Pentagon appeals for scientists' help tracking anthrax shipments

[June 05, 2015]  By Sharon Begley

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Thursday asked microbiologists for help in tracking samples of anthrax that the army shipped to at least 51 labs in 17 U.S. states and three foreign countries, according to an announcement shared with Reuters.

The request indicates that the Pentagon does not know where the anthrax wound up. Researchers who had worked with it at the Dugway Proving Ground biological lab in Utah thought the anthrax samples that they shipped had been killed, but at least one of the labs that received it said it in fact contained live spores.

"It suggests there has been some sideways movement of the samples that the army has no record of," said Martin Hugh-Jones, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at Louisiana State University who is considered the dean of non-defense anthrax research.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon said the number of labs known to have received live samples of anthrax could rise as its investigation continues.

The Defense Department's request to the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), which the group emailed to its members, indicates how far from complete that investigation might be.

The request reiterated that "there are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection" in lab workers and "no known risk to the general public."

But it asked the ASM to notify its members that the Pentagon is recalling the anthrax samples. The association includes microbiologists who work in academia, commercial labs, government facilities and elsewhere.

The Pentagon said its goal is to reach scientists "who may have received samples of inactivated Bacillus anthracis supplied by DoD from others within their institutions or third parties."

The Pentagon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The Pentagon's request to the ASM indicates that labs which received anthrax directly from Dugway may well have shipped it to colleagues within or beyond their own university or company, said Hugh-Jones. Either there are no good records of the chain of custody, he said, or the Pentagon does not have those records.

"This was supposed to be dead material," said microbiologist Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the founding editor of the ASM's journal mBio. "If it was completely inactive you would think that a record of chain of custody would not be required in the same form as if they were dealing with live spores."

Most labs keep some sort of notebook or diary of how they handle samples, however.

"I suspect this will not be so hard to figure out since labs know who they sent samples to," said Casadevall. "With all the publicity, anyone who got spores from anyone would probably be concerned."

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by David Gregorio)

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