9* - 
(5) Despite precautions, human error 
is unavoidable and escape will occur. 
Affidavits fl4. 
The laboratory at Ft. Detrick is a P-4 laboratory by 
virtue of the extensive safeguards built into its design. 
The Ft. Detrick protocol provides that all experimental 
manipulations will be conducted inside closed glass cabinets 
with insert arms and gloves, through which the researchers 
will work. Air and water and all physical materials, including 
glassware, pipettes, cotton stoppers, gauze, inoculating 
loops and needles, in short, everything that touches experimental 
biological materials, will be sterilized before leaving the 
laboratory. So, also, will all biological experimental 
materials. The controls will be so complete and the physical 
containment barriers will be so complete that even should there 
be a "mistake" or "spill" by laboratory workers, it will not 
create a hazard. Such spill or error would be confined to 
the interior of barrier equipment, and thus would be a nuisance 
but not a danger. Finally, the technicians who conduct the 
individual manipulations will be well trained and under the 
surveillance of a safety officer. All personnel will know 
what to do to prevent accidents and what to do should an 
accident occur. 
In order for adverse environmental or health consequences 
to result from the Ft. Detrick experiment, there would have 
to occur simultaneously several accidents with the chances 
of any one occuring already negligible. These events are: 
(1) a human error that in some unforseeable way permits a 
recombinant carrying Chi 1776 bacterium to escape a most 
tightly controlled laboratory in which the organisms are 
sealed in glass cabinets and the air and water is decontaminated; 
(2) Chi 1776 bacteria would have to have, in some unforseeable 
manner, gained survival possibilities outside the laboratory 
[Appendix C — 151] 
