![](https://i.imgur.com/CLvY2jA.png")
02-11-2022, 08:39 PM
AT THE MOMENT that the ferret bit him, the researcher was smack in the middle of Manhattan, in a lab one block from Central Park’s East Meadow.
It was the Friday afternoon before Labor Day in 2011, and people were rushing out of the city for a long weekend. Three days earlier, the ferret had been inoculated with a recombinant strain of 1918 influenza, which killed between 20 and 50 million people when it swept through the world at the end of World War I.
To prevent it from sparking another pandemic, 1918 influenza is studied under biosafety level 3 conditions, the second-tightest of biosafety controls available.
The researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine (now Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) was wearing protective equipment, including two pairs of gloves. But the ferret bit hard enough to pierce through both pairs, breaking the skin of his left thumb.
The ferret bite happened six years later but has not been publicized until now. For some, it is a stark example of the risks that accompany research on dangerous pathogens.
The new documents fill in some of those gaps. While the researcher at Mount Sinai did not fall ill, in a small number of cases, accidents did lead to infection. In one instance, a researcher at Washington University of St. Louis contracted Chikungunya virus, which has sparked epidemics in Africa, after pricking herself with a needle in a biosafety level 3 lab. She only reported the accident after getting sick.
With pathogens like the 1918 flu virus, the stakes are even higher. The current system “gives a good level of review most of the time,” Bloom said. “But it’s not the kind of system that you could count on if you potentially have research that could kill 10 million people if it goes wrong.”
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/01/pand...biosafety/
It was the Friday afternoon before Labor Day in 2011, and people were rushing out of the city for a long weekend. Three days earlier, the ferret had been inoculated with a recombinant strain of 1918 influenza, which killed between 20 and 50 million people when it swept through the world at the end of World War I.
To prevent it from sparking another pandemic, 1918 influenza is studied under biosafety level 3 conditions, the second-tightest of biosafety controls available.
The researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine (now Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) was wearing protective equipment, including two pairs of gloves. But the ferret bit hard enough to pierce through both pairs, breaking the skin of his left thumb.
The ferret bite happened six years later but has not been publicized until now. For some, it is a stark example of the risks that accompany research on dangerous pathogens.
The new documents fill in some of those gaps. While the researcher at Mount Sinai did not fall ill, in a small number of cases, accidents did lead to infection. In one instance, a researcher at Washington University of St. Louis contracted Chikungunya virus, which has sparked epidemics in Africa, after pricking herself with a needle in a biosafety level 3 lab. She only reported the accident after getting sick.
With pathogens like the 1918 flu virus, the stakes are even higher. The current system “gives a good level of review most of the time,” Bloom said. “But it’s not the kind of system that you could count on if you potentially have research that could kill 10 million people if it goes wrong.”
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/01/pand...biosafety/
