Postal Chief to Seek End to Mailings of Deadly Viruses

Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank declared that he intends to halt the Army’s shipments of deadly experimental viruses through the U.S. mails, a practice that the Army has followed for years.

In an interview published Monday in Federal Times, a newsletter for government employees, Frank said: “I don’t think biological warfare agents should be shipped through the mail, and unless the Army can convince me it’s absolutely safe, we aren’t going to let them do it.”

Frank was responding to Army plans to step up mail shipments of infectious disease agents, including live viruses of anthrax, botulism, Q fever and dengue fever, as part of the U.S. military’s extensive program of research on defenses against biological weapons.

Sees Rise in Shipments

The Army expects a large increase in shipments of such materials when it completes a new biological warfare testing facility at the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah in the early 1990s. The United States and more than 100 other nations have forsworn the use of biological weapons under a 1972 treaty but the military continues work on protective gear and decontamination procedures.

Frank, a former San Francisco savings and loan executive who earlier this year assumed the post office job, said that he is concerned about an accident at a postal facility or the crash of a mail-carrying truck or airplane.

“The military should ship that stuff by their own couriers. The Army ships parts by United Parcel Service--let them have the anthrax, too,” Frank said.

An Army spokesman said that the service complies with all regulations governing the shipment of infectious materials and that it never has had a transportation accident with germ agents that caused death or disease.

Meanwhile, a Washington environmental group joined the controversy by petitioning Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci to halt the shipments through the U.S. mail or through private carriers, such as UPS or Federal Express.

Asks for Safety Study

The Foundation on Economic Trends, a longtime opponent of gene-splicing and other exotic biological experimentation, also asked the Transportation Department and the postmaster general to examine the safety of military germ shipments to and from Army facilities and 129 private laboratories, hospitals and universities that work with the toxins.

“The Department of Defense is shipping the deadliest diseases known to man without taking any substantial precautions. . . . If released by accident or through terrorism, these pathogens could cause damage equivalent to that of a nuclear meltdown,” said Jeremy Rifkin, the group’s president.

“Jeremy Rifkin is from Mars,” responded Chuck Dasey, a spokesman for the Army’s Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md. “That’s so absurd--it’s just so irresponsible it’s unbelievable.”

Dasey said that the Army follows detailed U.S. Public Health Service and Transportation Department regulations governing the shipment of infectious agents.

The rules require that vials containing the toxins be wrapped with waterproof tape, surrounded by absorbent material and sealed in two metal canisters. Packages are labeled as containing etiologic (disease-causing) agents and carry a telephone number at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in case of damage or leakage.

Dasey said that in 1987 the Army research institute sent 48 shipments of germ agents to various private and military laboratories, with an average volume of a little more than a teaspoon each. None was shipped in the U.S. mails, he said. The Army preferred Federal Express and other overnight package services because of their speed--most of the shipments involved live viruses packed in dry ice--not because they are safer than the postal service, he said.

Dasey said he knew of no case in which viruses leaked and infected postal or lab workers.

But Neil Levitt, a medical researcher who worked for 17 years at Ft. Detrick, said that he knew of cases in which deadly material was lost or mislabeled. He cited one package last year from the Centers for Disease Control to Ft. Detrick that was supposed to contain Crimea-Congo virus, a deadly tick-borne disease.

The package arrived but it contained a completely different substance, Levitt said. Postal authorities suggested that the Army check the Philadelphia dead-letter office for the missing package. It never turned up, he said, and the CDC later claimed that it had not sent the virus.