US Lab in (country of) Georgia at Center of Storm Over Biological Warfare Claims
The laboratory, formally known as the Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research, became the target of a renewed attack by Russian authorities Monday when Gennady Onishchenko, head of the state consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, expressed “extreme concern” about the lab.
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The laboratory opened in March 2011 as the Central Public Health Research Laboratory, with Lugar saying it will “serve as a manifestation of America’s commitment to Georgia.”
The US Army Medical Department’s Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) has been tasked with training Georgian scientists at the lab in areas such as “pathogen research, biosecurity, biosurety and facility operations and maintenance,” according to the USAMRMC.
The goal of the US military and the Georgian government “is to address the threat of infectious diseases at the source with approaches that utilize modern technological developments applied from the rapidly expanding knowledge base in public and animal health,” Jamie Blow, director of Overseas Operations for Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, said last year.
Onishchenko said last year that an outbreak of African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) in southern Russia was the result of “economic subversion” by Georgia
Swine fever outbreaks can seriously impair the animal breeding industry because the disease can neither be treated nor prevented by vaccination, and Onishchenko suggested in July that the virus had likely come to Russia from the US-funded laboratory in Georgia.
http://en.ria.ru/world/20131015/184149734/US-Lab-in-Georgia-at-Center-of-Storm-Over-Biological-Warfare-Claims.html