The catastrophes at Plum Island did not occur in a vacuum. The single-minded zeal of the USDA's science mantra ends in wreckage far and wide. What happens when the blind pursuit of science is taken too far? When scientific glory is pursued for glory's sake? In Plum Island's case, the not-so-invisible hand of government prioritizes an abundance of food (really the livestock from which food is derived) ahead of its human workforce and the public health. Plum Island runs at the sufferance of deep-pocketed agribusiness. One political scientist put the USDA's thinking in no uncertain terms. "Critics inside the establishment are not appreciated, and outside criticism that cannot be dismissed as malicious, romantic, or uninformed is viewed as trivial in the context of agriculture's record of increased food production." There are no signs that DHS will change this modus operandi.
Then there is the question of the animals themselves. Plum Island has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of them, in all shapes and sizes, in an ambitious effort to tame foreign animal germs. Yet fifty years later, there is still no cure or silver-bullet vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease virus— Plum Island's cause celebre — or any of the other germs studied there. Is all this animal carnage necessary? If the modest success of the past is a barometer of future successes, productivity at Plum Island needs to be addressed.
The best solution may be not to rebuild on Plum Island, but to pack up instead and leave the mess behind. In this case, the USDA and DHS should consult those communities in Maine, Montana, Washington, and the Virgin Islands that actually wanted the lab during the first go-around in the 1950s. Generations from now, after the germs have long subsided, Suffolk County can establish that magnificent park preserve it wanted to build on Plum Island before the Army canceled its sale of the island.
In its final battle, Pat Acampora's task force faced down mad cow disease.
At an early morning meeting in Acampora's office, with Dr. Breeze present, USDA officials were asked if Plum Island had ever studied bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease. This animal infection's human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, gnaws away at brain tissue and has a 100 percent mortality rate.[51] The Plum Island officials told the group they had not worked on mad cow and weren't equipped to study it. But a few months later, when 255 sheep in Vermont were suspected of contracting mad cow, the USDA made plans to ship the carcasses to Plum Island for necropsy, tissue and blood samples, and incineration. Tipped off of the plan, Acampora went livid. When she confronted Plum Island about it, the USDA told her, "Well, the situation has changed." "They don't even have a state permit for their incinerator!" she roared, and threatened a showdown: if they carted the sheep carcasses through Manhattan or Connecticut onto Long Island soil, she would get the police in Nassau and Suffolk counties to barricade the roads.
Fearing a public relations debacle with national implications, the USDA backed off, and trucked its infected sheep refuse to the Ames, Iowa, laboratory. "It became such a hassle, they decided not to do it," Acampora recalls with modesty; the truth is, she was the hassle. So many others— politicians, media, community groups — had failed over the years in trying to fight Plum Island. Finally, the task force had won a battle. It was a start.[52]
"Look at our space shuttle," Acampora says. "We spent billions of dollars on the space mission, hundreds of engineers, technicians, scientists, and safety experts to make sure the flight was fail-safe. We watched in awe. We clapped. And then it exploded in horror. That's what I'm worried about." Even to this day, while other local officials have accepted tour invitations, the feisty assemblywoman won't go to Plum Island. Why is that? "It's really a simple reason," she laughs. "They say that when you go there, you have to scrub down, and get all washed up. And no one's going to see my hair wet." One gets the impression her fears go far beyond a bad hair day. "There have been a lot of mishaps out there," she says, "and let's face it— Long Island has a lot of wind, and should something happen there, and the wind's blowing in the wrong direction, that could be pretty problematic.
"When you are a mile off the coast of a heavily populated area, an area for which we have no real evacuation, I have a concern." Indeed, there is only one arterial road off the North Fork and one out of the Hamptons, spilling into the heart of Long Island. From there, Long Island's 7.2 million people bottleneck into ten narrow bridges and tunnels that themselves empty into the cluttered congestion of New York City, where 11 million more people reside.[53] Indeed, Plum Island lies on the periphery of the largest population center in the United States.
"You know, a lot of people really don't know Plum Island even exists," Acampora muses as her smile fades to a smirk. "People move here from New York City, they come here, play here — and they have no idea what's going on one mile off the coast."
Whether the nation's exotic animal disease laboratory should remain on Plum Island remains the central question. "When the Manhattan Project was developed during World War II," Karl Grossman points out, "they selected places that would be safe. The Manhattan Project laboratories were inland, at places like Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and Los Alamos. If it was a small island in the Pacific doing very sensitive research, through radar you could make sure no vessels came within a certain distance. But Plum Island…man." Grossman lets out a long sigh. "Plum Gut on a summer day is a main street for boaters and fishermen. If they aren't moving in, they are moving out. You can't screen [marine traffic] until they are onshore. There is a war consciousness today — is it appropriate to have [the laboratory] on an island that is jutting out there in the Atlantic, with lots of traffic?"
Can Plum Island's facilities be moved to the mainland, like the National Academy of Sciences urged back in 1983? Asked this question in his Plum Island office, Dr. Huxsoll says, "With the biocontainment technology today, you can probably put this anywhere. But the stakeholders are more comfortable with it being there because of the geographic location." Yes, the "stakeholders" — a fancy euphemism for the $100 billion agribusiness empire that claims this research is essential, but won't spend a dollar of its own money to do it itself. "The reason Plum Island survives today is money," says ex-union chief Ed Hollreiser. "The cattlemen and pig and poultry farmers want it continued."
"You could put it in the middle of New York City and obtain the right biosecurity," Huxsoll asserts. Sounds crazy, but he's right. While it sounds ironic, the work is safest not on an island but right next door, like the CDC in Atlanta, where tens of thousands of people mill past it each day. Why? Because that kind of closeness demands (and in the case of the CDC, enjoys) the most stringent protocols of safety possible. If past history has taught us any lessons, it's that Plum Island desperately needs a babysitter.
If Plum Island should go, there will be yet another accompanying consequence, though perhaps not as weighty as national and regional safety and security — the demise of a local economy. Dr. Breeze's ploy to split the workforce between New York and Connecticut crippled a good part of the east end tax base, and far fewer federal dollars were spent locally. With the departure of those skilled and professional positions remaining on Plum Island, the "brain drain" of educated folks will continue, leaving behind empty nesters and dwindling farm families.
51
Mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are caused not by live germs, but inanimate "prions," free-floating snippets of infectious DNA material that lack the structure that characterize viruses and bacteria. More resilient than any known germ, they resist the decontaminating processes of steam autoclaving and even incineration. Little is known about prions, but they are known to be extremely dangerous to animal and human life.
52
Later, the USDA disclosed that tissue samples from the infected sheep had been sent previously to Plum Island and, unknown to the task force and the local community, were used in tests there.
53
As of 2000, the island of Long Island holds 2.6 million people in Nassau and Suffolk counties, 2.2 million in Queens, and 2.4 million in Brooklyn.