BOSTON — Klare Allen, a once-homeless mother turned community activist, was stunned at a public meeting in 2002 when she and her friends learned that Boston University Medical Center officials planned to build a biological defense laboratory in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods.
"We heard anthrax and Roxbury-South End," she recalled. "Then we heard Ebola. The last thing we heard was bubonic plague. We looked at each other and said, 'No way are they bringing that . . . into our community.' "
Seven years later, the $198-million lab complex stands completed between an apartment building and a flower market. But state and federal lawsuits by anxious residents, backed by skeptical scientists, have blocked the opening until late next year at the earliest.
The battle marks the first major setback in the vast growth since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of labs authorized to research the world's most dangerous diseases. It also underscores a growing debate over the safety and security of such labs -- and whether so many are needed.
Federal officials and scientists say the labs will not secretly create germ weapons, which the United States renounced in 1969, but they are determined to stiffen America's defenses against pathogens that terrorists might use.
"There's nothing military about this operation," said Dr. Mark Klempner, a microbiologist who heads the Boston lab. "We are scientists who are interested in defending the nation, and the world, against infectious diseases."
Klempner said the facility would conduct no classified research for the government, and would bar any attempt to make an organism more virulent. "There's nothing nefarious or hidden about this," he said.
The high-containment lab is deep inside the building, a 13,000-square-foot vault behind foot-thick walls and blast-proof doors. Negative air pressure will keep germs inside if a leak occurs. Lab workers will wear fully enclosed, air-supplied moon suits.
But still opponents fear the accidental release of deadly toxins or organisms into a crowded urban area. They also warn that the supply of "hot" strains in a lab may attract terrorists, or push other nations into a biological arms race.
In theory, bioweapons are inexpensive to produce, difficult to detect and capable of killing millions. In practice, no terrorist group has launched a successful biological attack, and many U.S. experts believe the threat is vastly overstated.
