Sars Research Lab Loses 2,000 Tubes of Killer Virus

So, where did the SARS virus go?

The Pasteur Institute lost over 2,000 tubes containing fragments of the virus. Now, the fragments aren't infectious. They aren't the whole virus. Hopefully, the speculation is correct and someone just messed up and forgot to follow proper procedure and log that they destroyed the tubes and their contents.

But how do you lose 2,394 tubes of SARS at a place like this?

It is not clear how the tubes disappeared from one of the institute's safest laboratories. Management were made aware of the loss in January, Le Monde newspaper reported.

...

The tubes were stored in a high-security laboratory dedicated to research into highly infective viruses.

Access to the lab is limited to a restricted number of personnel, who have to go through a disinfection process before they can leave.

They quote the spokesman from the lab as saying that "foul play" is considered highly unlikely, but it has not been ruled out.

So the bottom lines is that they've lost over 2,000 tubes of potential bio-agent, they've known since January and they still really have no clue what happened to it. If you were someone with 2,000 tubes of bio material from SARS ... what would you be looking to do with it? Certainly, it spreads like common colds and flu, so what kind of Pandora's box might you open with that?

According to the article,it wasn't infectious,and was likely destroyed by an employee accidently without recording it. Odd that. It sounds like they have meticulous tracking and safety protocols,yet how could anyone destroy over 2000 vials and not record it? I don't believe it was taken, simply an incident internally.

reply to post by AccessDenied


Thing is that they don't know, and yes, every facility that works with infectious organism like that does have meticulous tracking protocols in place which makes it even more incredible that something like this would fall through the cracks.

The most likely scenario is that there was a failure of the tracking system, but they simply don't know. The fact that we're into April and they still don't know is a bit worrisome. Is their record keeping that flawed or imprecise?

And yes, I mentioned this isn't infectious in the OP.

Someone screwed up badly.

Happened once with a nastly pathogen once at a lab I worked in. Person didnt sign the vials out of storage before work begain
Result= person sacked + company got a angry letter from the UK home office

But this scale? The poor sods going to have the legal book thrown at him/her.

reply to post by ketsuko


Love this bit: "We've looked ...everywhere."