Homeland Security Focus Areas

Science and Technology

Chemical Defense Collaboration Protects Nation

By Sarah Maxwell
Special to American Forces Press Service

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md., June 25, 2008 – What was once was a barn for goats is now a place for scientists on the forefront of chemical defense research to test their theories to help in protecting and healing the nation’s warfighters.

A sturdy 6,800-square-foot structure made of concrete blocks, the barn was transformed into the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense’s Collaborative Research Facility here, part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

The three new labs in the renovated building are within the scope of the ICD’s Collaborate Research Program, which brings in ideas from scientists outside the institute that could develop improvements to help protect servicemembers from possible chemical-weapons attacks.

“The collaborative research here leads to countermeasures to protect the soldiers, and ultimately protects the nation,” said Army Capt. Jeremy Goodin, Research Collaboration Program director.

The facility is expected to enhance the program’s ability to accommodate work with other organizations, allowing a steady flow of scientific ingenuity. By using ICD scientists, who are part of only a handful in the world certified to handle the strongest chemicals, they can get their theories tested, Goodin said. The Army expertise is becoming more and more sought-after in research communities around the country. Just five years ago, there were only 23 collaborations, and this year the chemical defense program already has 101 projects in the works from dozens of other groups.

“From 2003 to 2008, the collaboration program skyrocketed,” Goodin said. “We stood up the CRF to accommodate the needs and interests of investigators.”

Researchers at universities, government agencies and other military laboratories often will have promising results in a bio-chemical experiment, but will not have the authority to test their theories on chemical agents due to stringent safety requirements. That’s where the collaboration program comes in. The other agency will coordinate with the principal investigators at the ICD to safely perform the portion of their experiments that require a chemical agent.

“I don’t think collaborative research anywhere else in the military is like it is here. It’s a really good deal for them and us,” said Jack Baggett, chief of ICD’s Program Strategies and Operations Office. “Although the amount of time to get a project done is a little on the long end compared to the outside research facilities, it’s because we are much more careful. We don’t rush anything.”

Baggett said the collaboration program, as well as all the research conducted in ICD’s 10 other buildings and laboratories, ensures science performed by the ICD investigators is verifiable through rigorous testing and documentation. That way, the scientists who submitted their work will know that it can be published and shared with the broader scientific community.

“Collaboration is the way to go,” Goodin said. “As a researcher, I’ve always worked with people in academia. It increases research exponentially and helps publish more papers.”

But not everyone who wants ICD to test a theory will get the chance to use the principal investigators and facilities. Potential collaborators submit a request, and if the research is found beneficial for protecting or treating servicemembers, it may get picked up. The other agencies also pay a fee for the Army’s services.

“We don’t approve everything that comes through our door,” Baggett said. “If it doesn’t fit our mission, we’re not going to do it.”

Because the program gets so many requests, he explained, the ICD researchers can be selective and concentrate on experiments that will have the broadest benefits to the country.

“We’re not a for-profit laboratory,” Baggett said. “I’d rather have someone doing one to three experiments extremely well than just getting six done.”

Benefiting from collaboration on a number of projects with ICD, Richard Gordon at MRMC’s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., said he very much appreciates the working relationship he’s had with ICD for more than a decade. As one of his partnership projects, he and an ICD investigator will delve into decontaminating and detoxifying sponges for chemically exposed skin.

“We have a group of people who want to do some of the same research at ICD as at WRAIR, but we can’t work with the chemical agents,” Gordon said. “We’re on equal footing with the science, but go there to execute.”

(Sarah Maxwell works in the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command Public Affairs Office.)

Dallasnews.com

UT fires man in charge of research safety

12:20 AM CDT on Saturday, May 31, 2008

By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – A veteran national security expert hired to make safety improvements in University of Texas research labs has been fired, less than a year after he took the job.

Dr. Harold "Woody" Davis said he's being forced out because university scientists, some of them working with infectious agents and toxic chemicals, complained he was overzealous with his safety measures.

Though he was brought on to oversee compliance in UT's research program, he said, university officials resented him for what he found: badly monitored experiments, disregard for federal reporting rules, and under-trained students working with dangerous agents.

"If I had a kid here, he or she would not be working in these labs," said Dr. Davis, who is returning to a job at a government agency in Washington. "There were serious concerns they asked me to address. But ultimately, they didn't want to address them."

Campus officials say Dr. Davis, a physician, attorney and civil servant whose career spans several federal security agencies, is being terminated for "performance, communication and personnel issues" – not for being a safety watchdog.

Dr. Davis "is disgruntled. He is not happy," said Dr. Juan Sanchez, the university's vice president for research. "He is a person not familiar with the university. When it comes to compliance, it's important to have someone who understands the regulations in the context of research."

UT officials strongly deny that there are any security problems in campus labs, which they say are fully accredited and have easily passed surprise federal inspections.

"We have a very strong and vibrant and robust compliance program," said Dr. Susan Sedwick, associate vice president for research. "We continually work to strengthen our programs."

But as recently as September, news stories revealed the university had failed to report 10 lab accidents to the National Institutes of Health over a seven-year period, incidents that included a flu virus spill and several workers' exposure to the bacteria Shigella.

When those reports broke, Dr. Davis, just two months into his new job, became the public face of the university's lab problems, making promises to increase training and monitoring, and to change the campus' safety culture. At every step, he said, he felt resistance.

Dr. Davis, who has previously worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, cautioned that the problems he's seen in UT labs aren't across the board. There are some researchers who take safety compliance seriously, he said.

But he said that in his short time at the university, he repeatedly butted heads with researchers unwilling to abide by new safety measures. He saw experiments being conducted without proper federal approval. And he witnessed barely trained undergraduates and graduate students working in high-security environments.

Dr. Davis described researchers more concerned with the perception of safety than with taking real-life precautions. Their ability to bring the university prestigious, high-dollar grants seemed to earn them a free pass, he alleged.

"There has been a pushback from day one with certain groups of researchers who were insulted at the idea that they had to disclose what was going on in their labs," said Dr. Davis, who said he was told he was being fired because he didn't "have the confidence of the faculty."

In a letter he wrote to UT President William Powers this week, Dr. Davis described a "culture of appearances over accountability ... that results in unapproved and at times dangerous research being conducted." A university spokesman said Friday that Mr. Powers had been out of the office most of the day and had not seen a copy of the letter.

Dr. Sanchez called Dr. Davis' perceptions incorrect and said there are "absolutely no safety problems" in UT labs. He said the federal reporting requirements are a top priority – second only to the security of campus labs and the students who work in them.

And Dr. Sedwick said she's not sure what Dr. Davis means when he says research wasn't reported. In her experience, researchers have always gotten proper approval for their work.

In the past, Dr. Sanchez said, the federal compliance employees hired by the university have been able to adapt to the intricacies of college research programs and campus lab experiments. Dr. Davis was not "able to cross that gap."

Edward Hammond, who runs The Sunshine Project, a biodefense and lab safety watchdog organization, sees it another way.

"This guy is a regulator. He takes rules seriously," Mr. Hammond said. "My impression is Dr. Davis proved to be more serious about safety than the university wanted someone in his position to be."

Rockville Biotech Buys Rival's Anthrax Vaccine

A Twist in Race for New Drug, Emergent Aims to Pick Up Pieces of VaxGen's Failed Federal Contract

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2008; D01

The effort to protect the country from another anthrax attack will take an unexpected turn today when Rockville firm Emergent BioSolutions plans to announce that it has bought for $2 million an anthrax vaccine from a California company that federal health officials dropped in 2006.

VaxGen of South San Francisco has struggled to survive since losing its $877.5 million contract for a next-generation anthrax vaccine. Having accumulated a $254 million deficit, VaxGen has struck an unlikely deal with Emergent, its once-bitter competitor still eager to compete for millions of dollars under the Bush administration's $5.6 billion Project BioShield program.

Emergent has paid VaxGen $2 million up front and may pay up to $8 million for meeting various milestones. Emergent must also share an unspecified portion of sales. The acquisition of the vaccine, though striking, is risky, and there is no guarantee that Emergent won't suffer the same scientific problems as VaxGen.

Emergent already sells an older version of the anthrax vaccine that is widely used in the military, but some soldiers have reported serious side effects and it can take up to 18 months and a half-dozen shots to produce immunity. The government wants a faster vaccine to be the cornerstone of the national stockpile, and in 2004 it awarded VaxGen -- a small company that had never successfully developed a product -- a contract for 75 million doses.

As Emergent spent millions of dollars lobbying the government to win support for its vaccine by arguing a sole-source contract was a bad idea, VaxGen struggled with internal problems, including the delisting of its stock. The Food and Drug Administration issued the company a written warning for making unfair comparisons between its vaccine and Emergent's.

Federal health officials were also concerned about how stable the vaccine would be in storage, canceling the contract in December 2006 after VaxGen missed a deadline to start a key test in humans. The company has nearly collapsed. Last month it laid off 75 percent of the 22 employees that remained.

Meanwhile, Emergent's competitive situation appeared to change in March when Annapolis firm PharmAthene bought the rights to a next-generation anthrax vaccine being developed by British company Avecia Biologics. That made PharmAthene a prime candidate to win an upcoming contract for 25 million doses of anthrax vaccine.

Emergent has newer vaccine candidates in development, but the research isn't as far along as the VaxGen product. With the government's request for proposals for the new contract due at the end of this month, the company settled on trying to turn around the vaccine, believing the problems have been fixed or are fixable.

"This acquisition provides us and the government with a vaccine solution that addresses the stated requirements," said Daniel Abdun-Nabi, Emergent's president. He added that it was advantageous for all parties that the government has already closely studied the vaccine for several years.

The $2 million price is a fraction of the more than $175 million spent to develop the vaccine, but VaxGen has been weighed down by financial problems. Also, a planned merger with Raven Biotechnologies was recently scuttled by VaxGen shareholders.

Emergent, once known as BioPort, is more stable. It went public shortly before VaxGen's vaccine blew up, raising $62.5 million in its initial public offering. The company is still tightly held by chief executive Fuad El-Hibri, who controls 55 percent of Emergent stock. El-Hibri, 50, was born in Germany and grew up in Europe and the Middle East before attending Stanford and Yale universities. He and his family made a fortune in telecommunications. He lives in Potomac and became a U.S. citizen in 1999.

Since 1998, Emergent has delivered approximately 20 million doses of anthrax vaccine, mostly to the Defense Department. Last year, it won a $448 million contract to provide 18.75 million doses for the stockpile, though not under the potentially more lucrative BioShield contract for a newer vaccine. While winning such a contract may be viewed as preferable by Wall Street, the strategy is not without significant risk.

"The government has gone on the record looking for new technology, but there's a big leap of faith here," said Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities, which tracks Emergent and doesn't have a banking relationship with the company. "Many companies have been felled by new technology. VaxGen is a perfect example of a company turning into vaporware. It was death by slow cuts."

There is no guarantee that Emergent, even if it is successful fixing the vaccine, will win the contract. Besides it and PharmAthene, several other companies could apply, including one in India.

And though Emergent maintains that the government shouldn't award a sole-source contract, it is already making signals that it is preferable to companies making the vaccine overseas.

PharmAthene, though in Annapolis, will still rely on Avecia to make key parts of the vaccine in Britain. In a statement regarding the deal with VaxGen, Emergent noted that the "acquisition positions Emergent to offer the U.S. Government a domestic source for an advanced anthrax vaccine candidate" -- the key phrase being "domestic," since the vaccine would be manufactured in Michigan.

The Scientist

Volume 22 | Issue 4 | Page 40

The War on Animal Research

What it's like to be hounded by activists who will stop at nothing to stop your research.

By P. Michael Conn
Photographs by Bill Cramer

This is an edited excerpt from The Animal Research War by P. Michael Conn and James V. Parker, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in May 2008.

For more information please visit www.palgrave-usa.com.

"Excuse me," I said, cutting to the front of the line of passengers at the airport departure gate counter. "I have an emergency and need you to call the police right now!" Two airline agents stopped checking seating charts and looked at me. "I am a medical researcher and some people are protesting my visit to Tampa. They're not passengers," I explained. (This was in 2001, shortly before 9/11, when security measures allowed nonpassengers into boarding areas.)

One desk agent examined my boarding pass, and then looked at my pursuers. I knew what she saw: five people with T-shirts that read: "KEEP PRIMATE TESTER Dr. P.M. CONN OUT OF U.S.F." She let me through. Ten minutes later, when the pilot boarded and asked if I was okay, and I heard the outer doors close, my blood pressure and heart rate slowly began to sink into normal ranges.

I was en route from Tampa where I had been selected as a final candidate for the position of vice president for research at the University of South Florida (USF). The people following me were animal rights activists, who had learned of my visit on an animal rights listserv.

I currently don't use animals in my research, but I am associated with people who do. I was special assistant to the president of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), and associate director of one of its Institutes, the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC). I also have a research program that has contributed to the development of treatments for breast and prostate cancer, endometriosis, and problems of infertility. 1,2 I believe in the value of animal research in basic science. I have spoken and written about the importance of humane animal research and how it benefits both humans and animals.

Because of my position at the OHSU primate center, an animal rights activist had urged subscribers to an animal rights listserv to write letters to the University of South Florida administration and to my academic colleagues, protesting my candidacy. In Tampa, my plane was met by animal extremists who tried to engage and film me. Exercising their rights under a state open-meetings law, they were present at most of my scheduled meetings with university committees. Some stood outside meeting room doors to berate attendees and distribute fliers that made outlandish claims. At the end of the first day, I considered returning home to Portland for my safety, then decided to remain in this stressful situation for one more day. The university assigned an armed police officer to look after me. I received threatening calls at my hotel and knocks on the door in the middle of the night.

As the demonstrators hoped, drawing this much media attention suggested that I or my research program would be a liability. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.

The university assigned an armed police officer to look after me.

What word other than "war" can we employ to describe what is happening to the enterprise of biomedical research? Attack? Assault? How else to describe the posting of pictures of researchers and inaccurate, inflammatory descriptions of their work on the Internet? What do we call the nighttime "visits" to our homes, the mailing of letters to scientists in envelopes armed with razor blades, and Internet postings that reveal an eerie and threatening knowledge of our personal lives and loved ones?

Some argue that animal extremists are a handful, at most. Scientists should ignore them, they say, and concentrate on their research. But consider this: All of the drama surrounding my trip to Tampa was achieved by, at most, 15 poorly informed and inarticulate people who successfully stirred up fear among the search committee, which had been highly supportive of me at first. A small group of extremists are more successful than their moderate colleagues in drawing public attention to their cause, and can exercise an influence wholly disproportionate to their numbers. They are chillingly effective in causing casualties, whether institutional or personal.

The metaphor of war can be self-defeating. We are confident that in any open and civilized public-policy debate, scientists, even though they tend to be poor communicators, would prevail over their challengers. But what will happen if researchers, convinced that they are encircled by belligerents, retreat behind barricades and remain incommunicado? Research and its beneficiaries - that is, all of us - stand to lose.

I never predicted that I would find myself, at age 50, a target of the animal rights community. I have been interested in the biological process of life as long as I can remember. By the time I was 12, I realized that cures for diseases required understanding how the body works when it is healthy. Even before that, I was a biology geek, crawling around on the ground to watch ants, and growing seeds under different colors of plastic film.

These people charged me with "crimes" that I had never committed.

I had read a little bit about animal rights activities when I was in high school in the late 1960s. It was never front-page news, mostly distant and abstract grumblings from "antivivisection" groups in the UK. When I went to college at the University of Michigan, activism was directed towards ending the Vietnam War. I watched people of conscience, including a roommate, get arrested for demonstrating their views.

I never trained to go into primate research and, frankly, knew little about nonhuman primates until I came to Oregon in 1993. I spent the first part of my career at Duke University, working on rat-derived cell cultures. We used white rats and a handful of mice, all of them raised for the laboratory. We caused them no pain and killed them humanely to study their tissues. Six years later, when I became a department head at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, I made the transition to continuous cell-culture lines.3,4

ONPRC, one of eight federally sponsored primate research centers, is a fully accredited institution that is responsible for the care of more than 3,500 monkeys. This is a serious responsibility that involves frequent, unannounced inspection visits by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). We support our animals with a veterinary and animal-care staff of 90 people, along with a separate psychological enrichment program that includes seven more people led by a doctoral level researcher. We also participate in a voluntary inspection program by an international professional organization, the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). We are fully accredited by that program as well.

The envelope blades, armed with rat posion, were placed so that opening the letter would result in a severe cut.

But that wasn't enough to satisfy the activists who set out to sabotage my trip to the University of Southern Florida. Several things struck me about this experience. For one, the communication among animal extremists was fast, and effective. I was also shocked by the accusations. These people charged me with "crimes" that I had never committed: torturing marmosets and obtaining huge quantities of monkey sperm by a process that they likened to genital electrocution. When I tried to tell them I didn't use sperm and my studies were all done in cell cultures, they shouted me down.

Some investigators at our center and elsewhere routinely collect monkey sperm by a process called electroejaculation. The USDA and the veterinary community approve this process, which isn't painful (despite its unfortunate name). A similar process is used for human paraplegics, otherwise unable to father children. In terms of torturing marmosets, 16 years ago, I collaborated with a British colleague in measuring hormone levels in some marmosets. For that contribution my name was added (as a middle author) to the scientific publication's author list. I had never seen the animals, since the serum was shipped to me on dry ice from England. 5

The accusations lacked any basis in fact, and people who should have known better - the search committee, for example - accepted them as truth. The president of the university, who had disclosed to me the ironic detail that she had grown up in a family of meat packers, and who had been gracious and supportive during the interview process, refused to speak with me further afterwards. The extremists, of course, took credit. The university eventually filled the position with an animal researcher who works on a rat model of hypertension, but who isn't associated with a primate center and thus wasn't in the crosshairs.

I moved to Portland in 1993. At the time, I was unaware that the area is an incubator for the animal rights movement, which I considered distant and irrelevant, much as I had in high school. On May 3, 1996, that began to change.

That day, I arrived at work early in the morning to find two cars blocking the only entrance to our primate center. The drivers had fastened their necks to the steering column of each car using bicycle locks, and the keys to the cars and the locks were "lost." After firefighters sawed off the steering columns, found the keys, liberated the drivers, and towed the cars, ONPRC officials signed complaints for second-degree criminal trespass against Craig Rosebraugh and his associates, who identified themselves as members of the Liberation Collective.

Ineffective though it was, this event kindled my interest in the animal rights movement. In 1994, the primate center was approaching its 35th year of uninterrupted compliance with federal regulations for animal care. Nevertheless, we were being targeted by activists. I began monitoring animal rights Web sites, following their listservs, and gathering information from a handful of proresearch organizations operating on shoestring budgets, which provided e-mail summaries of animal rights activities.

One morning in October 1999, I saw a startling message on one of the listservs: A group calling itself the Justice Department said it had sent razor blades to about 80 animal researchers. The blades had been fastened near the top of each envelope so that opening them by inserting a thumb under the flap would result in a severe cut. The blades, the letter announced, had been armed with rat poison. The enclosed letter called on scientists to abandon their research within 12 months or "your violence will be turned back upon you."

I found four primate center investigators on the list of recipients. Being an early riser, I was able to warn them, and we recovered all four envelopes, unopened. These were transferred to law enforcement authorities, but to this day we have heard nothing about them. The 12-month deadline to abandon research programs came and went, without incident.

In recent years, I personally got to know some of the movement's most infamous members.

Craig Rosebraugh - I met Rosebraugh for the first time when his neck was attached to a steering wheel at the entrance to the primate center. In recent years, Rosebraugh ran the press office of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He told mainstream media when seemingly random fires or other destructive acts were the result of the movement. He claimed to be uninvolved, and provided no names: Members of the ELF, and its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), don't carry identification cards or have meetings. No one knows who all the members are.

The FBI, armed with search warrants, had seen fit on two occasions to search Rosebraugh's home. On the first occasion, agents discovered a purple index card, duly reported in the local newspaper, containing my name and home address. Why this card was in his house, or what it might have portended, remains a mystery to this day. You can be assured that when I learned of the discovery, I felt not just the threat of violence, but something more: a violation of my person.

When subpoenaed to testify before Congress in February 2002 as part of an ecoterror investigation led by Senator James Inhofe, Rosebraugh answered only a portion of questions, but some caught my attention.

Q: Do you know who Michael Conn is?

A: Michael Conn is a researcher at the ONPRC in Beaverton (OR). Conn wastes hundreds of thousands of federal tax dollars torturing and killing monkeys, a practice which has in no way benefited human health.

Q: Why was there an index card with Mr. Conn's name and home address in your residence? Was either ELF or ALF planning to take 'direct action' against Mr. Conn or his property? If not, why was Mr. Conn's name and address in your possession?

A:See all objections, rights, and privileges asserted.

In all, Rosebraugh took the Fifth Amendment more than 50 times.

In October 2003, he announced and promoted his new, self-published manifesto, The Logic of Political Violence. The cover features an image of the burning World Trade Center towers, and the book contains this message: "Attack the financial centers of the country ... This can be done in a variety of ways from massive property destruction, to online sabotage, to physical occupation of buildings."

Matt Rossell - Matt Rossell is very good with people. He is clean and well groomed, and seems honest - in all, the kind of person that you might like your daughter to marry. All of this led us to hire him as an animal technician in 1998.

Rossell's subterfuge was so effective that when the local chapter of the Animal Legal Defense Fund announced a press conference to expose allegations (including videos) from a whistleblower about animal abuse at the primate center, we had no idea who the whistleblower might be. Even after we learned it was Rossell, we did not realize that he had been working at our facility as an informant.

Dealing with the public relations nightmare created by Rossell's video images was extremely difficult, to say the least. One of the videos showed a "hungry and filthy" monkey in an incubator. In reality, the infant had been given human baby food and had, like human babies, played with it and smeared the puree on the incubator window. The video had been made at an opportune moment before daily cleanup. From this same video clip came a still photo, frozen at the instant when the infant face looks anguished. This was puzzling until we went back to the video and noticed a rubber-gloved finger moving over the window of the incubator and toward the monkey. In expectation of food, the monkey moves toward the finger, pursing its lips and producing, for less than a second, the look that Rossell reduced to a still. The monkey was not upset or in pain, just caught in an unflattering pose.

Other images presented frightened animals living in what looks like crowded conditions and in the midst of feces covering the floor. The images were created before morning cleanup, so some of the material is likely feces, but most is Purina Monkey Chow biscuits photographed from a distance in the dim light of dawn before morning cleanup. The photographer, having entered their enclosure, had likely frightened the monkeys, causing them to huddle together and appear hemmed in.

Another clip showed a room of monkeys banging their cages. But, in this instance, Rossell's cropping wasn't careful enough: At the bottom right of the video image we can see the food cart, and any animal technician will tell you that monkeys bang their cages in excitement when they see food coming.

The center launched an Internet site to explain the truth behind each of Rossell's images. None of his allegations were supported by extensive federal investigations. Five federal investigators, all veterinarians, worked daily for two weeks but found no merit in Rossell's claims and found no signs of animal cruelty or federal noncompliance. Animal abuse would have been impossible to hide in this investigation or in the 10 unannounced inspections that extended our continuous USDA certification to over 40 years in a row. The primate center was cleared of any wrongdoing. But Rossell has used his images to elicit contributions to the California nonprofit In Defense of Animals, and Web sites and brochures continue to display the images.

No one could wish for new plagues to bring home to the public the need for animal research and put animal extremism to rest. Yet, with global warming, jet travel, avian flu, and AIDS, as well as threats of bioterrorism, diseases once unknown or thought to be conquered are arriving on our doorstep. It may be that exotic and resurgent viruses will swing public opinion in favor of animal research. Medical schools, scientific societies, physician organizations, and research institutions must get out and explain the connection between animal research and human and animal health. We cannot afford to keep it a dirty little secret.

References

1. P.M. Conn, W.F. Crowley, "Gonadotropin-releasing hormone and its analogues," N Engl J Med, 324:93-103, 1991.

2. C. Castro-Fernandez et al., "Beyond the signal sequence: Protein routing in health and disease," Endocr Rev, 26:479-503, 2005.

3. P.M. Conn et al., "G protein-coupled receptor trafficking in health and disease: lessons learned to prepare for mutant rescue in vivo," Pharmacol Rev, 59:225-50, 2007.

4. A. Ulloa-Aguirre, P.M. Conn, "G-protein-coupled receptor trafficking: Understanding the chemical basis of health and disease," ACS Chem Biol, 1:631-8, 2006.

5. H.M. Fraser et al., "Gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist for postpartum contraception: outcome for the mother and male offspring in the marmoset," J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 78:121-5, 1994.

Statement from U.S. Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Laura Keehner

Release Date: February 29, 2008

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

P-28 was designed to be a demonstration of critical technologies and system integration under the broader SBInet initiative. Specifically, its purpose was to demonstrate the feasibility of the SBInet technical approach developed by Boeing, and to show that this type of technology could be deployed to help secure the southwest border of the United States. The intended objective has been achieved – after successful field testing, we formally accepted it from Boeing last week. We have a system that is operational and has already assisted in identifying and apprehending over 2,000 illegal aliens trying to cross the border since December.

We have been forthcoming about the technical deficiencies identified in the P-28 module last year, and as good stewards of the taxpayers’ money, DHS delayed acceptance of P-28. After a period or operational testing, additional deficiencies were identified and subsequently corrected to the department’s satisfaction. From the P-28 demonstration, we learned that a one-size-fits-all architecture does not meet our needs. Accordingly, we are building upon lessons learned to develop a new border-wide architecture that will incorporate upgraded software, mobile surveillance systems, unattended ground sensors, unmanned and manned aviation assets, and an improved communication system to enable better connectivity and system performance.

The GAO is simply incorrect in its assertion that the delay with P-28, which was from June to December 2007 only, delayed our deploying other tactical infrastructure along the border. In fact, we are committed to developing and deploying technology and tactical infrastructure along the border that works and that protects the interests of taxpayers. To that end, we have requested a budget of $775 million next fiscal year – bringing the two-year total to $2 billion – to continue these efforts.

The department has completed more than 167 miles of pedestrian fence and 134 miles of vehicle fence on the southwest border, for a total of approximately 302 miles. We are on track to have 670 miles of total pedestrian fence and vehicle fence by the end of 2008. Further, the Border Patrol now has more than 15,000 agents and by the end of this year we will have more than 18,300 agents. This doubles the size of the Border Patrol under President Bush’s leadership. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) also continues to increase its workforce at the ports of entry, hiring 2,156 new CBP Officers and 340 agriculture specialists, for a net increase of 648 officers and 151 specialists in Fiscal Year 2007.

Fact Sheet: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement

Release Date: February 29, 2008

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

Each day at America’s ports of entry CBP officers inspect more than 1.1 million travelers, including 340,000 vehicles and over 85,000 shipments of goods approved for entry; process more than 70,000 truck, rail and sea containers; collect more than $88 million in fees, duties, and tariffs; seize more than 5,500 pounds in illegal narcotics; and intercept more than 4,400 agricultural items and pests at ports of entry.

Securing the Border

DHS has completed more than 167 miles of pedestrian fence and 134 miles of vehicle fence on the southwest border, for a total of approximately 302 miles.
We are on track to have 670 miles of total pedestrian fence and vehicle fence by the end of 2008.
The Border Patrol now has more than 15,000 agents and by the end of this year we will have more than 18,300 agents. This doubles the size of the Border Patrol over the FY 2001 level.
We are committed to using technology along the border in connection with tactical infrastructure, where Border Patrol deems necessary. Some technology currently used includes: unattended ground sensors, truck-mounted mobile surveillance systems, remote video surveillance systems, unmanned aerial systems, and fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft to detect, classify, track and respond to illegal border crossings.
The National Guard continues to support the Border Patrol under Operation Jump Start. This partnership has been extremely productive as we work to the build the fence and train Border Patrol agents.
DHS saw a more than 20 percent reduction in apprehensions of illegal aliens at the southern border in Fiscal Year 2007. This is an indication that there are fewer attempts to cross the border illegally.

Interior Enforcement

In Fiscal Year 2007, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 3,563 gang members and their associates. This includes 1,489 criminal arrests.
Under Operation Community Shield ICE has arrested more than 8,000 members and associates of approximately 700 different gangs. Of those apprehended, 2,444 have been charged criminally and 5,211 have been charged with immigration violations and processed for removal.
Over a three month period last summer ICE arrested more than 1,300 violent street gang members and associates in 23 cities across 19 states.
ICE has expanded its Criminal Alien Program to identify incarcerated criminal aliens. In Fiscal Year 2007, ICE identified for removal more than 164,000 criminals who were incarcerated in federal, state and local facilities.
ICE has increased its fugitive operations teams from 15 in 2005 to 75 today with an additional 29 allocated for Fiscal Year 2008. As a result, the fugitive alien population has plummeted by more than 35,000. Fugitive Operations Teams made more than 30,000 arrests in 2007, nearly doubling Fiscal Year 2006 arrests.
ICE continues to increase worksite enforcement operations. In Fiscal Year 2007, ICE made 863 criminal arrests and 4,077 administrative arrests for a total of 4,940 arrests.
In Fiscal Year 2007, DHS obtained more than $30 million in criminal fines, restitutions and civil judgments as a result of worksite enforcement.

E-Verify

E-Verify is a free and simple to use Web-based system that electronically verifies the employment eligibility of newly hired employees. For more information on E-Verify visit www.dhs.gov/E-Verify.
E-Verify works by allowing participating employers to electronically compare employee information taken from the Form I-9 (the paper based employee eligibility verification form used for all new hires) against more than 425 million records in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) database and more than 60 million records in DHS immigration databases. Results are returned within seconds.
Currently, more than 54,000 employers in every state are enrolled in E-Verify and, on average, the program increases by about 1,000 new employers each week. The system is currently capable of handling up to 25 million inquiries a year.

No-Match Letters

DHS issued a regulation earlier last year which outlines specific steps an employer should take if they receive a “no-match” letter from the SSA informing them they have an employee whose name and Social Security Number do not match the government records.
The regulation sets forth clear guidance for businesses to comply with “no-match” notices and provides a safe harbor for employers who follow the guidance and perform due diligence so they are not found in violation of their legal obligations.
The implementation of this regulation has been delayed to lawsuits filed by the ACLU and U.S. Chamber of Commerce preventing DHS from issuing “no-match” letters.

Pentagon Seeks Money for Unmanned Drones

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

Associated Press Writer

6:08 PM CST, February 5, 2008

WASHINGTON

When a missile fired from a U.S. Predator killed a top al-Qaida leader last week it underscored the warfighting power of unmanned aircraft, which are being considered for even greater use in Afghanistan and would consume at least $3.4 billion in the Pentagon's 2009 proposed budget.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be traveling to a meeting of NATO defense ministers this week to discuss military needs in Afghanistan, which include more such eyes-in-the sky. And Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Tuesday that the demand for intelligence-gathering aircraft there, as well as in Iraq, "has never been higher."

According to military officials and budget documents, the Pentagon's spending proposal would buy more of the larger, costlier and deadlier Air Force Predators and Reapers than in the current budget year. The hunter-killer drones are armed with missiles and can also rapidly relay photos and video to troops on the ground.

Early last week, Abu Laith al-Libi -- a key al-Qaida leader -- was killed when a Predator fired on a suspected terrorist safehouse in Pakistan's north Waziristan region. Predators, which are used by the Air Force and the CIA, are armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles. Officials have not confirmed whose Predator struck al-Libi, although all signs point to the CIA.

Overall, the Defense Department is asking for $2.6 billion in its base budget for a variety of drones for the Air Force, Army and Marines. Also, the Navy is looking for at least $800 million for continuing research and development, particularly regarding drones that can take off and land vertically from its ships.

The Pentagon also has a pending request for $460 million in emergency war funding for unmanned aircraft that has yet to be approved by Congress. That money is not included in the 2009 budget proposal, but in a supplemental request. The 2008 budget included about $2.3 billion for drones.

"The secretary is doing everything within his power to make sure that the commanders on the ground have as many intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets as humanly possible," Morrell told reporters.

He said Gates, who will leave Wednesday for a NATO meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, will urge defense ministers there to do all they can to meet the needs of the military in Afghanistan. Gen. John Craddock, the top NATO commander and head of the U.S. European Command told, The Associated Press last week that the military is looking for more surveillance and other intelligence-gathering systems to help aid the fight in Afghanistan.

The growing dependence on unmanned aircraft is evident in the Air Force's budget request, which seeks a total of 93 aircraft, 52 of which are drones.

Of those, 39 are Predators, at a cost of about $378 million, and nine are Reapers, for about $161 million. Another $80 million is being requested for ongoing research and development of those programs. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. is prime contractor for the Predator.

The Air Force also is asking for nearly $1 billion for continued research and the purchase of five Global Hawks, which are the military's top surveillance system. Northrop Grumman Corp. is the Global Hawk's prime contractor.

At the same time, the Army budget includes about $186 million for one of its new Warrior systems, which includes 12 drones and is an armed hunter-killer similar to the Predator.

The Army also continues to rely on its workhorse drone, the Raven, which weighs about four pounds and can be launched into the air by hand. Smaller Army units, such as companies and battalions, have Ravens, which they often use to locate roadside bombs or give soldiers a glimpse of what is going on over the next hill.

There is $30 million in the proposed budget for 168 Raven systems, which each include three drones and required controls. Thus, all together the Army wants 504 of the drones. AeroVironment Inc. builds the Raven.

As of Jan. 15, Army drones have spent nearly 400,000 hours in the air in Iraq since February 2003. The total for Afghanistan, during that same time period, is close to 20,000 hours.

The Marines are seeking about $20 million in the 2009 budget for one Shadow system, which includes four drones. AAI Corp. builds the system.

The Navy is also working to develop unmanned aircraft, and is looking for at least $800 million for ongoing research on several unmanned combat and surveillance systems.

CSU unveils $30 million biocontainment lab

Greg Campbell
October 3, 2007

By Greg Campbell

For the Tribune

It's apt that Colorado State University's newly unveiled Rocky Mountain Regional Biocontainment Laboratory is located on Rampart Drive -- of all the places in Fort Collins that's most in need of expressing a sense of fortification, it's here.

Once it's up and running, the $30 million lab that held its ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday morning will be home to some of the deadliest bacteria and viruses on the globe, but there are few complaints from the neighbors. In fact, the new lab won't bring much that's new to the area in terms of what even some seasoned scientists call "spooky" microbes, infectious bugs and weaponizable biological agents.

Between the existing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention field station, the Colorado Division of Wildlife research center and the new biocontainment lab, an entire galaxy of dangerous material will be concentrated in a linear quarter-mile along the Fort Collins foothills.

Among them are anthrax, SARS, avian influenza, tularemia, encephalitis, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, chronic wasting disease, plague, yellow fever and dengue fever, just to name a few.

"One of the spookier ones we'll be working on is Burkholderia, an organism on the select agent list," meaning it could be adapted for biological warfare, said Dr. Ralph Smith, interim director of CSU's infectious diseases complex and a professor of the department of microbiology, immunology and pathology. Burkholderia can incubate for up to 60 years, is infectious during its incubation period and seems to be able to penetrate skin.

But Smith and others who hosted a who's who of local dignitaries and media on a tour of the facility stressed that CSU's new Level III biocontainment lab -- meaning that it is certified for research and testing of exotic bacteria and viruses that have the potential to cause serious or lethal diseases if inhaled -- has put safety above everything else.

"Before we work on any agents, we're inspected by a team from the CDC to examine our protocols," Smith said "We can't start any work without their approval."

As far as the new facility representing a possible terrorism target, he said the university was required to perform a classified threat and risk assessment in which possible threats and mitigation measures were identified and analyzed.

"Our main criteria is safety," reiterated Bob Ellis, the university's director of biosafety. "That trumps everything else."

So it would seem; on a tour of the facility, the safety features of a variety of rooms were ticked off for media members in a way that left little question that the building was as hermetic as possible. In an isolation lab, where the most dangerous work will be performed, it was pointed out that the floor is made of seven layers of epoxy. It was explained how airflows are not only constantly monitored to ensure specific air pressure, but how those monitors are rigged to set off alarms if the airflow is disrupted. Utilities, such as gas and electricity, come in through airtight holes in the ceiling, and the sprinkler system is designed to put out fires with a low-flow mist. That keeps to a minimum the amount of contaminated water that would have to be disposed of ... and that water stays in the room since there are no floor drains. Air is exhausted through a thick HEPPA filter designed to capture microbes in cellulose fibers.

In comments before the ribbon cutting, CSU President Larry Penley said the lab will help researchers protect human health against threats both now and in the future.

"The facility we dedicate today is a remarkable tribute to where we've been and where we're headed at Colorado State as an exceptional land-grant university," he said.

After a series of community open houses, which will be the last time residents will be allowed in the secure building, researchers will work with Level II projects in order to ramp up to Level III research.

It should be fully operational within four to six months.

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