South End Infectious Disease Lab: “Like It’s a Lady in Waiting”

South End Infectious Disease Lab: “Like It’s a Lady in Waiting.” Things have still not progressed too far for the beleaguered Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory, which remains barely used since construction completed in the South End — and used at that only for pathogens well below the grade for which it is cleared. (Which is to say, it’s doing tuberculosis research, which is okay, but it’s not doing the Ebola research it was built for.) The community surrounding the lab continues to suffer from a decided, if understandable, sense of NIMBYism when it comes to rubbing elbows with fatal and infectious pathogens, and in an attempt to counter that, the National Institutes of Health will convene a meeting on Thursday to get more input from, and provide more information to, the locals. Alas, though true, we suppose it probably wouldn’t go over too well for the researchers to point out that the state-of-the-art lab is probably safer than the aging nuclear reactor just across the river that everyone’s perfectly happy to tolerate. [WBUR]