Scientific Research - Future of Plum Island Weighed as Labs Move Is Planned - NYTimes.com

The controversy over Plum Island continues. The thought of moving a major facility studying zoonotic diseases that can infect our food supply, right into the production heart of that same supply, fills me with foreboding. All it would take is one momentary lapse, and we'd see a major segment of our economy and our diet wiped out. Just as bad would be the temptation to the crazies who would use this opportunity to advance their whacky agendas to "Save the pink-spotted mongoose" or whatever, by working to engineer a deliberate release of some disease into the wild.

Given my druthers, I'd see an island far more isolated than Plum Island used for the research. Why the US Government in all of its combined wisdom (remember,these are the guys who watched over Wall Street as over the last 20 years or so, leading to that current debacle) wants to make this move into the heartland of the United States is incomprehensible. The published "They only have a level 3 facility" is probably easily remedied, for probably far less than the cost of the move. Upgrade it to level 4.

Ultimately, I smell $$$'s somewhere at the bottom of this dungheap of an idea. Monsanto and other agribusiness would love to have more control over the governments research process, and this is the sort of thing that they would propose. Someone somewhere is looking to line their pockets, hoping that nothing bad happens. And when (not if) it happens, they'll be comfortably out of the limelight, and will join the shrill cry of "Gee, that should never have been done"