Texas A&M Files
New files 20 Sept 2007 (HHS IG Correspondence)
Timeline with Documents: Sunshine Project News Releases and CDC Orders and Reports
24 October 2006: The Sunshine Project files a Texas Public Information Act request for (among other items) "All records on possible or actual occupational exposures and/or laboratory-acquired infections with risk group 2 (RG2) or higher agents at TAMU, from 1 January 2000 through the present."
In response to that request, Texas A&M produced a single enigmatic page that the University implausibly claimed was the entirety of its records on all such exposures over a period of nearly 7 years: "The Page that Started it All" A&M's obviously incomplete - and illegal - response under Texas law triggered an ongoing chain of Texas Public Information Act requests. Information from these requests in turn triggered CDC's investigations of Texas A&M bioweapons agent research.
12 April 2007: The Sunshine Project - Texas A&M University Violates Federal Law in Biodefense Lab Infection (see documents linked from news release)
20 April 2007: CDC Cease & Desist Order (Brucella work)
30 April 2007: CDC Report of [First] Site Visit (Brucella investigation visit)
26 June 2007: The Sunshine Project: Bioweapons Infections Hit Texas A&M Again
30 June 2007: CDC Cease & Desist Order (all select agent work)
31 August 2007: CDC Report of [Second] Site Visit (subsequent to 30 June Order)
Document Release, July 2007: The ten PDF files below were released by Texas A&M to the Sunshine Project and the Dallas Morning News. It was provided under the Texas Public Information Act, but not before A&M was threatened with a Grand Jury by the Brazos County District Attorney (for violation of the Texas Public Information Act).
There are 51 megabyes of documents divided into 10 files of varying lengths (748k - 9.4mb). The CDC inspection at Texas A&M began on 23 July 2007. Many of these records have also been pulled together for CDC/HHS/APHIS inspectors. Other government agencies have also visited the campus since. They include extensive internal correspondence.
File 1 | File 2 | File 3 | File 4 | File 5 | File 6 | File 7 | File 8 | File 9 | File 10
Other items released July 2007:
Texas A&M Expression of Interest in the NBAF (35 mb, 367 pages - many interesting)
Submitted by Robert Gates, then TAMU President, now the US Secretary of Defense. Texas A&M's partners in its NBAF coalition included Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (complete with supporting letters from UTMB's Stanley Lemon and David Walker). It also included Merial Animal Health, operator of the British lab that recently leaked Foot and Mouth Disease. Also interesting are the descriptions of Texas A&M's work for the Department of Homeland Security.
Main Biohazard Entry Log (125 pages, 17 mb)
Sign-in sheet for persons entering the Texas A&M labs where the brucella infection and the Q fever exposures occurred. The persons exposed in 2006 and 2007 appear here (including sign-in on the date of the accidented brucella exposure), as do persons without select agent permits that, nevertheless, handled select agents.
More on the Missing Q Fever Mouse
Another unreported incident a TAMU: At the end of 2006, a mouse experimentally infected with Q fever was lost. It was never found.
This new, large (135mb) A&M document release arrived late on 5 September at the Sunshine Project office. It has not been analyzed. On it's face, one item that deserves investigation (File 6 and elsewhere) is the 22 February 2007 "major flooding" of Texas A&M Select Agent Facility and the subsequent biosafety inspections - almost two months later - on 16 April 2007, perhaps not coincidentally the same day the CDC inspectors arrived to investigate the brucella infection reported by the Sunshine Project on 12 April.
File 1 | File 2 | File 3 | File 4 | File 5 | File 6 | File 7 | File 8 | File 9 | File 10 | File 11 | File 12 | File 13
NOTE: These two letters only pertain to the results of the first site visit in April.)
Letter from the Health and Human Services Inspector General to Texas A&M, 18 July 2007 (annexes marked "SBU" by HHS)
Reply from Texas A&M to the HHS Inspector General, 17 August 2007