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.

Remarkably, the notion that bringing anthrax and other incurable biologics into this bustling, densely populated setting might upset the neighbors initially seemed to escape BU Medical Center officials, who assumed it would rise on their campus, in "BioSquare" with existing research facilities and the hospital nearby. Federal officials "believed like us that these are safe facilities no matter where they are," Tuohey says, recalling the two-year-plus application process, when BU officials were focused much more on the science that would go on inside the facility than they were on the risks the building brought to the neighborhood. "Location is just one of many criteria that go into the application process. If you want the grant you have to meet National Institutes for Health standards on everything, including security and siting." From a security and safety perspective, the Albany Street site has advantages, Tuohey says. "People didn't put together that an infectious disease outbreak response will come here"&mdash:he points toward the hospital&mdash:"no matter where it originates. It's good to be close."

The Plan's Awful Debut

An air of inevitability surrounded the biolab. Besides the federal grant, state and city elected leaders backed the project for the jobs it would bring to Boston. Then came the first community meeting about the facility, held in January 2003 at the hospital and led by one of the lab's champions, a microbiologist named Dr. Mark Klempner. He began explaining, with some enthusiasm, the scientific research that would be done in the new facility and what he hoped that would produce&mdash:vaccines and therapies to combat natural epidemics and used as defenses against bioweapons. (It is illegal under international treaty to do bioweapons research, but not biodefense research.)

But a significant klatch of attendees from surrounding neighborhoods grew restless and irritated listening to Klempner. They wound up challenging him. They accused him of being patronizing and out of touch with their concerns. They demanded to know why they weren't involved earlier in the approval process for such a facility. They asked how Boston University could assume everyone would be OK with a "bioterror" lab in their neighborhood. The international Sars epidemic, having crested six months earlier, was no doubt fresh in their minds, and the anthrax attacks of 2001 probably weren't forgotten either. Questions about a "weapons factory" came up.

Officials for BU Medical Center appeared surprised by the tenor of these responses. They saw the biolab as a boon, producing construction and research jobs, and a dose of national prestige. Instead, according to a Boston Globe story, Klempner was seen as "condescending" and "evasive."