Battling for bio art

The drama continues in the case of University at Buffalo professor Steve Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble. Kurtz has been under investigation since May when police--who Kurtz called to his home after he awoke to find his wife dead of a heart attack--discovered biological materials used in the respected artist's work. (More background here.) Yesterday, Kurtz was charged with four counts of mail and wire fraud with a maximum prison sentence of 20 years each. Professor Robert Ferrell, chair of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health, was also indicted for helping Kurtz obtain a bit of harmless bacteria.

"I am absolutely astonished," said Donald A. Henderson, Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and resident scholar at the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Henderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush for his work in heading up the World Health Organization smallpox eradication program and was appointed by the Bush administration to chair the National Advisory Council on Public Preparedness.

"Based on what I have read and understand, Professor Kurtz has been working with totally innocuous organisms... to discuss something of the risks and threats of biological weapons--more power to him, as those of us in this field are likewise concerned about their potential use and the threat of bio-terrorism." Henderson noted that the organisms involved in this case--Serratia marcescens and Bacillus atrophaeus--do not appear on lists of substances that could be used in biological terrorism.

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