You put way to much confidence in the government. The protocols right now for restricted substances (a list which continually changes) make you write down every time you take some amount out of the tube.......except of course it can grow and reproduce once it's out, making the whole run around pointless. The government believes safety can be achieved by keeping track of every speck of biological agent, while forgetting that biological material can replicate.

I get what you are saying, and agree with a good number of your points, but trying to get the government to restrict access much further will simply cause scientists to jump ship and look for more friendly waters (for those who haven't already). The problem here is established policy, not the failure to follow the policy.

Government is the failure. How many other outbreaks of similar occurrence is because of laboratory "ACCIDENTS"? Yes the Gubbamint loves you to death.

What are you TALKING about? These are local hospital/clinical/reference labs that were afflicted with these outbreaks and not because of the government. Reread your story please.

Bacteria can travel on anything anywhere and at any time. The real thing you should be complaining about is lab techs and lab employees not washing their hands or thoroughly decontaminating before coming home. This is not all because of lab techs either. ANYONE who comes into the lab is at risk. Nurses who drop of specimens before heading home without washing hands is a HUGE culprit.

I DARE you start swabbing areas around your home and look for enteric pathogens. If it's there it is because someone put it there. If not you then your family or visitors (read: UPS, Fedex, gardener, pool boy, etc.)

Wait......are we talking about research labs or clinical labs here. Big difference.....the two never come into contact with each other. Nurses don't do science, and scientists don't run samples to diagnose diseases.

Microbiology labs are everywhere - in hospitals, in clinics, in government labs, in university research labs, in corporate research labs.

The real issue here is the ability of organisms to be spread from one person to another without much effort. They can live on/in food cooked and uncooked, keys, name badges, scrubs and clothing, jackets, eyeglasses, under finger nails, contact lens cases.... the list goes on.

Nurses don't necessarily do science (but they can); however, nurses do sometimes deliver patient specimens to lab. I am a medical laboratory technician. I would think I qualify as a scientist - not in a research sense but scientist nonetheless. Scientists aren't just PhDs working for big biotech companies or Big Pharma or universities.

U of C Student

As a former U of C student many years before you, I don't think you have a clue of what stands on the grounds of Regenstein Library, nor the area on Ellis Ave in front of the James Franck and what ever Institutes - Henry Moore's "Nuclear Energy" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Energy_(sculpture)

See

http://www.lm.doe.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=1239

and

http://www.lm.doe.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=1279

I was a grad student student working on the 4th floor of Ryerson in AA Michelson's lab and never forgot it.

U of C student -

More to the point now is that I work in medicine... Heard or "jumping genes" and " genomic insertion"?, hence the signs above every sink - "wash your hands, drown a germ".

And yes, your hands look like @!$%# after doing this 50-100 time a day...

Who needs regulations?

The government is a fault for not having enough empowerment and people to cover the thousands of labs that conduct these tests, as well as the meat packing plants that process the chicken and beef being sent to the market.

I used to work at a laboratory were people were written up for bringing their keys or phones into the laboratory, or wearing the lab coat outside of the contaminated rooms for fear that a regulator may be around without our knowing it. When the cats away....

The government is not at fault. Guidelines and training are simply not being followed. Researchers become used to certain levels of risk and lose respect for the materials and biologicals they work with. This leads to risk taking and lackadaisical safety by individual personnel. People begin to turn a blind eye towards protocol in favor of expedience.

In order to improve safety there needs to be more intensive safety training - beyond online training programs with quizes at the end. There needs to be physical training of all employees every year. Organizations who take safety seriously have extremely low risk. Private sector labs, government run labs, and large companies tend to have much better safety records and practices due to the fostering of a culture of safety. Academic labs and smaller clinics and companies often do not have the money to run such intensive programs.

For the tinfoil hat crowd: government run and government funded are NOT the same thing. The NIH is government run and their labs operate at a much higher level of safety than the typical university labs which often receive funds from the government but are run privately.

Yeah that's it,the smartest scientists in the world just aren't following protocol.

The sad thing is the NIH spends way more time and money making sure that scientists kill their mice correctly and in a humane manner and a lot less time updating safety protocols. They try to lump as many biological agents into as few categories as possible, making their advice less useful than if it were for specific agents.

No Chicago the sad thing is that the government has almost no creditably because of evil sh!t they blaitnley commit. It dosen't help that Americans are the last people in the world who have enough brains to identify problems facing this Nation unless those problems are spoon fed to them through the TV.

This isn't about government. This is about decontamination at your local hospital or clinic. If a nurse takes a specimen to the lab directly from the nursing floor and just leaves for the day without rewashing their hands - she's taking whatever she picked up along the way home to her family. SURPRISE!

This has everything to do with the Government. Who else would allow deadly agents produced in "Government or Government funded labs" to cause the swine flu outbreak a couple of years ago between Baxter pharmaceuticals and the WHO?

That is just one example of the problem being created between those who claim to be working for the better good. RRRIIIGGGHHHTTT. Who's better good? Those in charge of these labs or the controls from Governments?

HUH? Do you even know what this story is about? There is nothing in this story about government funded labs. These organisms didn't come from government funded labs. It comes from private corporations that grow these organisms to verify the proper working conditions of the equipment and test methods in the laboratory. Government didn't do anything to cause any outbreak or didn't supply anything to anyone.

The only role of government in this case is that they are monitoring surveillance of the spread of disease. They are the ones that is letting the public know what is going on. If it wasn't for the government surveillance you would have never known about this story... scary huh?

NOTHING is done that is not allowed or sanctioned/funded by the Government.

The Government only reports it when it is discovered or made public before the ones that report to the feds have nothing to do but make it public to protect or distract the underlying reason behind the facts.

how about leaving the foil hats at the door

I am sorry, I did not see any doors here. I thought I was here to free you from your cages.

I work here on my own free will, thanks... but no thanks.

U of C Student

As a former U of C student many years before you, I don't think you have a clue of what stands on the grounds of Regenstein Library, nor the area on Ellis Ave in front of the James Franck and what ever Institutes - Henry Moore's "Nuclear Energy" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Energy_(sculpture)

See

http://www.lm.doe.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=1239

and

http://www.lm.doe.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=1279

I was a grad student student working on the 4th floor of Ryerson in AA Michelson's lab and never forgot it.

These people didn't die because of the government.

Tics carry Lyme's disease. It wasn't shadowy G-men.

dude...

It must be nice living in a world where everything that is bad is the fault of an unseen group of evildoers. I mean, that makes you a poor victim who is totally virtuous if everyone else is part of a conspiracy doesn't it? We could all be in a utopia if not for the New World Order shadow government who faked the moon landings, killed Kennedy, created AIDS, and spray chemtrails from passenger aircraft! They are even responsible for earthquakes and hurricanes with their experiments, aren't they?

I guess you never heard of Plum Island or Erick Traub.

It's fan freaking tastic that technicians in "clinical and teaching microbiology laboratories" can't practice basic aseptic technique.

I got an A in microbiology. Not salmonella.

Daehttub, #6, You hit the nail on the head.

If you should go to many hospitals these days you will more than likely see hospital personnel walking around the hospitals in scrubs, and being in other places where they should not be in this attire like in the hospital cafeterias, and even in other public places like supermarkets etc getting food stuffs, or even wearing these scrubs home after caring for patients wearing the same scrub/labcoat.

Does anyone really think that these folks change their scrubs before going to the caf or on return from same or do they simply go into a patient's room, OR, ER, ICU etc as is? But they do wash their hands though......LOL

Thus if this sort of thing can happen at the hospital level, are these lab people changing their attire after handling these sort of substances? Probably doubtful.....

No wonder we have so many breakouts in this country unlike any other first world country....... Laziness and not following protocol, if there actually is even a protocol for this sort of clothing change in this country.....

Do TSA agents change gloves after each pat down of each traveller considering the intimacy of these searches? Talk about the ability of passing infections from one person to another......

Then we wonder why there are so many patients getting infections that they did not enter the hospital with in the first place.

In many first world countries overseas wearing hospital attire/scrubs etc as street clothes or wearing scrubs on the street after working in it, is simply not allowed, much less wearing scrubs on the street and then without changing same go on to care for sick patients on the wards......Hmmm

Like they say.... travel broadens the mind..... so do observing other countries' societal norms/practices.....

BZe1 -

Wearing scrubs is a status symbol - you can buy them "on the street".

For most of us "in the business", it was "do the case" and get rid of all the pus and blood, maybe a shower too.

More true than you know! I work in microbiology and it scares me to see people not washing their hands in the loo. It also bothers me when nurses bring us specimens and then leave for the day to go infect their kids. Or how about the people coughing up a lung at the grocery store while fingering someone's fresh produce?

Think about it: we test stool for salmonella, shigella, campylobacter, yersinia (plague), "E. coli", botulism, C.diff. We test blood and genital specimens for HIV, Syphilis, gonorrhea, HSV, etc. We test urine for all sorts of things.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. This is why we keep telling the public to wash your hands, cough/sneeze into your elbow and USE CONDOMS!

That must be why they use the term lab rats. They are the ones being experimented on.

These diseases aren't man made. They are simply spread by poor hygeine.

This just another GMO type issue of man taking or working on something that exists in nature and thus causing the problems that otherwise never would have occurred.

If it did not happen NATURALLY........it is man made.

That's why us lab techs deserve hazard pay!

...and don't take personal things into the lab like keys, phones, contact lens cases, food and drink...

Yep. I too am a microbiologist. And no matter what quality systems are in place, nothing is 100% safe. Things like this are bound to happen. You can minimize the occurances, but it is impossible to completely eliminate them

ditto

Sounds to me like we are more at risk from dangers coming from labs then we are in nature. But hey, it must be the human arrogance to control everything they can't.

Kerry,

You do realize that these organisms are found in nature too, right?

You noticed I said more of a threat from man then Nature. What part of that statement says there are no threats from Nature? Man tries to MANipulate nature and/or control it.

When ever man and his low mentality gets involved they make a simple threat more dangerous and deadly.

I've been working in labs for 13 years. Let me just say that it is indoctrinated in our brains to wash our hands and be organized and clean in how we work. Sloppiness is not tolerated. Everything I have to use at work (lab coat, pens, paper) stays there, and I don't take anything home with me. We are professionals, and I promise you that the vast majority of us are very careful with the work that we do.

I'm still trying to piece together what the article is trying to say. Was this traced back from a foodborne outbreak? What is the common starting point in the investigation?

good post. I fail to have this thought process to understand the whole event.

what a repeat? still good post. he he.