History
In response to disease outbreaks in Mexico and Canada in 1954, the Army gave the island to the Agriculture Department to establish a research center dedicated to the study of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.
The island was opened to news media for the first time in 1992. In 1995, the Department of Agriculture was issued a $111,000 fine for storing hazardous chemicals on the island.
Local Long Island activists prevented the center from expanding to include diseases that affect humans in 2000, which would require a Biosafety Level 4 designation; in 2002, Congress again considered the plan.
The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2002 that many scientists and government officials wanted the lab to close, believing that the threat of foot-and-mouth disease was so remote that the center did not merit its $16.5 million annual budget. In 2002, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center was transferred from the United States Department of Agriculture to the United States Department of Homeland Security.
In 2003, a whistleblower who voiced concerns about safety at the facility was fired by the contractor he worked for. He had discussed his concerns with aides to Senator Hillary Clinton. A National Labor Relations Board judge found that the contractor, North Fork Services, had discriminated against the whistleblower.
Read more about this topic: Plum Island Animal Disease Center
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)