CDC Reticence on Deadly Germs Illustrates Government Secrecy
The Obama administration’s efforts to crack down on government leaks and Donald Trump’s attacks on the media have raised broad concerns about press freedom. Less publicized: The federal government’s robust efforts to withhold, delay and redact public information.
The latest example is USA Today’s article “CDC keeps secret its mishaps with deadly germs.”
Part of an ongoing series about problems at public and private research labs, this article focuses on efforts by the Centers for Disease Control to keep “secret large swaths of information about dozens of recent incidents involving some of the world’s most dangerous bacteria and viruses.”
Alison Young reports:
In an effort to determine the extent of the CDC’s lab-safety problems, USA Today filed a request on Jan. 6, 2015 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking copies of lab incident reports for the previous two years.
But the 503 pages of records the CDC released in many cases look like Swiss cheese when an incident involves any pathogen that is on a federal list of potential bioterror pathogens, called “select agents.” They include pathogens such as those that cause anthrax, Ebola, plague or certain avian or reconstructed flu virus strains.
The CDC cites a 2002 bioterrorism law to justify its redactions. That law allows withholding from the public certain records filed with regulators or information containing specific “safeguard and security measures."
Young also writes that “the CDC would not answer USA Today’s questions about specific incidents, which occurred at the agency’s laboratory facilities in Atlanta and Fort Collins, Colo., during 2013 through early 2015.”
Read the full story here.
