By Jonathan York
Daily Texan
March 27, 2003, Thursday

A report to the federal government that the University of Texas-Austin fought to keep secret shows that students may be attending class in close proximity to components of such potential biological weapons as anthrax, Ebola and botulinum toxin.

But whether the University's samples of these and eight other agents are dangerous is a matter for debate.

The four-page report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obtained by The Daily Texan through an open records request, listed laboratory amounts of Ebola viruses, conotoxins, ricin, tetrodotoxin, Bacillus anthracis [anthrax], Brucella melitensis [brucellosis], aflatoxins, botulinum toxins [botulism], Shiga toxin, staphylococcal enter-otoxin and vesicular stomatitis virus.

Only one of those agents -- vesicular stomatitis virus -- is "viable" for reproduction, according to the report. Erle Janssen, UT director for environmental health and safety, said that amount is a harmless laboratory strain.

The samples listed are checked as "recombinant organism, nucleic acid or genetic elements from agent." In other words, they use only pieces of a dangerous agent's DNA or RNA strand. All the University's samples exist in these non-infectious forms.

"You can take very small amounts which have no infectious, no vaccine-producing property, but it can be use to make a probe, if you're building a sensor to detect this," said Steven Kornguth, who oversees the University's Biological and Chemical Counter measures program.

Some of the Ebola research was conducted by Jon Huibregtse, a UT microbiology associate professor.

"We only have one cloned gene from the virus," Huibregtse said.

"Ebola virus has its own DNA genome. We have only a single gene from that, which is cloned into a vector and maintained completely in bacteria."

Some of the toxins can be fatal if injected. But according to Brent Iverson, a UT chemistry professor, "gasoline is much worse."

"You're dealing with things that the big picture is not understood," Iverson said, noting that anthrax toxin, which he has studied, is harmless with skin contact. "There's a difference between something that's infectious ... and these toxins."

UT officials have treated information about the agents as if they were dangerous. Janssen would not reveal where the agents are kept nor which scientists use them in research. UT officials challenged in court the state attorney general's ruling that the CDC form was public information. They dropped the lawsuit this week.

"I just have to be very careful," Janssen said. "I don't think anybody will be posting their list. The feds cannot divulge that information under the Freedom of Information Act. It's not necessarily just UT-Austin that would not like to see this stuff in the newspaper."

Edward Hammond leads the Sunshine Project, a watchdog group in Austin, Texas, that opposes the development of chemical weapons. He questioned the University's reticence to release information.

"You can read different things into that," Hammond said. "Why are they being this way about this information? It may not be nefarious. It could be nefarious. Because of the nature of biodefense work, it really has to be subject to the highest public scrutiny."

More stringent regulation of "select agents" identified by the CDC required the University to submit a report in September 2002. CDC requirements for 2003, however, mean most of the University's agents are kept in too small amounts to be reported. UT officials cited the change in dropping their lawsuit.

Under revised guidelines, only two agents the University has registered still must be reported, Janssen said. He would not say which ones he meant.

Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, takes issue with the latest CDC requirements. He said he opposed in writing the two guidelines that will no longer regulate most of the select agents the University possesses. For instance, some derivatives can be recombined into new viruses.

"It has been demonstrated again and again that it is readily possible to combine [these agents] into a full-length genome," Ebright said. "With a virus, it can be done very rapidly."

Lately, concern for the safety of biological agents in university hands has brought quick responses from government officials.

For example, a FedEx office at Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio was evacuated and cleaned last week after a box holding live samples of West Nile virus exploded. The package was bound for UT Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.

And the FBI and CDC combed Lubbock, Texas, in January after at least 30 vials of bubonic plague went missing. A Texas Tech University professor was later charged for allegedly lying about the circumstances of the disappearance.

The University is careful in providing access to its select agents, Janssen said. He said researchers working with them need a key card and three separate keys. Processes for shipping samples to the University require extensive correspondence with the CDC.