A select agent slip up
| 12 May, 2010 | Adie Chan |
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University of Wisconsin at Madison biologist Gary Splitter won’t be doing much pipetting or centrifuging for the next few years. UW-Madison just pulled Splitter’s laboratory privileges for violating strict rules governing research on “select agents,” or microbes that pose serious dangers to human health and could be used as bioweapons.
After an exhaustive, two-year investigation, administrators at the school decided to bar Splitter from the lab for five years for creating antibiotic-resistant strains of the pathogenic bacterium brucellosis and inserting them into mice — work Splitter claims was being done by graduate students — without the proper approval from local or federal agencies, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Splitter, who has been at UW-Madison for more than 30 years, maintained that he was unaware of the unauthorized work being done by his students. He continues to teach and publish at the school and he’ll be back in the lab by the end of 2013 (his lab has been shuttered since 2008, when the investigation of the infraction began).
Does this story sound a little strange to anyone else? Can a PI really be completely unaware of the work his/her students are doing in the lab?
(Read this recent story on The Scientist to learn more about how select agent laws are affecting research.)
– Bob Grant, Associate Editor, The Scientist
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I can see how this could happen. Some common antibiotic markers for generating mutants in other bacteria are not allowed to be used for Select Agents as they are considered to be 2nd or 3rd line treatments for the latter. The students might not have been aware of this, and just used plasmids with the forbidden markers to create their mutants. This is probably another overreaction by the authorities to what in more enlightened times would have been considered a minor slip up.
If the students are at all competent, then yes. Indeed one should me disappointed in them if they were unable to do so.
Although, joking aside, there must have been a lack of oversight somewhere: shouldn’t they have been taught some where to draw the line?
Indeed. It was common practice in one lab I worked in to have secret projects–stuff you wanted to try but didn’t want to let on to the boss until you knew they had a chance of working.
However, there’s a world of difference between that and what’s happened at UW-Madison, which is a complete breach of regulatory protocols by the sounds of it.