CDC lab head resigns after anthrax incident

The bioterrorism lab head involved in potentially exposing dozens of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to deadly anthrax bacteria has stepped down, CNN reported.

According to CDC spokesman Tom Skinner, Michael Farrell, head of the Bioterrorism Rapid Response and Advanced Technology (BARAT)  Laboratory, submitted his resignation on Tuesday. Farrell had been reassigned from his post last month, after the anthrax incident was made public.

The CDC added the potential anthrax exposure happened between 6 June and 13 June. The BARAT lab had been preparing anthrax samples for use in two other labs on the CDC's Atlanta campus and failed to adequately deactivate the samples (See: Mishaps with live germ stock force closure of two CDC labs).

A CDC investigation report said the exposure happened due to failure of the lab to use an approved sterilisation technique.

The lab did not have a written plan reviewed by senior staff to ensure all safety protocols were followed. Further there was a limited knowledge of peer-reviewed literature about the process that would make it less dangerous.

The lab also had no standard operating procedure that would make ensure safe transfer of the material.

Frieden said the scientists failed to follow a scientifically derived and reviewed protocol that would have assured that anthrax was deactivated.

The management of the lab had been under scrutiny, The New York Times reported. Dr Frieden and Dr Michael Bell, who was leader of the agency's investigation into the anthrax incident and another in a different lab involving a sample contaminated with the lethal H5N1 flu said in an interview last week that they were looking closely at how the bioterrorism lab was run. The lab handled many pathogens with bioweapons potential.

Frieden said scientists who worked repeatedly with dangerous microbes ''can get a little careless.'' He added, in some of his agency's labs, the culture of safety needed to be improve.

Offering no more details, Skinner said that Farrell had said he did not want to speak to the news media.

According to Michael T Osterholm, a bioterrorism expert and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, the resignation showed that the CDC was making a good-faith effort to identify where lapses occurred and address them.

Frieden was recruiting outside experts to oversee changes in the CDC's lab culture. According to Osterholm he knew some of the candidates, whom he declined to name, and that none had previously been agency employees or official advisers, which he called ''encouraging.''

The lab accident involving anthrax took place in June, when an unidentified scientist preparing anthrax to test a new rapid pathogen detector made several mistakes, an investigation found.