KCUR, MO
11-09-07
K-State Hopes New Biosecurity Research Will Help Win Federal Faciltiy
Laura Ziegler
Jim Stack, Biosecurity Research Institute Director. Laura Ziegler/KCUR
KANSAS CITY, MO (2007-11-09) The Department of Homeland Security
announced recently that a site near K-State in Manhattan, Kan. was on the short
list to be the home of a new multimillion dollar federal center designed to protect
the nation's food supply and public health.
But, while DHS is deciding between Kansas and four other sites, K-State is
moving forward with its own high-level biosecurity research center.
Several years before 9/11, the university decided to capitalize on its expertise in
veterinary science and food safety and enhance programs to protect against the
threat of attack on agriculture.
KCUR's Laura Ziegler has more.
The grey and beige halls of the Biosecurity Research Institute leaves one with an
eerie sense of fear and calm. When the facility is fully operational, sometime next
year, scientists will work with some of the most lethal and contagious pathogens
in the world, like anthrax and Avian Influenza.
That's why security systems are being checked and rechecked. Everything, from
petri dishes to plastic bags, will be sterilized and re-steralized. And air flow is key.
Jim Stack: "What you're hearing is flow of air. One of the most important features
of a containment facility is air. You want to make sure air is always flowing in the
direction of the highest contamination, so when you open a door, air flows into
that space."
The director of the BRI, Jim Stack, a boyish looking, plant pathologist in wire-rim
glasses and sneakers, talks about air flow the way a computer geek talks about
routers.
Jim Stack: "And you can see this gauge, this is visual for person coming in. That
way I know more negative air, and it is OK for me to open this door. The direction
of the air is going to flow in."
Laura: "What read? Says Point 20."
Jim Stack: "Inches of water. That's called a Magnahela gauge. It's a suction and
measures the air pressure. It tells me there is more negative pressure in there
than in here. The highest level of containment has the most negative pressure.
When you open a door, air flows into that space."
It's clear working here's not for everyone. For example, if you're one who has a
problem spending your day in a tiny, hermetically sealed lab where leaving for a
bathroom break means a change of clothes and a shower
Jim Stack: "And you work for few hours, feel like a cup of coffee, shower out, go
back in, suit up in scrubs, work until lunch, shower out, you shower 4 or 5 times
in a day."
Our next stop is a gymnasium-size lab with corrals and gates. Large animals can
be tested here for vaccines and contagious diseases like Foot and Mouth
Disease, the virus responsible for the destruction of six million head of livestock
in Britain in 2001. A few spores of FMD dropped into a Kansas feedlot on a
contaminated Kleenex could halt the export of US beef and kill the Kansas
economy. That's one reason, says Jim Stack, people in this region get it about
biosecurity research.
Jim Stack: "In Kansas, 36,000 jobs are directly linked to agriculture exports, so if
you have the introduction of one of these things that stops movement, people
lose their jobs. $10 billion of the Kansas economy is linked to agriculture."
In a small office at the back of an old administration building, Jerry Jaax oversees
research and compliance of biosafety programs at K-State.
A career army veterinarian and officer, he was at the center of experiments with
the deadly Ebola virus in 1989. In and out of isolation in space suits, Jaax, and a
team of scientists, including his wife Nancy, did autopsies on infected African
monkeys.
In the course of their work, Nancy was exposed to the virus. Science writer
Richard Preston wrote of the harrowing story in his best selling thriller The Hot
Zone. Here, Jaax reads from a signed copy in his office.
Jerry Jaax reading
Settled on a quiet ranch outside Manhattan, Jaax says, easy access to
information and globilization make bioterrorism a reality and programs like these
at K-state essential.
Jerry Jaax: "The ability and technology to manipulate organisms is widespread
and available to people who are not necessarily even scientists it's a real threat"
Officials at K-State hope agroterrorism luminaries like Jerry Jaax and the
Biosecurity Research Institute will tip DHS in favor of Kansas when it comes time
to decide where to locate the new federal center. But Harley Moon, Professor
Emeritus of Veterinary Pathology at Iowa State University in Ames, and for
many years a leading expert in biosecurity, believes programs will count for only
so much, and that politics will play a role as well.
Harley Moon: "Just because one has been in this game prior to 9/11 certainly
does not lead to a slam-dunk. There are a good number of vet schools in the
country who had high quality research in infectious diseases prior to 9/11."
The Department of Homeland Security plans to announce where it will put its
National Bio and Agrodefense Facility in early 2008.