Bio-defense labs make strange bedfellows.

One of the odd things about the NBAF debate is the way some opponents are lumping Athens elected officials in with President Bush and the bogeymen at Homeland Security.

Much has been made recently of a letter Mayor Heidi Davison wrote to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in support of bring the lab to Athens, as if she was conspiring with those Republican fascists to kill us all in the name of the almighty dollar.

The Sunshine Project has folded, according to the British magazine Science. There is also a better Chronicle of Higher Education article, but it’s subscription-only.

The group, with offices in Texas and Germany, was probably the only organization in the world solely committed to investigating and criticizing bio-research. The local anti-NBAF group FAQ invited U.S. director Edward Hammond to town last month to give a talk on the dangers of such research, to mixed reviews, and I had interviewed him for an article back in September.

Grady Thrasher, one of the founders of the local anti-NBAF group FAQ, passed along a link today
to an article in a Kansas paper that quotes NBAF project manager as saying the lab would be protected by 50 armed guards, and another to a North Carolina television report that also mentions guards.

Thrasher and his wife Kathy Prescott are not pleased with Mayor Heidi Davison accusing them of using fear-mongering tactics to scare residents into opposing NBAF.