how many high containment labs exist in united states and home do we really need to how many labs have had serious accidents in which lab workers or the public could have been exposed to dangerous diseases three how effective are the high containment labs personnel reliability measures and inventory technology what changes have been made to address the department of justice conclusion that a single department of defense employee caused the anthrax attacks of two thousand and one we asked the government accountability office to look into these issues and today we will learn what they found unfortunately many problems still exist no single agency or office in the federal government keeps track of how many  high labs there are and united states where they're located what types of research they're doing and whether they are safe and secure in short there are still appears to be no adequate federal plan or effort to manage much less  highly dangerous research there are no universal standards for lab design construction for use any part of health and human services publishes a guideline safety in the biomedical and micro biological laboratories known as the b m b l labs that receive grants must comply with the guidelines but private and other non federally funded research facilities have no similar requirement while labs that handle select agents must obtain federal registration certification no accreditation or certification is required for labs working with dangerous organism organisms that are not on the selective agent list such as sars or west nile virus there are no standards for safety training or credentialing of high containment laboratory workers that apartment of health and human services only requires workers handling organism  agent list there are no standards or mechanisms for ensure involuntary control or personal personnel reliability it is essential to lab security that lab workers undergo adequate screening and that the quantity of biological agents in the lab is tracked carefully failures and personal reliability practices can be catastrophic again the two thousand and one anthrax attacks which department justice has said was the work of one department defense scientists a tragic example of this risk finally the biolab community has no mechanism to catalogue accidents and mishaps for collective analysis so lessons can be learned and shared to improve safety and security practices unfortunately what is clear is that the federal policy on safety and security remains basically unchanged from what it was when we had our hearing two years ago there is hope that this may change thanks to two reports that should be finalized hopefully in the next coming weeks the first is that trance federal task force on optimizing by safety and by containment oversight which is co chaired by h h s and u s d a which was a direct result of our hearing two years ago the task force report will make important recommendations for improving bio safety in the united states another such study by the executive working by the executive order working group on strengthening the bio security of united states which was created by president bush's executive order in january will make recommendations on ways to improve the agent program the committee staff has been briefed about the process for preparing these reports and it is hope that these reports will be available in the next few weeks i look forward to hearing from the administration on this important matter at that time today we will hear testimony from the government accountability office about its findings and recommendations concerning biolab safety and security their report titled high containment laboratories national strategy for oversight is needed was released yesterday we also hear from a representative of the american society of microbiology who can share the perspective of those who operate and work directly with high containment labs i look forward to hearing testimony about what is this regarding how we can quickly and responsibly address this challenge and enhance our nation's safety and security it is our hope that this new administration was quickly to improve data about labs and improve lab safety and security let me also express my condolences to the families and coworkers and friends of the university of chicago professor malcolm shabazz who died last week from aware from what appears to be an infection that he may have a d from the lab while doing research on the plague this highlights the fact that even more needs to be damage done to protect our scientists and the public inside and outside the lab with that next turn to a gentleman from oregon mr persisted in his blood that's related to the plague perhaps caused his death and so clearly we need to be investigating these safety issues in all of our countries labs i also say mr chairman that  the republican staff has come to learn that the and i h as part of their stimulus dollars now may have received upwards of a billion dollars to more rapidly build out these labs which i think raises the issue about our need to do proper oversight not only of ho stimulus dollars are being spent here but elsewhere throughout the government so that the taxpayers money is spent appropriately and so i would hope that our subcommittee would have a hearing on stimulus spending this relates to the agencies under our purview yesterday the government accountability office released a report addressing some of the issues raised our previous hearing regarding increased oversight and improved safety measures at these types of laboratories and they're here today to discuss their findings and i appreciate that just weeks after nine eleven our nation faces a series of bio terrorist attacks where weapons grade anthrax was delivered through the mail and five people died thirty's now believe the one scientist who worked in one of our nation's high containment laboratories was responsible for those attacks my office was in the longworth building in those days and we were shut out of our office because of the anthrax that came into that building in response to the attacks congress increased funding to upgrade our nation's bio defense program the national institutes of health and i h which fund much of the lab research and construction spent one point seven billion in two thousand and seven compared to fifty three million on bio defense labs in two thousand and one now that's a thirty two fold increase in spending again we understand that and i h is receiving stimulus dollars to add another billion dollars in spending for intramural extramural facilities and i think it would be important to know just how that money's being spent especially with such a steep increase in funding and rapid expansion of lab networks it is time to resemble the federal regulatory system to ensure safety and efficiency are hearing on october fourth of two thousand and seven examine the results of the bioterrorism act on federal oversight of select agents in a dental fight a few gaps and question how these labs and federal regulations would mitigate risk while increasing our defenses now it's been almost two years since our last hearing and it is evident both the federal government and the academic realm agreed with the sense of the subcommittees hearing that there is a need for increased oversight and improved safety and security measures in high amen laboratories as a result of the october two thousand and seven hearing the trans federal task force on optimizing bio safety and bio containment oversight was created that's co chaired by h h s and u s d a and their report along with recommendations to improve oversight and safety is scheduled to be released within the next week or two in then president bush as you mentioned mr chairman signed executive order thirteen for eighty six which established the working group to examine how to strengthen laboratory bio security and safety in our nation's high containment labs and the working group's report was completed and sent to the president in july yet to date the administration has not publicly commented on nor release the report nor made any formal recommendations committee staff was told the administration has begun to collect in a value wait these reports and is in the preliminary stages of the policy process yet a request for a briefing or a witness for the hearing from the white house was unanswered geos report highlights the pressing need for coordinated national oversight of our nation's high containment laboratories g a o recommends the national security adviser name a single entity charged with government wide strategic value way short of high containment laboratories including tracking our lab capacity evaluating our country's needs in establishing our research priorities there seems to be some consensus within the scientific community that we already have oversight infrastructures emplace within the departments of health and human services and the department of agriculture i hope the administration utilize this existing expertise instead of creating a centrally located bio safety or shall we call it a germs are at the white house other reports completed by the american association for the advancement of science and the national science advisory board for  biosecurity were issued earlier this year these reports discussed ways to increase safety and security in our nation's high containment labs focusing on purse n l reliability and enhanced in training programs a lot of research and reports have been completed by our government and academic associations and we're appreciative of those but some of these reports of not been finalized and made public in turn only dr king's barry from the g a o is here to discuss their report which we appreciate and answer questions but these facts suggest to me that this committee might have been better served by delaying this hearing for a week or two until we could have all the reports before us before they were released and various responsible federal agencies could also send witnesses to give us a more complete view of what we face the oversight of our nation's high containment laboratories is an issue that is deserving of this subcommittees attention over this hearing is not inclusive i believe or representative of all the work that's been done in this area and we need to keep that in mind as we proceed i do want to welcome dr atlas from the american society of microbiology which has more than forty thousand members we appreciate your being here representing the scientists and health professionals who staff these labs your your input will be very valuable you'll discuss the important roles these laboratories play in protecting our nation the importance of bio safety requirements for the labs and its personnel and recommendations to improve bio safety training oversight resources reporting and bio appreciate the opportunity to take this second look at the oversight or lack of oversight on the high containment bio lab i recall from my time on the committee on homeland security when the national institute of allergy and infectious disease testified that they were in the process of building agriculture to track the growth of these labs and again i appreciate the witnesses here today and my other had i serve on the health committee and a lot of those illnesses that labs are working on are ones that we hope to be over we hope they'll never have high containment laboratories have proliferated in recent years this report focuses on the proliferation in the u s but similar things are done other countries in two thousand and seven we reported on several issues associated with the proliferation of these labs in the possibilities of insider misuse of labs facilities materials in technology highly publicized laboratory errors and controversies about where high containment labs should be located have raised questions about whether the governing framework oversight and standards for bio safety and bio security are at a adequate in this context you asked us to address the following questions to what extent and in what areas has the number of high containment labs increased in the united states which federal agency is responsible for tracking the expansion of high containment laboratories and determining the associated aggregated risks and what lessons can be learned from a highly publicized incidents of high containment laboratories and actions taken by the regulatory agencies we have three basic findings to report first since two thousand and one the number of b s l three and b s l four labs in the united states has increased and this expansion has taken place across federal state academic and private sectors information about the number location activities and ownership is available for high containment laboratories that are registered with c d c s or u s d a is select agent programs but not for those outside those programs the expansion that began after the anthrax attacks in two thousand and one lacked a clear coordinated national strategy decisions to fund construction of high containment labs were made by multiple federal agencies and multiple budget cycles federal and state agencies academia and the private sector consider their individual requirements but an assessment of national need was lacking even now after more than seven years we were unable to find any projections based on a government initiated strategic evaluation of current and future capacity requirements linked to national public health goals such information is needed we think to ensure that the us will have facilities in the right place with the right research capabilities second no executive or legislative mandate directs and a single federal agency to track the expansion of all high containment labs accordingly no federal agents and c knows how many such lab exist in the united states and no single agency is responsible for determining or able to determine the aggregate risk associated with the expansion of these labs consequently no federal agency can determine whether high containment lab capacity is now less than more meets or exceeds the national need finally for highly publicized safety incidents in high containment labs as well as evidence in the scientific literature demonstrate that while laboratory accidents are rare they do occur primarily due to human error or systems failures one of the incidents we reviewed involve the allegations that dr bruce ivans of d o d was the source of the two thousand and one anthrax attacks these allegations highlighted two lessons first an ill intentioned insider could pose a risk by removing dangerous material from a high containment labs and second it is impossible to have one hundred percent effective inventory control of biological material with currently available technologies such inventory control  possible for nuclear material and for chemical material but because biological material grows and expands there are no currently no available technologies for dietrich ineffective procedures for the control of inventories and the unrestricted use  syllabi allegedly allow dr ivans the opportunity to pursue his own hands as the number of high containment labs increases there will be inevitably be an increase in the pool of scientists with expertise and thus the corresponding risk from insiders is likely to increase taken as a whole these incidents we review demonstrate failure of systems and procedures meant to maintain bio safety and high containment labs they reveal the failure to comply with regulatory requirements safety measures that were not commensurate with the level of risk to public health posed by the lab workers and the pathogens in the lab and the failure to find ongoing facility maintenance and monitor the operational effectiveness of lab physical infrastructure in conclusion i want to stress that oversight plays a critical role in improving bio safety and ensuring that high containment labs comply with regulations however some aspects of the current oversight programs provided by the c d c and u s d a are dependent upon entities monitoring themselves and reporting incidents to federal regulators furthermore personnel reliability programs have been established since two thousand and one to counter insider risks but their cost effectiveness and programatic impact has not been a if an agency were tasked or a mechanism were established with the purpose of overseeing the expansion of high containment labs it could develop a strategic plan to ensure the number and capabilities of potentially dangerous high containment labs are no greater or less than necessary it could balance the risks and benefits of expanding such labs and it could determine the type of oversight needed to address these issues we recommended that the national security adviser in consultation with the secretaries of health and human services agriculture defense and homeland security and the national intelligence council and any other departments and agencies that are appropriate identify a single entity charged with periodic strategic evaluation of high containment labs that will determine the number location and mission of the laboratories needed to effectively meet national goals to counter bio threats the existing laboratory capacity within the united states the aggregate risk associated with the laboratories expansion and the type of oversight needed it could also develop in consultation with the scientific community national standards for the design construction commissioning and operation of high containment laboratories specifically including provisions for long term maintenance which is an area that we're quite concerned about we also recommended that the secretaries of health and human services and agriculture develop develop a clear definition of exposure to select agents some of these incidents suggest that there is some confusion in that regard and a mechanism for sharing lessons learned from reported laboratory accidents so that best practices for other operators of high containment laboratories can be identified and distributed recognizing that biological him and tories cannot be completely controlled at present we also recommended that the secretaries of h h s and agriculture review existing inventory control systems and invest in and develop appropriate technologies to minimize the potential for insider misuse of biological agents finally should the secretary's consider implementing a more stringent personnel reliability program for high containment laboratories employ to deal with insider risk we recommended that they evaluate and document the cost effective programatic impact of such a program we did obtain written comments on a draft of the draft of our report from the secretary of health and human services and agriculture h h s and agriculture concern concurred with our recommendations that were directed to them executive office of the president the national security council did not provide any comment mr chairman this concludes my prepared remarks and we'll be happy to answer any questions that you or your colleagues  began my career forty years ago we thought we had conquered infection but in fact that is not the case we have newly emerging infections every year whether sars drug an extremely drug resistant tuberculosis or the current outbreak of the h one n one influenza and outbreaks of disease have not only public health but also economic and political repercussions and we need to carry out research to find the laboratories with the safety of the scientists working on the organisms public protected these are not weapons laboratories or research laboratories where investigations are carried out with the aim of microbiology has strongly supported responsible regulation oversight practices and guidelines that improve laboratory bio safety and protect the laboratory personnel of the public and the efficacious performance of the research that leads t vaccines therapeutic drugs and diagnostics that we need and over the years we have reached a balance at least for the moment between the safety practices that are carried out in the laboratory and the ability to perform practices and to find new and better ways to move forward during the past two years has met with the trans federal task was on bio safety and bio containment oversight and the executive what a working group strengthening the biosecurity the united states made a number of recommendations to those groups clearly there is a need to ensure adequate training and strict compliance to provide the levels of protection injected in existing bio safety procedures as well as those that may be proposed has made a number of recommendations which i would like to summarize for you first the bio safety and micro biological and biomedical laboratories manual or the b m b l which contains the core guidelines for the safe operation of all micro biological laboratories should be the subject of regular biennial review and update as needed b m b l along with the  guidelines for recombinant d n a research are essential reference documents we need to continuously examine these update them and provide more guidance for the community and to develop specific competencies bio input from the community second the list the pathogens designated as selected agents and those requiring b s o three embryos so full containment should be regularly updated and again we would urge that a scientific community that is broadly based help to guide the development of the less third there should be mandated training and performance requirements for bio safety personnel overseeing the safety of high containment laboratories and again the i should make educational training programs available and we should continuously look to the standards that need to be achieved for the select age and regulation should be revised to change the requirements inventory of bylaws and agents laboratory should be accountable for which agents they possess and where these agents are located but counting of viles in a freezer when we're dealing with live organisms provides a false sense of security and does not really help in protecting the nation requirements the bar and institutions must have comparable facilities and standards as collaborating should be changed to remove hurdles for international collaboration we've been struck by the experience where they no longer can get strains of him roger fever riders has ensued united states because laboratories overseas that impact on holding those organisms may not meet u s standards six the congress should hance funding is needed to ensure the update of the high containment laboratories now that many of these laboratories have been constructed this should  be they continue to meet the high standards to which they were built seven we need an improved system for surveillance and reporting of laboratory acquired illnesses this should be done in a way where we learn lessons from inciden e and i think we need to examine the potential value of moving forward we would note that the american biological safety organization is in fact in the process of developing a voluntary committee and the nation that we are complying in conclusion i think we've made tremendous strides over the past years in moving towards meeting the needs of the nation both in terms of the research and the safety more for labs currently under construction so if we go back in that we look at your figure one in the g a o report and figure one on our monitor we can see the locations of the labs are being built right now across the united states when these labs become operational we will have doubled the capacity in united states without any federal agency analyzing whether this is appropriate needs for our country and then if we look at safe structures within the nation where research can be performed that's something that i support so in that sense no i don't have the same concern because the number and capacity of existing bio containment facilities were determined to be adequate to meet the needs for bio defense work what is the right number then what is the right number we need a level three and level four labs no the right number over all certainly there was an assessment done at the national institutes of health that suggested we needed something of the order ten fifteen regional laboratories to cover the nation that would provide a resources the research and potential surge capacity if we had a major break  beyond that there are a number of institutions have the need or desirability to have small laboratories where they could do research on a safe manner but my  scientists and researchers you have handling this the more likely of a disaster not just within the lab but the labs not if we have the appropriate safety standards and i think that's where we would put our emphasis on increasing the courses offered but again i'm not required not required and therefore you are correct that much of the training is on the job i think what we propose is that we in fact move to with national standards that would establish minimum guidelines for the training and that we provide the resources where we can assure this committee that anyone who's walking into a laboratory where dangerous is adequately trained and further that we instill in the community a culture of responsibility with a zero tolerance not following the procedures let me ask you this if you go back to figure number three that we had up and it's in the g a o report it's your figure number two where you went from four hundred b s l labs in two thousand and four to almost fourteen hundred in two thousand and eight  represent the construction of new you know i know that i'm retired i can be a university i might have many labs within within my university structure but i guess i'm just trying to explain how do you go from four hundred if you're supposed to be registered before are that much more interest in these dollars investment in research that was largely in the research conducted rather than construction of new laboratories and that has led to a number of individuals joining in the effort to develop vaccines against anthrax and the other diseases to protect the nation about what is now seen as a new threat from the misuse of biological weapons  and almost seems like we throw money out there suddenly we're all b s l three or four labs certainly when i testified before the congress in two thousand and two there was a perception that we had a tremendous threat facing us and we had to combat that threat by raising to develop stockpiles of therapeutics that could be moved across the nation we needed better vaccines when we looked at some of the ones we had we decided they weren't safe enough smallpox vaccine that you and i once we weren't going to give to our children we wanted something safer than that we called up on national institutes of allergy and to move forward with that and in fact there's been tremendous investment that has been brought forth with congressional support and pervert because the congress was very worried about the community has responded by trying to perform the needed research and that has led to an set up camp meant in southern lasco county outside the town of analog concocted a little mixture that they then spread in the salad bars in the city of dallas and poisoned hundreds of people took federal government more new year to admit that it was actually a biological attack salmon l a strain that they spread so i take this issue real seriously and realize there is a threat that if the folks in that encampment could pull it off it could happen by a serious terrorist somewhere do you think there's still a pretty good threat against the country we understand that there is a threat of criminal activity and terrorism and that we need to be vigilant from the communities perspective we need to  develop against the use of biological weapons a zero tolerance nowhere no how no one which also suggests that the community must be our eyes and ears and that we need a system whereby the t i don't think we have an adequate coordinated system of knowing who to call up in your local f b i office which may not have the ability to adequately understand the information  holdings we certainly the american society for microbiology is as put forth and as putting forth every day to our members code of ethics that calls upon to only use science for the betterment of humankind and to report to appropriate  the outbreak in oregon or no i'm sorry i moved off that into what dr alice was suggesting that there isn't a really good reporting mechanism for scientists to feedin observances of misuse of some of these agents there is there is really not an any of the programs that we see did you review that in the course of your investigation though that issue you want to yes we looked at in context of the department of defense and department of stop i mean we already have laws against doing what somebody might do so what about people is there a way to do some sort of precinct clearance i mean i don't want to bog down our whole research system well that's what that's what a person el stringent security program would probably require there's a cost to that and the whole basis for our cern about the growth of the number of laboratories grounded in the fact that this federal government to make some hard choices about cost and so you can't do that if you're not doing an evaluation of what things cost and what you're getting from and what the risk is and what the risk is exactly how many i mean we've heard these four incidents and then the latest which was actually at a level two lab  how many are there i mean if you've got sixteen hundred labs by the way that doesn't mean sixteen hundred separate buildings right as the chairman said you could have multiple labs in the same center but nobody knows how many there are do each  agency that has labs know how many labs they have does a just know how many labs they have does u s d a know how many labs they have the federal agencies probably do so the so somebody knows agents silo by silo agency by agency what labs they have once have been built by the federal government but these labs are being built by state governments they're being built in the private sector they're being built by other than the federal so if i wanted to go out and build a lab and deal with these agents a level three or four can i go do that not tell anybody you can't do it not tell anybody if they're on the select agent list that law is clear if they are not on a select list then  all you have to do is get the money from it and the select agent list is the one that has the worst of the worst right most of the worst of the worst ok so that raised the issue then should other agents be put who put gathers up the select agent  list the department of agriculture separately for human pathogens and plant and animal pathogens and you said you thought there were too many labs at sixteen hundred we said we don't know whether there are too many there are too few well i thought  need a very very large capacity to do this kind of work without looking again at the threat without looking at how much we really need in comparison at least at the federal level to the other needs facing our nation  that you all will take a look at those in the context of going forward or not it will be very interested in looking at them in the context of some of our other ongoing work or if this committee subcommittee would like to ask us to do that we can do that as well would net  oversee only issue from the community is a question of overregulation registration without requirements for performance doesn't get you very far when you begin to impose they would have their own safety standards that would be common between you know these companies and state governments or even the federal government for the most part i think that's true and certainly when we're dealing with  stop the research because with h one n one you know we couldn't be on where we're at now with the development without lots of different folks looking at it and different not only non you know government agencies but non government but it just seems like the between department bag and you know and i or f d a we could have a memorandum of understanding so they would have the same standards and they would split up their that we have a full study of cost and benefit of moving towards standards figure out what those standards would be and then see whether or not it's appropriate to institute an accreditation system across all the high containment we're not ready to sort of jump off the bridge and say mandate that until we understand the cost benefits and what we would be looking at but we think that that sort of study and examination ought to be done done now we've made that recommendation before both the executive order working group and trans federal task force i don't know whether or not that's been accepted and whether that will   doubling a b s l for a nearly increased fourteen hundred and they are we not seeing these agencies respond because they don't have the funds to develop this coordinated effort hearing chairman and i appreciate your holding it down at least let me ask you this reference the need for careful consideration of recommendations regarding new requirements for bio safety and bio security laboratories in light of the very careful equilibrium that currently exists to oversee and manage research activities and you also state that excessive policy changes could upset the delicate balance  alice what could be the impact on our scientific community if we were to pursue a policy certain changes that did upset that delicate balance what would be the consequences of that consequence would be that they would be less safe if we don't carry out the research that we need on infectious disease if we have scientists abandoning work on pathogens to work in other areas then in fact we're not going to have the vaccines we need we're not going to have the therapeutic drugs that we're going to see that we cannot contain outbreaks of disease if you went to an extreme you just wouldn't have a vaccine for h one n one coming in a few weeks so we need to ensure that we're not having a burden on the community that causes scientists to say i'm going to go work elsewhere and that's the call for careful evaluation not a call for no regulation no it's quite the opposite it is a call for can police considered appropriate regulation and oversight what one doesn't want is a knee jerk reaction that one completed by the executive working group and in fact of the present year law the other understand just completed by the trans federal task force on optimizing bio safety and bio containment oversight which is chaired by h h s and u s d a as you know given the subject matter of the yet to be released report i am wondering whether you think this hearing might have been better served or could be better served with the reports of bailable for us to consider might may be a good word but we don't substitute our judgment for the committee chairman when they want to have a hearing i'm not really asking you to to second guess the chairman i just ask you your opinion in regard to the report i'm here to report on our works or not my personal opinion ok well thank you very much and i'll ask out the at the same question that in my remaining time and i think the answer is we would be happy to meet with your staff certainly well again let me just say that i think it is important that we miss chairman maybe i would suggest that you strongly consider haven't hearing another hearing more so if reports are released in light of this hearing today and with that  chairman i guess the question may have already been asked to you and we can discuss this afterwards i don't understand why we don't have someone from department of homeland security here on the panel the department homeland security recently selected kansas as the site for the new foot in mouth disease facility or level four labs and i'll ask this to both of our witnesses are level four labs appropriate for inland research for diseases such as foot and mouth disease wouldn't it have been better to hold the hearing before we held the vote you don't have to answer the second part but is it is an in line facility appropriate for this type of monitoring and research on well we did issue a very contagious illness because forty percent forty five percent of the nation's cattle perverse the state of kansas at some time in their their lives there was a very large number of recent resolution discussion in the house about that report recently and it looked at that question not asking our opinion per se about whether it's appropriate to put a facility on the mainland as opposed to an island but rather looking at the evidence that the department of homeland security put forth in making that decision and concluding as they clearly did conclude that there is no risk of doing foot and mouth disease research on the mainland or essentially no risk that the facility that is being talked about is going to do more than foot and mouth disease but the thing that has continued to concern us is that a foot in mouth disease is the most infectious virus on the planet and the research on that requires research with a lot of very large animals and so the whole design and operational structure of that facility in the on the mainland workhouse or in the neighborhood has not yet been laid out in a way that we would conclude in our experts would conclude has demonstrated that it's safe to do put mouth disease research in particular in that when when do you expect that we will have the availability of that information or will it just be information that's gained along the way after the facility opens well the kansas state university folks and the people who are putting that facility where they have selected to put it in the department of homeland security will have to develop a design for the building they'll have to develop operating protocols they'll have to develop all of the things about how you would contain an outbreak if it did get out and so forth and those are the things that aren't developed yet but hopefully would be developed before any of that virus actually enters the building hopefully maybe a good word there as well  in the community but clearly the kansas community wanted that facility there for that in that location it was not a matter of their saying the federal government is putting something where we don't want it only on foot and mouth disease but on many of the other culturally relevant that would be worked on there so something had to be done to provide an adequate facility and my contention is that you can build an adequate facility and located an appropriate place an observation from from galveston a year ago of course hurricane ike ravaged the island  having some difficulty recovering but a brand new bio defense laboratory that was that point not occupied but certainly came through what i would regard as a very serious stress test came through with pretty much flying colors now these are expensive to build they're expensive to maintain the funding level for both the building and the maintenance of those funding levels adequate is that something that is receiving the appropriate amount of  scrutiny the proper amount of monitoring we didn't directly look at what the funding level would be there is an initial funding being discussed in current appropriations discussions what the entire facility will end up costing i think i facilities it will be very important to continue to pay attention to how much maintenance is going to be necessary to provide the support for doing that and the fact that that has to go through our annual appropriations process  oversight on that and when as correctly dr king's very pointed out is those budgetary dollars are squeezed we need to make certain that areas where legitimate functions of government are not compromised now you're back to balance my time thank  be surprised that even department of interior has these labs how many of them have the personnel reliability measurements or protections of the twelve agencies department  year all the agencies don't have a robust one would be department of defense energy starting so we have ten more without any kind of measurement  dr outlets do you think academic and private institutions should you think they should be registered labs level for level three do you think they should be registered with the government and i think the question is what comes with the registration just mean someone should send you a note that says we have a laboratory doesn't bring anything else about i don't see much value but there's also very little bird going to get that i think the sense is if you're going to register the labs you ought to be asking additional questions and that's where the devil will be in the details about what it means to public at large that what's going on in the laboratories is being appropriately we don't know what's going on lab stories unless they tell us right if you're one of these agents your level three or your level four so why why would you be a reluctance in the register with the government the labs first of all they already everybody has to go through a clearance process the government knows exactly where those laboratories are and everything that's going on in those laboratories if you talk about laboratories which might be isolating a new and emerging infectious disease organism there are questions about how quickly and who you would tell and what you're doing in the private  development which we have a real problem getting people to invest but if companies see that and they build a laboratory perform the work to develop a new vaccine against influenza virus they want to be able level earlier question that is where they would also register concern is that have to be vigilant about ensuring maintenance well let me ask you this and you make a number of recommendations about seven am i think here today and in the letter you sent in two testimony and comments today especially when you said that you wouldn't necessarily want the government deciding somebody couldn't open the lab to go you know figure out the new and latest vaccine i don't want to government complete takeover of this whole process what i want is make sure those labs are safe and secure and i think it makes sense that we kind of know what's out there where they are and i appreciate your testimony too and you talk about just sending in a note and saying i'm a lab and i'm here doesn't really the trans federal task force and the executive working group how were those recommendations received by those two organizations waiting to see the report which we have not seen they certainly brought input not only from a s m but many other organizations shared viewpoints with both of those groups they held public hearings we attended those that was brought in put and now we like you wait for the outcomes of  not and i appreciate we'll look forward to their response my understanding is there are two hundred forty two entities doing this type of research that are that are registered which then among those entities constitute the thirteen hundred and sixty two laboratories so in a given university setting or whatever there is we could be sending federal tax dollars in to do this research toward h one n one vaccine or toward anthrax vaccine or whatever we've decided as priorities that goes into those two hundred forty two entities and within wherever they do their research there are multiple labs and how they define a lab which may be animal facility maybe one laboratory and then the room where you actually do national security council and you were advising the president who would you pick as the lead agency to oversee this national lab network i would see it from a perspective on a public health  application if you will to be considered in the decision process identified another part of their island where they could build the kind of facility that would need to be built to do the broader range of research that is relatively costly compared to exactly the same building on the mainland because all the materials have to be shipped on to the island  i always made that point as one of the reasons that they don't find the plum island attractive but you could build almost the same kind of building there it's just a matter of whether the additional cost is prohibitive there have been expressed concerns about recruiting scientists to work on an island it's a fairly pleasant forty five minute ferry trip to get there we've done  it doesn't hasn't seemed to be a big deal with respect to recruiting enough scientists that remains to be seen if we were going to try to do that but we recognise in our report that plum island has already invested a great deal in upgrading and for a fifty year old building it's in pretty good shape so just a dollar for dollar comparison plum island versus an inland facility the cost is about the same but there's just a issues that would make the building  be an entity that oversees h h s on that because of the security the security concerns that exist that that mr walton was bringing up i hate i hesitate to use the words are but does there need to be a bios are that is looking at this from up from more from a security standpoint we know more is ours we've focused most of our work on the bio safety side of these issues not the bio security side some of our colleagues testified this  physical security examination that they did have several of the b s l for laboratories the problem there is what is the actual threat and what what is the experience that has happened over the past two years of anybody breaking into a lab and we're not aware of any incidents that would suggest that physical security upgrades may or may not be  visiting the lab in the new lab in galveston i was impressed with the security always of course you do have to ask yourself what is the threat from an internal disruption or someone who's who's working in the facility  decides to take a different different approach to their to their employment so what do we have available to help us with that well that's what a personal personnel reliability program would help with but again even in that case there has been only one alleged case of an insider doing illegal things in the way that we all worry about and so i think to study it and  think about how you're going to invest the taxpayers money looking at the question from a somewhat broader context really is important including how much how much of this research capacity do we need we've built a lot of it as we've been talking about through this whole hearing there's a lot of young scientists out there getting very interested in these kinds of jobs what happens if the funding for supporting that research dries up where are those scientists going to go with the skills that could make them insider threats if they were to get upset so those are the kinds of issues that we think need to be studied in evaluating the national need here in comparison to other national needs oversight of domestic and international labs proliferation dr king's worry when your team done good work and are asked to review the two reports which will hopefully be on next few weeks around here they always say a few weeks that usually means a few months reports we're asking that will assess any recommendations set forth in those reports and report back to us with your assessment we do that for us thank you and that concludes our hearing members will closer in knowing when we might have a hearing involving that issue kicking around some calendar dates as you know the majority leader is just given some back if you will fridays there's been some discussions if we're here on thursday can we do a friday morning hearing to get some i'm done we'd like to have some hearings not just on the insurance industry but also what is the effect of ban on small businesses the cost of health insurance i look forward to spending the next month in doing some hearings on insurance i know we all have an interest in th is along that same one if i could ask you in the ranking member has that information that was gathered from from those companies has that been has a majority staff share that with the minority staff everything we haven't received everything from every request we've made but the information we have received minority class pretty staff and they are class minority staff has had access to it and it will continue