MADISON Wis.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison allowed a star researcher to study material that could be used to produce the Ebola virus in a lab less secure than what’s required under federal guidelines.
The study was stopped last fall after a National Institutes of Health official told the university the material must be contained at labs with the highest level of security, or Biosafety Level 4.
Researcher Yoshi Kawaoka, his colleagues and the public were never at risk because the deadly virus itself was never present in the lab, said UW-Madison biological safety officer Jan Klein.
“It’s more of a technical violation than a safety violation. No one was at risk,” she said. “It was a matter of how you read the guidelines. NIH took a broader read of the guidelines than we were aware of and we were using.”
A NIH spokesman said he was looking into the matter and had no immediate comment.
Kawaoka, a professor of virology in the School of Veterinary Medicine, was traveling at a meeting in Chicago on Wednesday and did not immediately return an e-mail message.
