Head of troubled CDC anthrax lab resigns

A series of embarrassing and serious safety incidents at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resulted in the resignation of a top laboratory official in Atlanta.

Michael Farrell, who led the CDC's Bioterrorism Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Laboratory since 2009, resigned Tuesday, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

Farrell was reassigned to other duties last month in the wake of his team's mishandling of live anthrax and potential exposure of dozens of agency employees to a particularly deadly strain of the bacteria. None has shown signs of infection.

CDC Director Tom Frieden last week testified before a congressional oversight committee that his agency is seeking to address an insufficient culture of safety that resulted in the anthrax incident and another serious incident involving cross-contamination of a benign strain of bird flu with a dangerous and deadly strain. Frieden said the agency will also take disciplinary action, where appropriate, with staff involved in the incidents.

Skinner said Wednesday there have been no additional personnel moves to date. He declined to provide further details about Farrell's resignation. Farrell was unavailable for comment.

"He's a scapegoat and everybody knows that," said Sean Kaufman, one of the two biosafety experts asked to testify at a House oversight hearing last week on the CDC lab issues. "Mike had just as much to do with this incident as the people all the way at the top."

Kaufman, president of Georgia-based Behavioral-Based Improvement Solutions and a former CDC employee, said he had done training of Farrell's staff in April on the proper use of a particular piece of equipment, a biosafety cabinet, that was not part of the issues involved in the anthrax incident. Kaufman said he spoke with Farrell after he resigned from the agency.

Kaufman expressed dismay that the incident, which he sees as a result of larger systems issues at the CDC, has cost Farrell his job. He noted that Farrell, the father of two boys, had 20 years of federal service, including service in the Navy. "He's an extremely brilliant individual," Kaufman said Wednesday.

According to CDC's internal review of the anthrax incident, the lab overseen by Farrell used an unapproved method to deactivate anthrax spores before sending them to other labs at CDC where scientists were not equipped with protective gear to work with live anthrax. The agency later discovered that some of the bacteria had not been killed by the deactivation method.

CDC has said the risks of infection are small, and so far no employees have shown any signs of infection. Still, the agency's internal review found serious safety lapses.

The CDC incidents with bird flu and anthrax, along with the recent discovery of forgotten vials of deadly smallpox virus at another lab on the National Institutes of Health campus, raised concerns among members of Congress about the safety and security of more than 1,400 U.S. labs conducting research on bacteria, viruses and toxins that have the potential to be used as bioweapons.