Loss of Research at Tulane

calmom · October 16, 2005, 6:28am

THURSDAY, Oct. 13 (HealthDay News) – While still dealing with those left dead or homeless by Hurricane Katrina, cities and towns torn by the storm are now turning their attention to another disastrous loss: years of research that could have yielded important medical and scientific knowledge over the coming decades.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has estimated that Katrina inflicted serious damage on about 300 federally funded projects in New Orleans alone, representing more than $150 million in research dollars, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Over the last four or five years, Tulane University, especially, had emerged as a research powerhouse, tripling its NIH support during that time. In fact, the university was the only institution in the area ranking on the NIH’s “Top 100” list in terms of funding, according to Dr. Paul Whelton, senior vice president for health sciences at Tulane. Annual research awards granted to Tulane are in the $150 million range, representing about 50 percent of all NIH dollars coming into the state, he said, and the institution is the largest employer in the city of New Orleans.

Katrina and her aftermath have changed that, although the extent of the damage is not yet clear.

One example is the Bogalusa Heart Study, which was tracking the diets, lifestyles and blood chemistry of 16,000 people in Bogalusa, La., with an eye to pinpointing risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Thirty to 40 years’ worth of biological samples were stored in minus-70-degree freezers. After three or four days without power, those freezers rose to room temperature and two generations’ worth of knowledge went with them. Genetic analysis is still possible, as DNA can withstand such changes, but other tests are now out of the question, Whelton said.

Other clinical trials were also compromised. Once samples are lost, current histories of heart attack and stroke can’t be compared to the participants’ prior experience or to the prior experience of people who are disease-free.

Added to the loss is the fact that many of the several thousand people participating in ongoing clinical trials at Tulane have been dispersed. “They’ve been blown all over the country,” Whelton said. Researchers are trying to connect patients with physicians so as to continue research, but it’s not clear how much lapses in protocol may have compromised the studies.

One of the greatest challenges facing institutions like Tulane is the loss of personnel.

Some researchers have found lab space locally, while others have found temporary quarters at Rutgers in New Jersey or Emory University in Atlanta. 

As faculty members decide whether to accept or reject posts in faraway towns, the task right now for Tulane is to keep going.

“We have a lot of applications going in, awards going in. It ain’t perfect but we are encouraging people to get back on track,” Whelton said. “We’re determined.”

SOURCES: William Pinsky, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president and chief academic officer, Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans; Paul Whelton, M.D., senior vice president for health sciences, Tulane University, New Orleans; Sept. 22, 2005, Medscape; Sept. 23, 2005, Los Angeles Times; Associated Press; FDA statement

For full text article, go here:
Katrina Leaves Scientific Research in Ruins
<a href=“http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=54885[/url]”>http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=54885</a>

emeraldkity4 · October 16, 2005, 11:52am

what a contrast-

When San Francisco was hit by earthquake and fire in the early morning of April 18, 1906, San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz had 1,500 U.S. soldiers on the city’s streets by noon, helping local police and firemen rescue the trapped, treat the injured, fight the fire and guide the homeless to shelter. He also, more controversially, took shoot-to-kill anti-looting measures, and destroyed some city blocks by trying to create firebreaks against the spreading flames.

Schmitz’s actions were illegal (“Only the state governor can call in National Guardsmen,” writer Simon Winchester tells us, “and only the president can summon federal troops”). But Schmitz was beyond red-tape niceties: “While the orders issued at the time were perhaps without legal authority, and were extraordinary,” he later explained, “they were accepted by the people with a good nature and good will.”

In the meantime, food, fire engines, hoses and dynamite poured in from nearby Oakland and Sacramento. A trainload of food and medicine arrived from Los Angeles within 18 hours of the quake, and 200,000 rations were sent from Washington state’s Vancouver Barracks within 24 hours.

All this occurred with only one surviving military telephone circuit, two commercial telegraph lines and one trans-Pacific cable (to Manila) out of the city. All internal communications were destroyed, along with 490 city blocks and 28,188 buildings, leaving 225,000 citizens, half the city’s population, homeless.

From Simon Winchester’s new book A crack in the edge of the world : America and the great California earthquake of 1906

One hundred years ago- we managed things better looks like :(

barrons · October 16, 2005, 12:38pm

Actually I see virtually zero connection between the two items.

jmmom · October 16, 2005, 12:41pm

Katrina hits research labs

<h2>Scientists rush to salvage data, avoid biohazards</h2>

LM OTERO/the associated press

Tulane University President Scott Cowen talks last month about the damage to his school during his first tour of the university since Hurricane Katrina.

<hr>

By Sarah Martin
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
<a href=“mailto:smartin@media.ucla.edu”>smartin@media.ucla.edu</a>

After hurricane winds and rain threatened research facilities in New Orleans, university-based health research laboratories had dramatically different issues to deal with in the face of the destruction than governmental biological labs.

When tumor research is being threatened because cell samples are being lost, retaining power to the freezers is of the utmost importance. But when dangerous and highly contagious biological agents are the specimen, security and containment is much more of a concern.

Tyler Curiel, chief of hematology and medical oncology at Tulane University, hauled 400 pounds of liquid nitrogen to his labs to preserve frozen fragile cell samples when power was knocked out to the his laboratory refrigerators, according to Tulane University’s Health Sciences Center press releases.

As water levels rose around her facilities, Claude Bouchard, Louisiana State University’s Biomedical Research Center director, worked to relocate tissue samples and data to preserve research efforts on glaucoma and the development of new biomedical materials intended to reduce health costs.

But Raoult Ratard, Louisiana’s chief epidemiologist, broke into his evacuated governmental “hot lab” with bleach in order to kill all living specimens from experiments on dangerous germs.

“This is what had to be done,” Ratard said to an Associated Press reporter.

Ratard’s team was able to collect their laboratory computers with all their stored scientific data, but some university researchers were not so lucky.

LSU scientists lost 8,000 lab animals being used in a range of medical research. The National Cancer Institute surveyed facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama universities and found there were 318 trials that had more than 7,000 patients registered who might be affected by lost data and damaged hospital facilities.

LSU has temporarily moved its medical education program from New Orleans to Port Allen’s dock in Baton Rouge. The Finnjet, a 705-foot-long ferry and passenger ship, has become home to more than 1,000 students and faculty of LSU’s New Orleans medical, nursing, dental, public health and allied health schools.

“We may see if there is some other hospital we can lease to buy more time, but right now we have very few options,” said LSU hospital system chief Don Smithburg to the university board in a press release, after is was announced that the two LSU hospitals which had been training grounds for doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals have been declared devastated beyond repair.

But the greater New Orleans area also houses several of the United States’ governmentally funded infectious-disease and biological-weapons research labs.

There were at least five level-3 biological labs in New Orleans and nearby Covington. Biological agents being studied include anthrax, HIV, SARS, West Nile and a genetically engineered mouse pox, according to The Sunshine Project, a nonprofit organization based in Germany that researches governmental funding applications.

The National Primate Research Center, located at Tulane, housed nearly 5,000 monkeys in outdoor cages for “infectious disease, including biodefense-related work, gene therapy, reproductive biology and neuroscience,” according to an article in Tulane University Magazine.

But right after the storm, however, NPRC was quick to announce no animals or biological agents were lost or released due to the storm.

“The (center) at Tulane came through the storm just fine. There were no injured or escaped animals and there was no release of any biological agents due to other causes,” said Ann Puderbaugh, a National Institutes of Health spokeswoman.

Efforts to secure these government-funded biological labs have been expedited due to the federal rules regarding “the procession, use, transfer of select agents and toxins” in accordance with the USA Patriot Act and Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002.

So while medical schools scrambled to get their students placed in other programs and began plans to rebuild, the Center for Disease Control sent aid to the labs that work with “select agents” which pose “severe threat to public health and safety” as determined by government officials.

“We made an immediate outreach to all of these laboratories. The reports back were that there had been little or no damage. No loss of or release of any agent occurred and there is currently security in place at all of our facilities,” said CDC spokesman Von Roebuck about the Select Agent program to “From the Wilderness” reporters, a biological weapons media outlet.

Loss of Research at Tulane

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