The first look inside Plum Island's Lab 257 by Jim Knipfel (review)
- From: "Cytyzens Agaynst Lyme Cryme" <CALC@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 11:39:30 -0400
The first look inside Plum Island's Lab 257
__________________________________
By Jim Knipfel
Homegrown Area 51
We peek inside Plum Island; we get a bit scared.
Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's
Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory
By Michael Christopher Carroll
Before the attacks in 2001, few civilians had any idea that something hinky
was happening out on Plum Island, an 840-acre patch of land two miles off
the eastern tip of Long Island. Those who knew anything at all tended to be
crackpots and found ways to worm Plum Island into any number of L.I.-based
conspiracy theories. It became, in a way, the East Coast's Area 51: a super
high-security top-secret government lab under the jurisdiction of the USDA
where scientists studied virulent animal diseases. The big question among
the paranoids was whether or not that was all they did out there. And if it
really was no big deal, then why didn't Plum Island appear on most maps?
Since the attacks, we've been hearing more about Plum Island-and little of
it has been good. There were security concerns. The fire departments on
shore were unprepared to deal with an emergency out there. Maintenance
workers went on strike. And then last year the facility was quietly turned
over to Homeland Security, though no one could say why.
The Plum Island administration still claimed that all they were doing there
was researching ways to stop foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever.
We were told that their only concern was in protecting American livestock,
but fewer and fewer people believed that. It was an Army biowarfare lab
before the USDA took over in 1954, and most of the facility's directors over
the years had backgrounds in military biowarfare research. More people were
getting antsy about having a major germ lab (whatever its true purpose) so
close to home. Chemical or radiation leaks are one thing, but if you release
a germ into the environment, it can keep spreading. Recent news stories
hinting that the place is a mess aren't making anyone more comfortable.
So far as I'm aware, Michael Carroll's Lab 257 is the first book to focus
specifically on what goes on at the mysterious 50-year-old facility.
(Novelist Nelson DeMille wrote a thriller centered on Plum Island a few
years back, but that doesn't really count.) And if Carroll's writing is at
times a bit overwrought (he's a lawyer; it's his first book and he's clearly
trying hard), the book remains a treasure trove of unnerving information. To
hear him tell it, the lab didn't just become a mess in recent years-it's
always been a mess.
In his preface, along with discussing the genesis of the book, Carroll hints
at a potential al Qaeda plot to attack the lab. The results of such an
attack would be disastrous, of course, but I have to wonder how necessary it
is to bring such a thing up. The facts as they stand, the lab's
less-than-stellar safety record and evidence of the things that have escaped
from there already are scary enough without resorting to the terrorist
bugaboo. The problems on Plum Island are all homegrown, and very, very real.
The proof is in Lab 257's first chapter, in which Carroll argues quite
convincingly that outbreaks of both Lyme disease and West Nile virus
originated at the lab after the experimental viruses were accidentally
released into the environment.
Even more disturbing is his account of what happened out there when
Hurricane Bob hit in 1991.
There are a number of buildings on the island-labs, administration offices
and the like. Lab 257 is where the work on the most virulent diseases takes
place. When it was constructed, it was outfitted with a number of safety
features-air locks, sewage treatment systems (they keep herds of infected
animals on the premises), deep refrigeration units, air filters,
decontamination methods of all sorts. The maintenance crew had been asking
for a few more things, like an electric generator in case of emergencies,
but the administration didn't feel they were necessary at the time.
But when Bob tore through the island, everything failed. The electricity
went out. Then the back-up electricity went out. And without electricity,
nothing in the lab works. Specimens kept at sub-zero temperatures began to
thaw as refrigerators shut down. The seals around the doors of the air locks
deflated. The pumps in the sewage treatment tanks stopped and the tanks
overflowed. It was a complete systemic breakdown. While it seems nothing
(miraculously enough) was released into the environment, it was a pretty
hairy series of events-which would later be denied by the lab's
administration and the USDA.
In the years following the hurricane, the administration on Plum Island has
been replaced a number of times. Yet despite occasional promises of change,
they've continued to remain as tightlipped as ever about what really goes on
there-even to the point of refusing to assist mainland doctors who were
trying to diagnose former Plum Island employees who'd come down with
mysterious illnesses. With Homeland Security in charge, that's likely to get
worse.
Carroll was lucky enough to get in touch with a number of ex-employees
(disgruntled or not) who were willing to go on the record about what sorts
of things have happened there-not only during the storm, but in day-to-day
operations as well. All in all, it's a very disturbing account. And while,
yes, Carroll certainly approaches the book with an agenda in mind, the facts
are still there beneath his editorializing and the heavy-handed prose. In
opening up the (almost) hermetically sealed Lab 257 and taking a peek
inside, Carroll's done an invaluable bit of investigative research.
Volume 17, Issue 11
http://www.nypress.com/17/11/books/books.cfm
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