Pandemic Concerns Mount As CDC Labs Deemed 'Not Credible' After Safety Review

Government employees cleaning out the old research center storage room were quite shocked when they stumbled across several old vials of Smallpox inside a cardboard box. Smallpox was declared eradicated during the 1980s. Government officials claim that the vials discovered at the National Institute of Health campus is the first time an unaccounted for sample of Smallpox has ever been discovered. In spite of initial room temperature claims by the CDC, officials at the FDA said that the smallpox was in cold storage for decades, according to the Mohave Daily News.

A report on the anthrax “mishap” by a House committee revealed that additional vials of anthrax were found stored in unrestricted hallways in unlocked refrigerators at the CDC facility in Atlanta.

Approximately 85 CDC workers were exposed to live Anthrax after staffers unknowingly transported samples from one lab to other facilities. CDC head, Thomas Frieden, was forced to address the “numerous other incidents” over the past 10 years involving the mishandling of deadly microbes when called before the House Committee.

Also in 2014, CDC researchers reportedly sent a virulent strain of the bird flu to a USDA lab in Georgia by mistake. “Each layer we peel back in this investigation seems to reveal a new instance of carelessness in the CDC’s management of dangerous pathogens,” Representative Tim Murphy said. Murphy is a Republican Representative from Pennsylvania who also heads the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee.

After the June Anthrax incident, which caused concern both inside the beltway and around America, the CDC initiated an internal investigation into the matter. The disease control agency asked the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to embark upon a “parallel probe.” The findings of the USDA investigation revealed long list of “mishaps.” Such mishaps could cause deadly consequences for CDC staff, and even spark a pandemic of massive proportion throughout the country.

The team of biohazard and  biosafety experts, (which were appointed by the CDC) tasked with investigating the serious and possibly pandemic inducing safety concerns, found that the CDC is losing credibility as they seem to view themselves as “special” and exempt from proper safety protocol.

Excerpt from the CDC labs safety report:

“We are very concerned that the CDC is on the way to losing credibility. The CDC must not see itself as ‘special’. The internal controls and rules that the rest of the world works under also apply to CDC. A significant percentage of CDC staff have concerns about experiencing negative repercussions, either personally or more generally to the Agency, as a result of reporting incidents involving exposures to pathogenic organisms or other hazardous materials. Some staff members working in Select Agent laboratories fear regulatory or other negative repercussions as a result of incident reporting.”