In Manhattan, Kansas, the center of US agriculture, a new US facility has been established to investigate lethal animal illnesses in huge animals. Experts are concerned about the possibility of a lab leak.
The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) is a secure facility designed to avoid lab leaks of this nature, but that hasn’t stopped epidemiologists and agriculture experts from being concerned.
Many specialists agree that the facility is important to safeguard American cattle and the general people against catastrophic illnesses, despite the avalanche of worried opposition. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is the only laboratory in the US that can do the same sort of research that the NBAF is intended for.
The Plum Island Center has been studying dangerous animal diseases in large animals for more than 60 years, and it is located on a little island (similar to Alcatraz island) in the Long Island Sound.
The government decided to construct the NBAF as a successor after the lab recently began to exhibit signs of aging and a lack of innovative biosecurity characteristics.
How Dangerous Are Lab Leaks of Deadly Diseases?
Since 2020, there has been an exponential surge in fears of dangerous infections leaking from various types of high security biolabs. While there isn’t enough evidence to state definitively, many experts, including the US Energy Department, think COVID-19 was leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
If this is accurate, current concerns of more damaging lab breaches are likely legitimate. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a biosafety level 4 laboratory, the world’s most secure kind of laboratory. If a lethal infection escapes from this facility, all other labs may be at risk of leakage as well.
Even the US National Institute of Health issued a warning about problems with the Wuhan Lab’s biosafety procedures in May 2020.
Additionally, the Wuhan Institute is not the only lab in recent years that has (supposedly) had a serious lab leak. It wouldn’t even have been the only COVID-19 leak. Despite the absence of any other documented local cases, a lab worker at a high-security biolab in Taipei caught COVID in November 2021. He had the same variety as the one being researched in the lab, it was later revealed.
Since 2000, there have been several verified lab leaks of illnesses including Ebola, Brucella, Polio, Smallpox, and others, and they don’t seem to be slowing down.
However, proponents of studying deadly viruses and biotech corporations think the risk is worthwhile.
Will the NBAF Lead to a Deadly Disease Lab Leak?
Despite NBAF’s designation as a biosafety level 4 facility, some specialists think there is a strong likelihood that a lethal animal infection may someday leak. A fairly alarming 2010 DHS assessment is cited by Laura Kahn, a biodefense specialist who has worked with Princeton University’s Science and Global Security program for over two decades.
According to the study, during the next 50 years, there is a 70% risk that NBAF will be the source of an outbreak of the deadly and infectious foot and mouth disease. Oddly, the DHS then published a study that reduced the danger to 0.11%.
The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel deemed both studies to be problematic, stating that the first was just incomplete and the second was based on « questionable and inappropriate assumptions. »
Laura Kahn said that the facility is located in what she considers to be a terrible area. A leak would be particularly disastrous because it is located in Manhattan, Kansas, in the center of the US’s agricultural heartland. A breach there, according to Kansas Cattlemen’s Association board member Larry Kendig, would be so catastrophic as to « just shut down commerce. »
And Manhattan, Kansas, is located right in the heart of tornado alley. It’s possible that a powerful tornado might destroy even a BS-4 facility. The likelihood of a tornado carrying live lethal viruses directly infecting cattle or people is minimal, but cleanup activities might result in infection and transfer of the illnesses.
