# “Mad scientist” in Barcelona sent biologically hazardous C-J prion samples to his lab by courier (without taking any precautions) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 31, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384 "2023-10-31T17:30:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/1 "2023-10-31T17:30:56Z")
The title is long, but I couldn’t condense in anything shorter the utter fucked-up-ness of this piece of news. Neuroscientist Franc Llorens (deceased), associated to the University of Barcelona and Bellvitge Hospital, routinely had samples of Creutzfeld-Jacobs prions sent via courier from Portugal and Germany to his lab in Barcelona. He did not declare what he was sending, the samples were not packaged in any secure way, the packages were not marked as they should have been… His lab in Barcelona was bio safety level 1 (in order to work with Creutzfeld-Jacobs a lab has to be bio safety level 3 at least), he did not use any kind of protective measures… The researcher died at the age of 45 with symptoms reminiscent of Creutzfeld-Jacobs disease, and after his death the university found **hundreds upon hundreds** of samples of C-J prions in freezers, that he had essentially smuggled into the labs. _Ahem…_ … **WHAT.** **THE.** **FUCK?!?!?!?!** What on fucking **EARTH** was that guy thinking?!?!?!?! Read the article; everything is MORE fucked-up than I could have imagined. I guess he felt that “bureaucracy” was “preventing” him from doing his research? Or what? Honestly… What the unholy fuck?! > **[The deceased Idibell scientist sent samples with prions by courier](https://www.usanews.net/breaking/the-deceased-idibell-scientist-sent-samples-with-prions-by-courier-h101656.html)** > > The neuroscientist Franc Llorens, who died at the age of 45 in Barcelona with symptoms compatible with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which he was also researching, sent high-risk biological samples containing active prions by courier from Germany and... ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/2 "2023-10-31T19:48:57Z")
Is there any connection between this news and the fact your avatar is wearing a mask? Seriously, this is the big problem with inherently dangerous work and solo operators or academics. A single-person lab _will_ go nutty. A multi-person or corporate or government lab _might_ go nutty. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/3 "2023-10-31T20:24:50Z")
I’m not familiar with [usanews.net](http://usanews.net) but from a brief perusal of the site it looks full of click-bait gossip and questionable pop-sci. Neuroscientist Franc Llorens does appear to be a real person who did work on Creutzfeld-Jacobs disease but no other news outlet I can find is reporting on his death from a degenerative brain disorder. The [Biosafety in Microbiological & Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL) protocols](https://www.cdc.gov/labs/BMBL.html) are designed around control of bacteria, viruses/viroids, and pathogenic fungi and parasites. It really says nothing about prions (self-propagating intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP)) which are far more resilient than viruses and living organisms, and essentially have to be denatured to render them harmless, so they don’t fit within normal laboratory safety protocols and the assertion in the article that a lab has to be BSL 3 to perform research with prion-based diseases is incorrect. Fortunately, prion infection is not readily transmissible in a person-to-person vector unless one person is consuming the nervous system tissue of another, but incidental consumption of even a very small quantity of prions may cause disease, for which there are no inoculations or treatments other than palliative care. If Llorens or another researcher were shipping prion samples by mail or a commercial shipper without any protections it is certainly careless but not nearly as big a threat as many other more highly infectious agents which have escaped from many labs, including high BSL-certified labs in the United States and Europe. This is why the debate over “gain-of-function” research is so fraught, because of the potential for an enhanced pathogen to be inadvertently released from a research facility. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/4 "2023-10-31T20:30:36Z")
I wonder what the direction of causality is here. Did he get infected by prions after mailing them? Or, did he mail them because he was already infected by prions? ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/5 "2023-10-31T20:50:06Z")
I put that link because it is a straight translation into English of a Spanish language article published in “La Vanguardia”, one of the most serious newspapers in Barcelona (it is to Barcelona what the “New York Times” is to New York). “La Vanguardia” is a reliable source. I give here the original article in Spanish. If you pass it through Google translate you will see that the content is basically the same as that of the English link I gave: > **[El científico fallecido del Idibell enviaba muestras con priones por mensajero](https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20231031/9341482/cientifico-fallecido-idibell-enviaba-muestras-priones-mensajero.amp.html)** > > Ni la UB, ni Idibell, ni el Ministerio de Ciencia han explicado por qué tardaron tanto en investigar I am also putting here a couple more links to the same newspaper with additional information on the case: > **[El científico muerto introdujo las muestras con priones en el laboratorio de...](https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20231026/9328932/cientifico-muerto-introdujo-muestras-priones-laboratorio-bellvitge.amp.html)** > > El neurocientífico Franc Llorens, que investigaba la enfermedad de Creutzfeldt-Jakob y falleció en julio del 2022 a los 45 años > **[Los Mossos esperan luz verde para investigar la muerte del científico por...](https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20231024/9322887/mossos-esperan-luz-verde-fiscalia-investigar-muerte-cientifico.amp.html)** > > El caso lo asumiría la unidad central de consumo por sus vínculos con el sector Additionally, regarding prion research, I have found this link to the State University of Michigan: [https://ehs.msu.edu/lab-clinic/bio/handling-prions.html](https://ehs.msu.edu/lab-clinic/bio/handling-prions.html) Quote from that webpage: «Human prions are manipulated at Biosafety Level (BSL) 2 or 3, depending on the activity, with most human prions treated as BSL-3 under most experimental conditions.» It would thus seem that human prions should definitely be studied in labs with more stringent biosafety requirements than the one this person was using. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/6 "2023-10-31T20:51:17Z")
As long as this isn’t a ‘12 Monkeys’ scenario… ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2023, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/7 "2023-10-31T22:38:59Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > It would thus seem that human prions should definitely be studied in labs with more stringent biosafety requirements than the one this person was using. From _Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Containing and Preventing Biological Threats_: > _The primary symptom of the human prion-associated disorders is dementia, usually accompanied by manifestations of motor dysfunction. The symptoms appear insidiously in middle to late adult life and last from months to years prior to death. The abnormal protein is insoluble in all but the strongest solvents and highly resistant to digestion by proteases. It survives in tissues postmortem and is not destroyed by various rendering processes. The abnormal form of the protein is extremely resistant to heat, normal sterilization processes, and sunlight. It is also very resistant to most disinfectants and stable at a wide range of pH. The abnormal protein further does not evoke a detectable immune or inflammatory response in its host, so the body does not react to it as an invader._ Fortunately, ingestion exposure only rarely results in infection (based upon known rates of BSE exposure in the UK compared to known and suspected cases) but it is basically impossible to eradicate by normal sterilization methods, and is small enough that filtration is unlikely to be effective. It is only in the last few years that a reliable method of detection prions (misfolded protein assay (MPA)) has been available. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2023, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-scientist-in-barcelona-sent-biologically-hazardous-c-j-prion-samples-to-his-lab-by-courier-without-taking-any-precautions/992384/8 "2023-11-01T12:15:09Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > It really says nothing about prions (self-propagating intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP)) which are far more resilient than viruses and living organisms, and essentially have to be denatured to render them harmless, so they don’t fit within normal laboratory safety protocols and the assertion in the article that a lab has to be BSL 3 to perform research with prion-based diseases is incorrect. I’d take issue with that. It’s precisely because the prions are so hard to inactivate – it requires exceptionally high temperatures or treatment with highly corrosive solutions to do so with confidence – that people treat them with such care. It was working on an SBIR for using ultraviolet light as an alternative means of disposing of prions, and the laboratory I was working with that cultured and did research on prions was, indeed, a level 3 facility. I think I’d be scared of working with any group that treated them with less care.