THIS WEEK IN

CREDIT: BIO-GERM PROTECTION 2005
BIODEFENSE
Microbiologist Resigns After Pitch for Antianthrax Product
A scientist’s enthusiastic endorsement of a skin
lotion against anthrax has ended his career at
the University of Texas Medical Branch
(UTMB) at Galveston. On 17 August, John
Heggers, a microbiologist and plastic surgeon
specializing in burn treatment, resigned after
the university’s Scientific Integrity
Committee (SIC) concluded he
engaged in “egregious” misconduct
by making “false and excessive
statements” about the purported
antianthrax lotion, a blend of
citrus oils, plant herbs, and seed bitters
that sells at $179 for half a liter.
On 1 February 2005, the report
says, Heggers wrote a letter on
UTMB letterhead to Bio-Germ, the
Dallas company that produces the
lotion, in which he said his research
had demonstrated the product’s efficacy
and safety; “we believe it will
be successful against Smallpox, the
Plague, and other pathogens possibly
used by terrorists” as well, he
wrote, adding that the lotion
“should be rolled out to our Nation’s
First Responders, Military and, as
soon as possible, to the citizenry of our Country.”
Bio-Germ posted the letter on its Web site,
according to the 29 June university investigation,
along with a videotaped interview in
which Heggers made similar statements.
Heggers, 72, has been at UTMB for
17 years and had a co-appointment at the
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Shriners Burns Hospital; he was not involved
in UTMB’s sizable federally funded biodefense
program. He did carry out one anthrax
study, but the committee says it did not support
his claims. In a 2004 paper in the online Journal
of Burns and Wounds, Heggers described
All you need. Bio-Germ says its $249 Protection Kit, which
includes antianthrax lotion (also sold separately), provides
“an effective shield against infection from anthrax.”
tests of several topical antibacterials,
“nutriceuticals,” and herbal products against
strains of Bacillus anthracis, which causes
anthrax. The paper claims that the Bio-Germ
lotion and many other products killed the
microbes, but the result is irrelevant, the panel
says, because the tests used vegetative B.
anthracis growing in a petri dish, not the spore
form used in weaponized anthrax. Heggers has
no data on plague and smallpox, according to
the panel, which calls his recommendation for
mass deployment of the lotion “utterly irresponsible
scientifically.” The SIC says Bio-
Germ paid Heggers’s expenses to attend several
meetings about homeland security but no
honoraria. Two of Heggers’s co-authors,
Johnny Peterson and Ashok Chopra, say they
did not see the manuscript of the paper in the
Journal of Burns and Wounds before it was
posted and found its conclusions “misleading.”
The paper was removed from the journal’s Web
site in early June, they say.
Heggers could not be reached for comment.
But in a 15 July letter to UTMB President John
Stobo, Heggers claimed that the university had
been “intimidated” by the Dallas Morning
News, which first reported the story, and that
the panel was not qualified to judge him. In his
17 August resignation letter to Stobo (copies of
both letters were made available to Science),
Heggers acknowledged “several misstatements.”
In an e-mail to a News reporter he
attached to the resignation letter, Heggers said,
“on reflection, I think my hope and enthusiasm
outran my scientific caution.”
At UTMB’s request, Heggers’s testimonials
have been removed from Bio-
Germ’s Web site. “It’s an embarrassment,”
says David Walker, executive director of
UTMB’s Center of Biodefense and Emerging
Infectious Diseases. –MARTIN ENSERINK
Homeland Security Ponders Future of Its Animal Disease Fortress
The Alcatraz of animal diseases may come
ashore. Last week, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) announced that
the Plum Island Animal Disease Center
(PIADC)—which studies the most devastating
agricultural diseases on a tiny speck in the
Atlantic off Long Island, New York—will be
replaced by a new facility that may be located
elsewhere. The state’s politicians, who oppose
expanding the lab’s remit but don’t want it to
close, immediately blasted the proposal. But
some scientists say they would welcome leaving
the remote, impractical location.
DHS took over responsibility for Plum
Island from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
in 2002. In a fact sheet issued last week,
the department said the 50-year-old lab is
“nearing the end of its lifecycle” and will be
replaced by a new National Bio and Agrodefense
Facility (NBAF) with a stronger focus
on bioterrorism. DHS is launching a study to
determine the facility’s mission, its preferred
location, and whether it needs a biosafety level
4 (BSL-4) lab, the highest level of biological
containment. The study should be completed
by 2006, and the facility could open in 2011.
Few contest that the dilapidated complex at
Plum Island needs an extreme makeover. But
adding a BSL-4 facility, or moving it, is controversial.
Because most of the diseases studied
there—such as foot-and-mouth disease
and classical swine fever—don’t infect
humans, the lab operates at BSL-3 plus, which
resembles BSL-4 except that researchers don’t
wear space suits. Scientists have long argued
that the U.S. needs a BSL-4 facility for agricultural
diseases to allow the study of agents,
such as the Nipah and Hendra viruses, that
sicken farm animals as well as humans.
But Long Island residents and local politicians
fear an escape of the deadly viruses and
have resisted those plans (Science, 26 May
2000, p. 1320). In 2003, former DHS secretary
Tom Ridge assured Sen. Hillary Clinton
N EWS OF THE W EEK
(D–NY) and Rep. Timothy Bishop (D–NY)
that no BSL-4 would be built on Plum Island—
a promise DHS says it will honor. Clinton and
Bishop want the facilities upgraded, they wrote
“in distress” to DHS secretary Michael
Chertoff last week, not moved off the island.
A DHS spokesman says that all options are
still on the table—including building a new lab
without a BSL-4 on Plum Island. But Harley
Moon, an emeritus professor at Iowa State
University in Ames who directed Plum Island
in the mid-1990s, says moving the lab ashore
would be the best option for several reasons.
Operating the lab on an island is expensive, he
says, the researchers are “intellectually isolated,”
and Long Island’s high cost of living
hinders recruitments. Moon suggests moving
it to an agricultural research center, such as
those in Georgia, Colorado, or Iowa, where
“the community and the policy makers understand
the importance of the lab’s mission.”
–MARTIN ENSERINK
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 309 2 SEPTEMBER 2005 1475