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Briefings on The Joint Commission Credentialing Resource Center

The National Research Council, an independent advisory board made up of scientists,
called on the federal government on May 2 to substantially expand its safety review of a controversial research laboratory that Boston University is building, reported The Boston Globe.

Boston University plans to open one of two new Biosafety Level-4 labs in the country to help prepare for possible acts of bioterrorism, the Globe said. The university won a hard-fought competition in 2003 to open the high-security lab, underwritten by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The lab, known as the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory, will allow scientists to work with the world’s deadliest germs including those that cause Ebola, plague, and Marburg, the newspaper said.

In a 21-page letter to the NIH, the council recommended the agency perform a far more detailed analysis of the risk posed to the neighborhood surrounding the laboratory by the potential release of lethal germs, the Globe reported.