True to character, for all the newswire stories and national press attention the revolutionary achievement received (including front-page billing in the New York Times), the timid Bachrach gave but a single quote, letting Dr. Callis handle the publicity. Eliminating the threat of virus "is our goal and is what we expect to do," the diffident biochemist told the Washington Post. That was the extent of his public comment.
At a February 1985 ceremony at the White House, President Ronald W. Reagan presented Bachrach with the National Medal of Science, the United States' highest honor for scientific achievement. Welcoming him into the elite order, President Reagan spoke of his "pioneering research in molecular virology" and his "role in using gene splicing to produce the first effective protein vaccine." Equally impressive was his induction into the National Academy of Sciences, a select fraternity of the nation's brightest scientific minds. Dr. Fred Brown, a current Plum Island scientist and the world's foremost authority on foot-and-mouth disease virus, calls Bachrach "one of the foundation stones of Plum Island." Dr. Howard Bachrach had come a long way from Faribault, Minnesota. He had become a scientific legend.
obtaining the achievement of a lifetime at age sixty-one, Dr. Bachrach decided to retire in 1983, after placing the capstone on a thirty-year Plum Island career. Employees gaze upon the reticent scientist — who returns on the ferry now and then to tinker with viruses — with measures of admiration and awe. "He is kind of an icon," says a former administrator. After retiring, he turned to his three other passions: golfing in Florida, gardening in the backyard of his Southold home, and playing shutterbug, just like the old days in the 1950s when he snapped the first-ever glimpses of strange viruses.
The breakthrough did not merely revolutionize the future of an animal disease, it sounded the starting gun of the biotechnology race. Before long, genetically engineered hepatitis B and rabies vaccines were developed. The innovative work on Plum Island changed the face of biological science forever. It promised to resuscitate Plum Island's reputation. But with Bachrach's departure, one of Plum Island's two "foundation stones" was cast into the water. The absence was deeply felt. Without the anchor of the no-nonsense, determined chief scientist, the place shifted further downward.
HAZARDS
While officials on Plum Island thought the virus outbreak was a trifling event the public ought to forget and move on, Washington took the blunder far more seriously. A safety review board was appointed, made up of biological safety officials from USDA headquarters, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and Fort Detrick. These men were the top germ safety experts in the nation, and what they had to say in their fourth annual review of Plum Island since the outbreak speaks volumes.
"We believe there is a potentially dangerous situation and that without an immediate massive effort to correct deficiencies, a severe accident could result….[L]ack of preventative maintenance, [and] pressures by management to expedite programs have resulted in compromising safety." After they described the failure — the "breaks" — of three of the four degrees of containment during the virus outbreak (the fourth degree was the island itself), they noted two more incidents of this nature. "In August 1980, a break was due to the use of facilities for purposes for which they were not designed, and in January 1981, a break was due to the absence of first-degree containment and lack of maintenance of second-degree containment. We find both unacceptable." In the first incident, Plum Island experimented with animals, not in the specially filtered and drained animal isolation rooms, but in corridor hallways never designed to hold infected animals. The second infraction showed smoke tests revealing gaping holes in the animal test rooms. "These are signs of unsafe facilities," the safety review board said. "[B]reaches from known deficiencies are never acceptable."
One passage written by the experts shows just how dangerous Plum Island was at the same time it mass-produced deadly Rift Valley fever viruses:
It is distressing to the experts to find… massive leaks… (a) around the metal frame of a door supporting a gasket (caused either by door buckle and weld separation and/or rust-induced deterioration), (b) around hinges and handles, (c) through an unplugged hole (former pipe hole?) and/or around an existing pipe penetration, (d) around adjacent spots behind a "dust deflector" on top of a wall-mounted cabinet, (e) through cracks in the wall plaster, (f) through an electrical outlet….
Major problems in the air movement in the four rooms examined…suggest that few rooms at [Plum Island] provide satisfactory containment.
Was this known to Dr. Callis, Plum Island's director? Given his earlier sense of care and dedication, had Dr. Callis lost his grip, his handle on the situation? It seemed illogical that the esteemed veterinarian would stand by and let his island crumble beneath him. He seemed preoccupied often with seminars and conferences around the world, neglecting the management of Plum Island. By then, "Jerry Callis had his own agenda," says a source. "As long as he could take off to Portugal, Thailand, Caracas, or somewhere deep in Africa or South America — these were some of his favorite places— he was happy." The safety panel found widespread belief among employees that management was lacking, communications had deteriorated, and there was a "dictatorial" atmosphere. Employees expressed fear of reprisal if things were brought to the attention of management. The findings of the safety review board were only the latest in the unbroken string of ill-fated events over recent years taking their toll on Plum Island.
AIDS AND AFRICAN SWINE FEVER
Before human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was discovered in 1986, the cause for the emerging disease dubbed acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, was unknown. Dr. Jane Teas, a pathobiologist at Harvard University's School of Public Health, compared the symptoms of AIDS with those of known animal diseases, and hit upon a striking similarity between AIDS and the African swine fever virus in 1983.
Amid the hype over Teas's proposed link between AIDS and African swine fever, forty-seven Plum Island employees were secretly tested for the presence of the African swine fever virus, normally not infectious in humans. Six tested positive. When asked about the findings, Dr. Callis said they were "nonspecific," or unreliable test results. Though they didn't contract the disease, six people had accidentally been exposed to the virus in Plum Island laboratories. They were virus carriers — capable of spreading it to other animals through tick and insect bites — and reservoirs of natural virus mutation, possibly into a strain that could affect people, like swine flu had decades ago. With no cure, the six Plum Island workers would have to live, symbiotically, with the virus. And without ever knowing they had it.
The subjects were tested without their knowledge or consent, since the samples were taken as part of routine physical examinations. Dr. Callis said he couldn't recall whether those that tested positive for virus were notified. To this day, no Plum Island worker interviewed remembers being told they were carriers of African swine fever virus. Management apparently deemed it unimportant.
Finally, after being stalled for months by the USDA to study the AIDS connection, Teas's colleague Dr. John Beldekas got a call from a secretary at Plum Island, telling him a shipment of African swine fever virus materials was being sent to him overnight via Federal Express. The next day, Beldekas waited in his laboratory all day for the package to arrive. It never came. Checking his answering machine at home in the late afternoon, there was a message from a neighbor saying a package had been left with her, and there was very little dry ice that accompanied the delivered parcel. It was from the USDA. He had no idea how they had his home address. Beldekas asked his neighbor to open the package and put the vials inside her kitchen freezer while he raced home. "So instead of delivering it to my laboratory where I had the proper freezer, it was left on my doorstep….Then, when I called Plum Island back to tell them I received it, and everything was fine, they were like 'Oh. Okay.' They did everything they were supposed to do, but they also did everything in their power to screw us up."