The ceremony planned by The Ohio State University may resemble the grand opening of a supermarket, but the ribbon-cutting and gushing oratory are meant to mask the reality of this just-completed building. It's a taxpayer-funded encampment soon to be filled with hundreds of innocent non-human primates who will suffer and die to perpetuate the careers of animal researchers.

As Stephen Kaufman, M.D, of the Medical Research Modernization Committee, says of the opening: "This represents another setback for good science, as the self-serving, self-reinforcing animal research establishment continues to grow like a cancer, depriving human clinical investigation of the funds it needs to improve medical care."

Don Barnes (a former primate researcher who now regrets the unspeakable acts of experimentation he performed on monkeys under the guise of advancing human health and knowledge) says: "If the goal of OSU is to build another empire, then by all means they should open another research laboratory. But, if the goal is to ease the pain and suffering of AIDS, cancer, and other diseases, then their funds and human resources should be channeled into developing preventative measures to help people avoid these diseases."

Sadly, this release could be sent out today as OSU prepares to open another BSL-3 lab, which will house and kill thousands of rodents under the guise of protecting Americans from a terrorist attack.

While neighbors and OSU employees worry about tornadoes hitting the facility or release of pathogens via a terrorist attack, they may wish consider a scenario which occurred at the University of California-Davis.

Monkey's escape may sink biodefense lab

The escape of a small gray and tan monkey from a UC Davis medical research center may threaten a proposed high-security lab on campus to study deadly infectious organisms such as anthrax and smallpox that could be used as terrorist weapons.

The 4-pound rhesus macaque monkey vanished two weeks ago as her cage was being cleaned at the California National Primate Research Center, where she was used for breeding purposes and was "disease free," according to the university.

But the primate's disappearance is raising grave concerns among the many opponents of a proposed $150 million biocontainment facility that would be entrusted to study the world's most dangerous diseases.

"A lot of people are anxious about security and the university's ability to operate a lab with such high security needs," said Davis City Councilwoman Sue Greenwald. "This doesn't reassure citizens who have the perception that the proposed facility cannot be failsafe."

Missing Lab Monkey Believed Dead

An adolescent monkey that vanished this month from a research lab at UC Davis likely slipped down a drain and perished in the sewer system, officials said Wednesday.

Investigators who have spent the last two weeks searching for the 4.4-pound gray-and-tan rhesus macaque came to that conclusion after the animal's handlers passed "truth verification" tests that satisfied officials they had not smuggled the primate out of the facility.

"Now she is presumed dead," said UC Davis spokeswoman Lisa Lapin. "It's very sad. We're sick about it. In the 40-year history of the primate center, there's never been a monkey unaccounted for."

The disappearance comes at a bad time for the university, which is under fire for its efforts to build a federal lab on campus that would study deadly diseases, such as Ebola.

Many in the leafy college town say the lab would pose a risk to the community, both because of the threat that dangerous pathogens could escape and because it might make the city a terrorist target, said Councilwoman Sue Greenwald.

And the Pressey Hall facility might not be the last BSL-3 lab to be built at OSU. During a recent meeting (which POET attended) with Jim Moseley, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, OSU agriculture animal researcher, Linda Saif, who is an expert on pathogens that cause intestinal and respiratory diseases in food-producing animals, including rotaviruses, caliciviruses and coronavirus, made a pitch for a BSL-3 lab to be built at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) in Wooster.

In a recent release she states:

OARDC's future contributions to SARS research may not be as extensive as Saif and Benfield would like them to be. The center lacks a biosafety containment level 3, or BL-3, facility, which is required to handle live infectious pathogens such as the SARS coronavirus. For now, the only studies Saif can conduct are with inactivated or non-infectious fragments of the virus or its nucleic acid.

"We are hoping to receive funding for a BL-3 facility, but that's not available yet," Saif said. "This obviously is a handicap and frustrating because we have all this knowledge and background working with coronaviruses, but we don't have the facilities that would allow us to pursue this work."

And the empire continues to thrive.

September 22, 2003

Yes it does - from The Chronicle of Higher Education the following paragraph seems to clear the way for the BSL-3 laboratory to be built in Wooster.

Research on pathogens that could affect food and livestock is also common on the earmarks list. Two earmarks totaling almost $1.1-million, for example, are enabling Ohio State University at Columbus's Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster to build a new facility to house research on emerging infections that could, among other things, be used as biological agents

April 29, 2005 from The Lantern

New OSU biolab to study diseases

Ohio State researchers will be able to study tuberculosis and anthrax at a new $2 million biosafety lab opening in May on West Campus.

"This is a campus-wide interdisciplinary center for research of infectious diseases," said Dr. Larry Schlesinger, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Center for Microbial Interface Biology.

The lab, which is expected to open in the next few weeks, was built to allow OSU researchers more space to continue studying and developing new therapies and vaccines for infectious diseases, Schlesinger said.

The state-of-the-art laboratory is a Biosafety Level 3 lab. According to the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Level 3 labs are authorized to work with "indigenous or exotic agents which may cause serious or potentially lethal disease as a result of exposure by the inhalation route."

click here for the entire article

Coming soon the projects that will more than likely be moving into this new facility.