MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A University of Wisconsin-Madison employee caught a rare infectious disease after being exposed in a laboratory that has since been closed for unauthorized experiments, the school said Wednesday.
University officials said the employee was not exposed to strains of antibiotic-resistant brucella that had been used in the questioned experiments. Instead, they said the worker caught brucellosis after being exposed to a less dangerous form of the bacteria that had been approved for research. The worker was treated and has recovered.
Still, the infection reveals another safety lapse in the lab of UW-Madison professor Gary Splitter, an expert in brucellosis whose research privileges have been suspended over the unauthorized experiments. The university closed his lab in December 2008.
Splitter on Wednesday blamed the university for failing to train researchers on federal requirements for sensitive biological research and a lack of oversight. He said the infection was irrelevant to his discipline, and was caused when a subordinate mistakenly "put their hand to their face."
"It was a failure of normal lab procedures," he said. He downplayed the seriousness of the infection, saying brucella very rarely kills people and the organism is less dangerous than influenza.
The school on Tuesday released records describing 2007 experiments in which graduate students in Splitter's lab introduced strains of the bacteria that were resistant to the antibiotic used to treat the disease in humans and animals. The concern was that had anyone caught the disease, treating its symptoms would have been more difficult.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says brucellosis can cause recurring fevers, sweats, headaches and other symptoms and can affect humans and animals like cattle, sheep and pigs. Only about 100 to 200 cases are reported in the U.S. per year but it is more common in other parts of the world.
An investigation by the university and CDC determined the worker's infection was "not one of the strains with any antibiotic resistant-genes in them," said associate dean for research policyBill Mellon.
The university destroyed those strains after learning of the experiments, which had not been authorized by a campus review committee or the federal government.
Splitter, a faculty member since 1976, said Wednesday he reported the experiments on his own and was now paying the consequences. He called the suspension of his research privileges through 2013 devastating. While he can continue teaching, he won't be allowed to work with select agents, won't have access to high-level biosafety labs and cannot supervise research.
University officials said Splitter, a professor in the department of veterinary medicine, knew about and may have participated in experiments and his denials lacked credibility. The school faulted him for failing to supervise his highly secure lab.
Mellon said the lab-acquired infection was not a factor in Splitter's discipline. Nonetheless, he said such an infection is "extremely rare" and should not have happened.
"We don't have a reason for the infection, except for human error," he said. He said lab workers were retrained on safety measures to minimize the chances others would be infected, he said.
The university's 500 pages of documents related to the investigation of Splitter's lab only contain passing references to the infection. Stephen Robinson, a retired professor who was asked to investigate allegations against Splitter, said in his May 2009 report he purposely ignored the incident.
"I did not find any information given to me about this event to be relevant to the charges I was asked to investigate," he wrote.
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