Army chief: Mistakes behind live anthrax shipments ‘correctable’

The mistakes that led to Army labs accidentally shipping out anthrax and mishandling plague bacteria are “correctable,” Army Secretary John McHugh said Tuesday.

McHugh said he was “not prepared to say” how the mistakes initially happened or what steps can be taken to prevent a repeat in the future until an investigation is completed.

“We’ve got some partial answers, all of them correctable, but I think we want to be very, very sure that we understand as completely as we can the full picture before we come out and lay a way forward,” he added in remarks at the American Enterprise Institute.

{mosads}Earlier this year, an Army lab in Utah accidentally sent live anthrax to 194 labs in all 50 states and nine foreign countries. The samples were supposed to be dead or inactive before being sent to other labs to help develop countermeasures to potential anthrax attacks.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control also raised concerns that an Army lab in Maryland mishandled plague bacteria. As part of its investigation into the anthrax incident, the CDC found a sample of plague in a freezer outside the containment area at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland.

The plague sample was labeled inactive, but the CDC is doing more testing to be sure.

A week prior to the CDC’s plague announcement, McHugh called for a safety review and a moratorium on shipping biological agents from Defense Department facilities.

“I ordered the moratorium out of a sense of extreme caution,” McHugh said Tuesday. “And while as I think the CDC and others have stated that we don’t see, to this point, any threat to human health and safety, when you’re dealing with these kinds of pathogens I think the better policy is to err on the side of caution.”

The moratorium and review include retraining and a review of whether current safety protocols and standards are scientifically valid, he said.

“I don’t pretend to be an expert in the science behind it, but I’m going to make darn sure that at least in so far as my responsibility goes we’re taking every step possible to make sure the public is protected,” McHugh said, “and that we develop a way forward that allow us to conduct these tests, which are absolutely essential for the security of this nation and its people, in a way that’s as safe as humanly possible.”