Front and Center: Security at Boston's Infectious Disease Research Lab

When controversy hit, Kevin Tuohey became the public face of a high-profile plan to study deadly diseases in Boston. To succeed, the security director would have to become part diplomat, part great communicator.

By the end of October, scientists determined that the bacteria strains delivered to Rice's lab, thought to be inert, were actually virulent. Over the next two weeks, the medical center's Institutional Biosafety Committee, where Tuohey's manager of emergency planning holds a seat, shuttered Dr. Rice's lab, notified the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Boston Public Health Commission and the mayor of Boston, and finally confirmed with blood tests that the researchers had contracted pneumonic tularemia.

It was Nov. 12, 2004, almost six months after the first researcher contracted rabbit fever. The information had been kept confidential because the local health officials and BU Medical Center determined there was no threat to public health. Now the public would find out. And for Tuohey, the timing couldn't have been worse.

That's because the medical center was in the process of getting approval to build a new infectious disease research lab on campus. In 2003, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded a $128 million grant to build the lab, which if approved by state and federal environmental agencies, would bring billions in grants and attract top scientists.

But the new facility would also be classified a Biosafety Level 4 lab, one of only seven in the United States. In lab safety terms, level 4 means the biologics handled at that facility have no known vaccine or therapy. No cure. Ebola. Smallpox. Anthrax. (Level 3 biologics can cause disease if inhaled, but there are treatments available. Level 2 agents can cause disease but are not transmitted in a lab. Level 1 is not harmful.)

The live strains of F. tularensis that infected BU Medical Center researchers are Biosafety Level 3 agents. Those who opposed building the biolab seized on the rabbit fever cases as Exhibit A in their grassroots fight to stop the project, evidence that the center was incapable of protecting the surrounding neighborhoods from potentially deadly outbreaks.

A CSO Steps Front and Center

As an operations director, Tuohey initially had a limited role when a public controversy struck his organization's most important project. All he could do was explain the building design, systems and processes that BU Medical Center would use&mdash:most mandated by regulators&mdash:to prevent failures at the new lab. He also could point to his team's operations center, and the redundant systems and all of the new high-end security controls like advanced surveillance and biometrics that would protect the facility.

Tuohey did all that. But soon he did more. Tuohey knew it would fall to him to defend the new lab and quell a chorus of dissent coming from a well-organized alliance of citizens and scientists who categorically opposed the lab. Despite the tularemia episode, Tuohey had to tell them that the security and safety risks associated with this new lab were fringe risks, and manageable. And tell them he did. By the time the news of the three rabbit fever infections reached the public, Tuohey was making himself a public face for BU Medical Center. Ever since the center won the federal grant to build the bioresearch lab, Tuohey had moved beyond his normal focus as strategic security and safety director. He had testified at public hearings, briefed politicians, talked to the media and met regularly with community groups. His role became a community outreach and communications job too.