IT IS part of a "regional centre of excellence" for biodefence, but Texas A&M University in College Station has been ordered to stop research into potential bioweapons until further notice.
The move follows the revelation that lab staff had been exposed to dangerous "select agents". The accidents were reported in documents obtained by the Sunshine Project, a pressure group based in Austin.
The university failed to inform the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about a case of brucellosis in February 2006, and two months later three staff were found to have antibodies to the bacterium Coxiella burnetii, which causes Q fever.
On 30 June, the CDC told Texas A&M to stop all its work on select agents and toxins, which involves five labs and about 120 staff.
Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project is disturbed that the incidents only came to light through his group's pursuit of documents under Texas's public records law. "There's something fundamentally wrong with our lab oversight system," he says. "Why is it an NGO with an annual budget of less than $100,000 is doing the police's work?"
"Why is it an NGO with a budget of less than $100,000 is doing the police's work?
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