluskie said there is an option to bring in more diseases that were not on the list, and Homeland Security’s Web site said the list may change.

Currently, Columbia is on a list of 17 possible sites to host the lab. Homeland Security will shorten the list to three to five sites in July.

Another lab, a level-three Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, is under construction in Columbia on the MU campus that will study agents used for bio-terrorism, said Rona Hirschberg, a senior program officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It is associated with MU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and is not directly connected to the possible level-four lab.