• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Missing monkey prompts debate over proposed biohazard lab

Emergency Management Alert, February 26, 2003

Already facing opposition, the University of California, Davis' (UCD) plans for a new biodefense research center took another hit last week when townspeople discovered a monkey had escaped from a research lab, the Associated Press reports.

The rhesus macaque monkey disappeared on February 13 from the California National Primate Research Center, which would supply animals to the proposed Biosafety Level 4 lab to study diseases with no known cure, such as the Ebola and West Nile viruses. School officials say the monkey is disease-free, and note that the lab currently raises animals for research on level two and three diseases, which have vaccines or treatments.

The university is one of about a half-dozen institutions that applied this month to the National Institutes of Health for a grant to build the $200 million disease research lab. There are already five high-containment disease labs in the U.S., with plans to build two others.

UCD campus police say one possibility is that after the monkey escaped from its cage, one of the primate center's 278 employees stole it; the monkey is worth $5,000. The monkey escaped while handlers were cleaning cages, slipping behind a row of cages. Employees reported a slurping sound as though the monkey went down a small drain, but examinations of the plumbing with fiber-optic cameras found nothing.

The monkey incident stirred up fears of terrorism or other incidents occurring in Davis because of the new lab. Opponents fear such a lab located 65 miles north of San Francisco would be a target of terrorists or thieves looking for deadly pathogens. Davis Mayor Susie Boyd last week reversed her decision on the project and will oppose the project because of the town's opposition.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive