Micro­bi­ol­o­gist Dr. Taronna Maines injects a chicken egg with the H5N1 flu virus inside a BSL-​​3 bio­log­i­cal safety cab­i­net. Photo: Brian Thomas Humek

With their Acme Rocket Skates car­ry­ing them toward the edge of the fis­cal cliff at break­neck speed, the Republican-​​controlled House is keep­ing their self-​​proclaimed “laser-​​like” focus on the econ­omy. They’re not doing this in the way we might expect, how­ever. Appar­ently, this “laser-​​like” focus involves inves­ti­gat­ing any­thing which has the poten­tial to embar­rass Democ­rats or the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion. The whole Solyn­dra and Obama birth cer­tifi­cate thing never panned out, even though these inves­ti­ga­tions were clearly evi­dence of a laser-​​like focus on job creation.

So, the way Repub­li­cans are mak­ing sure Amer­i­cans have jobs is by hold­ing a series of extremely loud and incred­i­bly close inves­ti­ga­tions on issues related to unem­ploy­ment, such as women’s vagi­nas, Fast & Furi­ous, and now minor lab­o­ra­tory acci­dents at Fed­eral labs.

CDC Build­ing 18

Build­ing 18 at the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) cam­pus in Atlanta, Geor­gia, is a $214 mil­lion facil­ity, opened in 2005, which is sup­posed to be cre­ated expressly for work­ing with haz­ardous organ­isms. How­ever, like almost all such facil­i­ties in which I’ve worked, the building’s ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems do not func­tion as designed. I think the main prob­lem is with sci­en­tists com­mu­ni­cat­ing with archi­tects and archi­tects com­mu­ni­cat­ing with work­men regard­ing how these facil­i­ties are sup­posed to work and why.  (more…)