Front and Center: Security at Boston's Infectious Disease Research Lab

When controversy hit, Kevin Tuohey became the public face of a high-profile plan to study deadly diseases in Boston. To succeed, the security director would have to become part diplomat, part great communicator.

July 01, 2006 — CSO — Kevin Tuohey is the executive director of operations and safety at Boston University Medical Center, a job that includes security responsibilities and, he declares, "anything to do with risk." That includes expected tasks like access control and surveillance, managed from an operations center on the BU Medical Center campus. Through bulletproof glass, the ops center looks across Albany Street at the hospital, where Tuohey takes care of triply redundant utilities that keep critical medical systems online. On one side of the ops center sits security staff. On the other side, separated by a glass wall, sits the safety team. On a campus with a busy hospital and research facilities, safety and public health risks are on par with security risks. A public health risk he deals with is the potential release from research labs of infectious agents such as Francisella tularensis.

One micron long, F. tularensis is a small bacterium. But it can survive months in below-freezing temperatures, and 10 microbes will infect humans with a disease called tularemia. Historically, outbreaks were associated with rodent hunters who got sick from carcasses of their prey, giving tularemia its familiar name: rabbit fever.

The most virulent rabbit fever strain, pneumatic tularemia, is capable of airborne transmission. Antibiotics suppress the fever, but left untreated, it can kill. (Because early symptoms are flulike, some people will try to tough out what feels like a nasty cold.)

Outbreaks occur sporadically across the Northern Hemisphere. One took place on the Massachusetts island Martha's Vineyard in 2000, when landscapers mowed over an infected rabbit and aerosolized the bacteria, giving 15 people the fever, one of whom didn't seek treatment right away. He later died.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies pneumatic tularemia as a "Category A" infectious agent&mdash:a potential biological weapon that the government monitors and that universities research to prevent wider epidemics.

At Boston University Medical Center, Dr. Peter Rice was researching a vaccine for tularemia. In May 2004, one researcher in his lab went to the doctor's office with a fever, cough and headache. Two days later, a second researcher from the lab felt similar but more severe symptoms and was hospitalized overnight. Both were diagnosed with the flu, given antibiotics and recovered. In September, a third researcher from the same lab landed in the hospital for several days with more severe flulike symptoms. This time, someone put one and one and one together. For the vaccine research, all three had worked with what was supposed to be a harmless strain of F. tularensis.