PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Bioterrorism at local Universities
by anonymous Monday, May. 24, 2004 at 9:24 PM

News from The Sunshine Project: Federal Complaint Seeks Termination of Government Funding for Nine Biotechnology Research Institutions University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University are among the nine cited for failure to report the minutes of the International Biosafety Committee.

In 2001, the federal government rejected the protocol for declarations and inspections of Biotechnical labs, which is a step towards weakening the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The federal government then put more money into biodefense research. As a result, a lot of studies are being done in secret in major laboratories.

Pittsburgh is shamefully host to the highest number of the secretive labs, in both Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh. Both of these intstitutions are federally obligated to hand in their reports, so the Sunshine Project is requesting that federal monies be discontinued to the projects if they continue to fail to file their reports. The big worry is that they are researching biochemical weaponry for the United States, which is in violation of the BWC and the Geneva Convention.

More information can be found at:

http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr030504.html

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