The Bush administration is building a massive bioweapons facility and plans to cloak the entire operation in absolute secrecy.

The facility is intended to anticipate bioweapon attack scenarios and plan responses. It will involve laboratory tests with a myriad lethal viruses, bacterial, and other biological agents. Unfortunately, in order to do this the lab has to actually make small amounts of bioweapons to test against, and that may put the US in violation of a treaty banning biological weapons.

There is no question in my mind that this facility must be built. The anthrax scare of 2001 showed how vulnerable our society is to a bioweapons attack. Ever-continuing advances in biotechnology make very real the possibility of some nation creating a designer virus capable of killing millions of people, and even existing viruses like smallpox can do that. We must stay ahead of this game.

However, secrecy is not the right way to go about this. Absolute transparency should be required.

My biggest concern is with quality control: how can we ensure that a facility as secret as this (more secret than nuclear labs) will not engage in misbegotten experiments or be negligent in such a way that could somehow cause some mutagen to escape?

Another issue is the bioweapons treaty. An expansive reading of the treaty might, in the minds of some, justify creation of limited amounts of material for defensive purposes only. However, how would we react if we were informed that another nation like Iran was developing a secret lab that would create small amounts of material “for defensive purposes only?” We would have no moral standing to prevent another nation from doing something we are doing ourselves. By creating the lab and keeping it secret, the Bush administration will engender suspicion that may actually cause more proliferation of biological weapons.

Transparency–which is not the same thing as giving away all secrets–would ensure that the public knows what’s going on in this facility, that good quality control measures are being kept in place, that experiments are humane and necessary, and that other nations can be confident of the lab’s good intentions. Unfortunately, Bush’s insistence on secrecy, so that he can do whatever he wants as usual, does not engender confidence in anyone or any country, and in his hands this lab will probably do more harm than good.

Tags: biological-weapons, bioterrorism, bush, terrorism