Galveston Welcomes Biological Defense Lab

The October 28, 2008 New York Times includes a story on the Galveston National Laboratory, a $174 million biohazard research facility to open next month on the University of Texas Medical Branch campus ("Bio Lab in Galveston Raises Concerns"). Environmentalists and local residents raised questions on the logic of situating a "killer diseases" laboratory on a barrier island in the potential path of hurricanes. Citing concerns that the recent Hurricane Ike was a minimal storm and not a true test of the building's ability to withstand significant storm surge, wind, and rain, the director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club worries that a larger storm "would pose an even greater threat of a biohazards release." An infectious disease expert from the National Institutes of Health defends the decision to build the lab in Galveston, where noted virologists are already in residence.

Review selected library titles related to serious communicable diseases at LSC-CyFair Branch Library. Click the title of a book, select the "Request" button in the listing, and enter your library card number and PIN for each title you want to reserve for pick up at the library. Call the library at 281-290-3218 to check your PIN if you do not remember it. Use these subject words to find more in the library catalog:

• biological weapons
• bioterrorism
• communicable diseases
• emerging infectious diseases
• epidemics
• globalization health aspects

Pandemics and Global Health by Barry Youngerman - Facts on File, 2008
call number: 614.49 You

Bioterrorism edited by Jacqueline Langwith - Greenhaven Press/Gale Cengage Learning, 2008
call number: 363.325 Bio

Understanding New, Resurgent, and Resistant Diseases: How Man and Globalization Create and Spread Illness by Kurt Link - Praeger Publishers, 2007
call number: 362.196 Lin

The Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases by Carol Turkington and Bonnie Lee Ashby - Facts on File, 2007
call number: 616.903 Tur

Global Epidemics edited by Christopher Mari - H.W. Wilson Company, 2007
call number: 614.4 Glo