Having a world class bio-laboratory is critical in an age of pandemic fears and terrorism, but building one here in the United States represents a most ambitious project fraught with political pitfalls, controversy and looming doubts from inside—and outside—the scientific community.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), no stranger to controversy and second-guessing, has been plowing ahead with a proposed $451 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) and is expected to announce which state has won the opportunity to host it this fall. This follows a rigorous selection process that began three years ago and has commanded the attention—and participation—of governors, senators, public universities, prestigious medical and scientific research institutions and private laboratories.

“It is one of the most critical investments in animal disease biology that this country is ever going to make,” Roger Breeze asserted in an interview with HSToday. In the 1990s, Breeze directed the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the country’s only advanced animal disease research facility. It is located in the middle of Long Island Sound, eight miles off the coast of Connecticut and a mile and half from Orient Point, NY.

A number of states have been intensely interested in hosting the NBAF. Most agree it would be a boon, infusing its surrounding location with jobs and the prestige that comes with drawing the top minds in scientific research, veterinary medicine and infectious diseases into the local economy. In some cases, state and federal elected officials are directly involved in getting their state noticed.

This has led to accusations of political bias. Some critics, like Breeze, wonder why it’s taken so long for NBAF to materialize—and whether DHS will pick the right place to host it.

Long time coming

Breeze said the idea for building an advanced Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory began on his watch at Plum Island, at least two years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

At that time, there was an initiative in the early planning stages to upgrade and expand Plum Island to include the first BSL-4 lab in the country. That would allow research and vaccine development involving animal-carrying viruses like foot-and-mouth disease—the most serious threat facing livestock today—to extend to diseases that can kill humans, too, like the Nipah and Hendra viruses. But it wasn’t until after 9/11 and the creation of DHS in 2003 that the plan advanced more seriously.

“This is a sense of urgency?” complained Breeze.

The 2004 Homeland Security Presidential Directive 9 in part required that the federal government augment local and state agro-terror resources by deploying sufficient amounts of animal vaccine, pharmaceuticals and anti-virals addressing the deadliest animal diseases. That cannot be accomplished without BSL-4 and NBAF. DHS officials say they are well aware of the urgency and feel they not only have been rigorous but also fair and transparent in their quest for the NBAF’s new home.

“Some people think we have been too vigorous,” said Jamie Johnson, Science & Technology’s director of the Office of National Laboratories and NBAF program manager for DHS, in an August interview with HSToday. He chairs the steering committee, which completed five weeks of public hearings this summer at each of the five competing host sites: Athens, Ga.; Flora, Miss.; Butner, NC; Manhattan, Kan.; and San Antonio, Texas.

Each of the five—whittled down from 19 sites—has undergone site visits by DHS and accompanying field professionals. Johnson said the evaluators are acutely aware that community opposition to having a bio-lab studying deadly animal viruses in their backyard is more organized and pronounced at some sites than others. Those interests compete directly with the sites’ consortiums, which have been lobbying hard to set their states apart.

These “consortiums,” involving small battalions of interested parties and potential stakeholders at each site, have presented elaborate proposals to DHS. They boast varying degrees of space and existing infrastructures, proximity to large universities, private laboratories and skilled workers already in the region in order to tempt the project their way.