THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

October 10, 1989

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

On Saturday, October 7th we were the guests of the Military
Medicine Research Institute in Leningrad. This visit had been
arranged on fairly short notice by Dr. Raiefsky, a member of
the Soviet committee and (a colonel (3*) director for infectious
diseases at the institute. The clearance for the visit had
evidently been completed only the day before and there was some
scramble about obtaining amendments to our travel visas to allow
us to go to Leningrad. The original word was that we would be
having only an hour and a half and that punctuated by lunch;
but this was evidently a misunderstanding promulgated by the
functionaries at the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. They
may not have taken our mission very seriously and thought we
would . prefer sightseeing!

In fact the Research Institute was available to us for as
long as we would wish and that amounted to about four hours.
We were greeted by a two * general, Victor Vladimirov who holds
a degree of doctor of medical science and told me. .he was a
radiologist. The work of the Institute is divided into four
categories (I will enumerate later). It is located in a Lenin-
grad suburb called Porokhovyye which is located about 15 kilome-
ters due northeast of central Leningrad on Lesoparkovia Street.
The Institute has been located there for the last 20 years:
prior to that it had been part of a larger military containment
at some distance. This particular suburb has grown rapidly in
the last few years. There is no great security about the area,
which was a few hundred meters in extent on each side. There
was an unguarded gate but the windows on the lower floors were
barred. With animal rights activism emerging they will doubt-
less have to elevate their security standards to where they are
closer to those of research facilities in the United States.

Most of the personnel we saw there on Saturday -- it was a
national holiday and they turned out especially for us -- were
uniformed officers (a number of three * colonels?, one or two
two * majors?) There were a couple of civilians who entitled
themselves as professor and were probably connected with the
Medical Military Training Academy in Leningrad. The officers
wore army uniforms of the medical corps; we were told that
health services were not separated by Army/Navy/Air Force ser-
vice as is the case in the U.S. The Military Medical Research
Institute reports directly to a Ministry of Defense Medical
Officer. It is a research cadre that seems to be a quite
separate career line from the clinical services.

The research work at the Institute, which has been ex-
tensively published, appears to be directed mainly at in-
fectious disease problems that would arise out of geographic
endemicity. On a direct question from me they said that they
could "kill two rabbits with one bullet", and that the same
understanding would be applicable to defense against biologi-
cal attack. They were fully preoccupied with the former and
did not display the least bit of anxiety that they might have
to defend against BW. They were in agreement , however, that
this was a potential threat from the third world, and asked
if I could give them any information about the tangibility
of that prospect. I was not able to do so but they did not
quarrel with this as a theoretical proposition.

There are no production facilities of any kind on the
Site. They indicated that the largest scale of culture of
pathogenic agents was in test tubes or roller bottles. They
did have a cell culture fermentor of about 1.5 liter capacity
which they used to grow cells used in virus plaque assays.
This is manufactured on special order by a research institute
in Kiev.

Their most specialized facility was an aerosol exposure
chamber which.can be operated at P3 standards, and is used in
their extensive research on aerosol immunization of experimen-
tal animals. A great deal of that work has been published.

They use glove box containment facilities for dealing with
highly pathogenic organisms. They had for example an unexpected
circumstance of the isolation of Rift Valley Fever from a
veteran of the Afghan front -- a report which arouse consider-
able excitement at the arbovirus meeting.

There are no external signatures that would be indicative
of high containment. They do have an animal facility on site
and some of the runways for dogs are externally visible.

There is no reason to doubt the image of the research they
are doing. They are conscientious people dedicated to their
mission. They are dealt with somewhat skeptically by some of
their colleagues in the civilian institutes and this applied
especially to their report of having isolated the Rift virus.
They are going to try to clone segments of their isolate in
order to complete the identification. They do not feel that.
they have the facilities to carry on research with high hazard
agents very much further.
Located in a metropolitan area, they are increasingly
susceptible to public and environmental concerns and have
redoubled precautions to insure that there are no untoward
releases of dangerous agents. They are expectant that there
will be a rising tide of concern, given their location, both
with this issue and with animal rights activists. (In every
respect they would appear to be quite comparable to the
pertinent activities at Walter Reed and Ft. Detrick.) They
wre pleased that the new spirit of Glasnost had made our
visit possible and that it generally opened up their communi-
cations on scientific matters. We were the first foreigners
to have visited the Institute and they took a large number
of photographs to mark the occasion.

They asked if we were aware about the extensive changes
going on in their country: we replied that we felt we had
heard a great deal about them and remarked in particular about
the visits of Marshal Akhremeyov and General Yazov. They do
seem to expect reductions in the military budget which is now
under the control of the Soviet Parliament (Velikhov is chair-
man of the Military Appropriations Committee); and that
Parliament has evidently been given access to full details
of the military budget. They indicated that they felt they
had an important public health mission quite apart from those
connected with the military service and in this respect they
are also a close counterpart of the AMRIID. They expressed
their eagerness to respond to any questions about their own
current activities: our own group was particularly interested
in the Rift Valley Fever isolation (and its implications for
livestock on the Asian continent) and on the aerosol immuniza-
tions programs: there was extensive discussion about both of
those. Dr. Raiefsky took a very positive role throughout the
discussion and appeared to have developed a more important,
secure and mature position since our meeting in London.

We were asked to leave cameras and tape recorders on the
bus before disembarking for the Institute; but it was not
obvious to me what could conceivably have been the target of
any concern: this is a carryover of routine regulations apply-
ing to any military facility. The labs were not really in
current operation owing to its being both a Saturday and a
holiday.
Next time we should have brief bios available of our
group to pass out when we attend meetings of this kind.
They do have collaborative work with Dr. S.V. Prozorovsky
in which programs of troop immunization are used for the
calibration of immunomodulators. Dr. Lvov said he had
never been to the Institute but that some of his junior
colleagues had made some effort to establish useful
connections there with "so far indifferent success".