Lab weathers storms, not concerns?

A high-security pathogen lab in Galveston, Texas, survived the hurricane that hit the region last month, but is now the focus of safety concerns plaguing biosafety research of late. Galveston is an island often hit by hurricanes. Ike, which hit in September, caused more than $700 million in damage to the University of Texas facilities there, about $18 million of that to research labs, Nature linkurl:reported.;http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081022/full/4551012a.html But the pathogen lab escaped unscathed. "The entire island can wash away and this is still going to be there," the lab's deputy director, James W. LeDuc, linkurl:told;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/us/29lab.html?_r=1&oref=slogin the New York Times. Still, some say that locating a lab working with dangerous pathogens such as linkurl:Ebola;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54827/ and Marburg virus in a geographical area so vulnerable to storm damage is risky. "As destructive as it was, Hurricaine Ike was only a Category 2 storm," Ken Kramer, director of the Sierra Club's linkurl:Lone Star Chapter;http://lonestar.sierraclub.org/...