CDC Shipped Deadly Bird Flu to Poultry Lab By Mistake
ATLANTA (Worthy News)– The Centers of Disease Control (CDC) accidentally shipped a deadly strain of avian influenza to a poultry research lab. Last month, sloppy handling of anthrax by the CDC potentially exposed roughly 75 its employees to the deadly bacteria.
CDC workers had somehow shipped a dangerous strain of avian influenza to a poultry research lab run by the Department of Agriculture. Known as H5N1, the virus had killed more than half of the 650 people who had been infected with it since 2003.
The recent revelations have created a crisis of faith in the federal agency, prompting calls for an independent body to investigate such incidents in the future, as well as for sweeping changes at the agency and to a sprawling web of research labs that has grew after the 2001 terror attacks led to an intensified focus on microbes that could be used as biological weapons.
The agency’s internal investigation of the troubling incidents, made public Friday, found that senior staff had failed to write up a plan for researchers to follow in the anthrax study. It also faulted scientists who neglected to review the existing literature before working with the deadly pathogen, and found that the agency was ill-prepared to respond to a potential exposure incident. — Source