Mouse_Maven and other lab techy type people, a question.

Sorry I can’t name all of you. But I have a question on behalf of my mom.

Paraphrased: “I don’t think his FIL infected him on purpose, because he would be killing his daughter too. If he wanted them both dead, he’d infect her first and frame him. But is it possible that the infection did come through him, without malice aforethought? I’m sure they have literally air-tight security at those labs, but Three Mile Island had failsafes too.”

That seems to be the question no one is asking…did this guy get infected through his father-in-law (to-be, at that time) and if so, how? Has the father-in-law been tested? Has the now-wife been tested? If he’s had this since before January, she’s been exposed for quite a while. Or did he catch it from her? I want answers, darn it!

I’m not exactly sure what your question is… whether a small amount of material could, theoretically, be removed from a lab by an employee?

I don’t work in a biological lab (no viruses and bacteria!) but I do work in a chemical lab, with various controlled substances (such as cocaine, codeine, morphine, fentanyl, lorazepam etc) which have their usage tracked to the milligram and the millilitre when dealing with the injectable finished products that my company makes. There are only certain people who have access to these substances, and I need to get my samples for testing from them, and return what is left to them. Those people with access to the safe are on file with the government (and police I suppose) so if something goes missing, they are the ones who have to explain it.

That being said, would it be possible to steal a small amount?

Unfortunately, yes. None of the controls are 100% perfect so it wouldn’t be impossible for me to walk out with a controlled substance, assuming I had the inclination to do so. Thing there is no way for me to get my hands on the stuff without signing for it first, so if someone I know suddenly dies of a massive morphine overdose, it can be easily proven that I had used morphine at work, and the bottle can be examined to see if it still contained what it was meant to contain. The paper trail would be hard to fake or cover up. So I could walk out the door with stuff, but in the long run, I could never get away with it.

To explain why I have even thought about it this much: I took part in a committee to discuss weaknesses in our controlled substances plan!

As oddly coincidental as it is, I don’t think the infection came out of the CDC. True, some of the bacteria could have been smuggled out, but if you’re going to kill off someone, MRSA or VRE would be faster. Resistant Mycoplasma tuberculosis (MTB) is a long, drawn out infection that would take months to kill, and its use would suggest torture in addition to death. Unless the CDC employee really hated his future SIL or had issues with his daughter getting married, I don’t see intentional infection as the cause. The infected guy appears to me to be someone who doesn’t make good decisions all the time (sneaking back into the US via Canada nothwithstanding, they apparently weren’t married in Greece as planned because they didn’t have the needed paperwork), and I think that’s more likely the cause.

The media has conveniently forgotten to mention the getting infected with MTB takes some doing. MTB divides once every 24 hours, as opposed to E. coli, which divides every 20 minutes. You have to be exposed to someone with MTB for days or weeks before the risk of infection increases significantly. If the future FIL did infect the future SIL, he would have had to aerosolize the smuggled sample, risking infecting himself. I think the future SIL was exposed to someone else for a while and contracted it that way. The FIL, by the nature of his work at the CDC, would be closely monitored for MTB infection.

Vlad/Igor

Air tight security? Hardly.

First, you can grow up as much of a bacteria or virus as you want. No one can keep track of how much I have on hand at any given time. I just inoculate some media, and put it in an incubator. I can turn a few bacteria into hundreds of millions in no time.

Anecdote: I was moving labs and didn’t trust the moving guys with my virus stocks. These were relatively harmless vaccinia virus, but this is a virus QUITE related to smallpox. I took them on the New York subway to transfer them between schools.

No, we weren’t thinking of the FIL smuggling/stealing/purposely bringing bacteria out of the lab. I was wondering if there was any way for him to inadvertently bring something with him when he left. Do lab workers change clothes from the ground up between shifts? Is it possible to carry something out, not in a vial, but on a cuff or a shoe? I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I really don’t know anything about lab work. I’m just picturing the FIL having zero idea that the armrest in his car is sizzling with bacteria, or something along those lines.

I’ve only worked in labs that were bio-safety level 2(theres 4 levels, 3 and 4 being much more restrictive) and below, but we didn’t change clothes when we leave. It would most certainly be possible for me to sneak out the organism when I worked in a BSL-2 lab. It would be as easy as putting it in a tube and walking out the front door. As for inadvertantly leaving with it… sure it would be easy. Theres no way of telling if you were infected or not. Although in this case it is unlikely since it seems like it’d take alot of work to be infected with MTB.

TB is BSL3, if I’m not mistaken. But, yeah I think it would be very possible to inadvertantly take some home with you. If you follow all the BSL3 precautions, there would be near zero chance. But, I think when you’ve been doing it a long time, you get a bit lax.

There is no guard standing by BSL3 facilities ensuring that you gown up in the proper order, or even gown up at all. It’s up to you to actually follow the facilities mandates. I haven’t worked routinely with BSL3, but I see BSL2 breaches all the time.

If the FIL got lax about it, there is every possibility that he could have infected himself or carried it on his person and infected others.

Yes, lab-acquired infections happen with more regularity than we would like.

At level 3, you do have to cover your clothes and shoes with disposable scrubs, so it is highly unlikely to carry the bug out with you. Having said that, there is always a risk of a lab-acquired infection. No one is standing over workers at all times to ensure compliance; people get tired, mistakes happen.

However, this is a very unlikely scenario for TB. As has been said before, it’s actually pretty difficult to get TB. It requires inhalation of contaminated droplets. That doesn’t happen from a shoe or a shirt or a even contaminated hands.

Paricularly because Cooksey seems to be pretty well versed in proper procedure for similar bugs!