Dive Brief:
- Judge Patti Saris will allow Boston University to continue with the opening its National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory in the city's densely populated South End neighborhood.
- Environmentalists and residents have opposed the lab, which will study Ebola and other highly infectious diseases, on safety concerns, but Saris wrote in her defense that the lab poses "extremely low or beyond reasonably foreseeable" risks.
- Parts of the lab are already open to study less-dangerous germs and a final review from the Boston Public Health Commission will allow it to fully open, but the Conservation Law Foundation is weighing an appeal and several residents already have a pending lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court.
Dive Insight:
Saris noted in her decision that reviews from two groups of scientists vouch for the safety of the lab and BU spokesman Steve Burgay insists there's no need for concern. Still, it isn't hard to imagine the type of catastrophe that would occur if something like Ebola made its way into the local population. Still, it's not the first disease research center to be located in a highly populated city—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based in Atlanta, Ga., after all.