Hamilton, Montana prepares for major bio defense lab
| September 12, 2005 |  View for printing |
Montana's Bitterroot Valley, surrounded by mountains, has long offered a respite from the modern world, an area of small-town values with rivers beloved by fishermen and a thriving log cabin business.
The bucolic setting between two mountain ranges in western Montana will soon host one of the nation's few biowarfare defense labs, a controversial $66.5 million building where scientists will research dangerous pathogens in an effort to stem deadly attacks.
"It's an unfortunate mission, but unfortunately it's a necessity, especially after 9/11," said Joe Petrusaitis, mayor of Hamilton, pop. 4,400. "The community mostly supported it, but we did have detractors."
Scientists came to the Bitterroot Valley early in the 20th century to study the outbreak of an often fatal disease which came to be called Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
In 1928, some in the local community sued to prevent the building of what became the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. To calm local fears, the lab agreed to build a long-since demolished and never-used moat around its buildings to bar disease-carrying ticks from spreading.
In later years it worked on numerous infectious diseases including Lyme disease and prion diseases, a type of disease that includes so-called mad cow disease; today it is part of the network of U.S. infectious disease labs with 250 workers.
By Adam Tanner
Full Story: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/news ... 9209769.htm
(Many thanks to the Montana Chamber of Commerce for passing this along. Russ) 
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