A contractor working at one of the highest-security infectious disease research labs in North America recently risked an outbreak of deadly disease in order to exact retribution over a “personal dispute,” National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya claims.
According to a Health and Human Services official who spoke with Fox News, the contracting researcher poked holes in a colleague’s personal protective equipment following a lovers’ quarrel. The incident occurred at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick Army base in Frederick, Maryland, in early March, though Bhattacharya said he did not learn of it until weeks later.
At 5 p.m. on April 29, all experimental work at the facility was suspended indefinitely.
“NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick,” Bradley Moss, communication director for the office of research services at NIH, wrote to WIRED in an email. “This decision follows identification and documentation of personnel issues involving contract staff that compromised the facility’s safety culture, prompting this research pause. During the stand-down, no research will be conducted, and access will be limited to essential personnel only, to safeguard the facility and its resources.”
The investigation into the PPE incident ‘revealed a pattern — going back to the Biden administration — of safety not taken as seriously as it ought.’
The suspension of experiments, authorized by Bhattacharya in coordination with HHS Sec. Robert Kennedy, was a wise decision. The Integrated Research Facility conducts some of the highest-risk research on some of the deadliest pathogens in the world, including Lassa fever, SARS-Cov-2, and Eastern equine encephalitis. It is one of only a handful of facilities conducting such research involving “high consequence” infectious diseases in North America.
The Integrated Research Facility employs 168 workers, including contractors. The contractor who, according to Bhattacharya, “deliberately” sabotaged the coworker’s PPE has since been fired.
Connie Schmaljohn, the director of the facility, has also been placed on administrative leave. The HHS official told Fox News Schmaljohn failed to report the incident up the chain of command immediately, thereby delaying the remediation process.
Schmaljohn did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
In a tweet thread on Wednesday, Bhattacharya characterized the incident as “serious,” adding that “this is how lab leaks can happen!”
No timeline has been given for when research at the facility will resume. “I won’t reopen the lab until I am satisfied that it can be done with zero risk to public safety,” Bhattacharya pledged. “No more lab generated pandemics!”
“The sacrifice to research is immense,” said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “If things are unused for a period of time, it will cost more money to get them ready to be used again.”
The HHS official indicated to Fox News that breaches in safety protocol occurred repeatedly at the facility during the Biden administration, including as recently as November. Bhattacharya likewise claimed that the investigation into the PPE incident “revealed a pattern — going back to the Biden administration — of safety not taken as seriously as it ought.”
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