Foreign Laboratory Supply

The Bureau of Mines, within the Department of the Interior, funds a substantial amount of chemical engineering research in its in-house laboratories, particularly in the area of hydrometallrugical separation processes. The U.S. minerals industry is currently in a depressed state typified by diminished research efforts within industrial laboratories and, in some cases, wholesale termination of research operations. As a result, new researchers have bleak prospects for industrial employment. At the same time, the United States cannot afford to lose a professional generation of research persormel in an area that would be of critical importance if foreign supplies of certain metals were interrupted. 

Other possible downsides are the relative paucity of central laboratory facilities especially for assays, and that are accredited to International Standards and also both GLP and GCP compliant. Transport of clinical trial supplies, access of sites to monitoring visits may require days of rail transport rather than air with complications of humidity and temperature extremes on supplies and biological samples. Finally, sectarian violence can break out at any time causing disruption to monitoring of studies and possible danger to foreign monitors. 

Imagine, for a moment, that a foreign nation has dispatched a band of terrorists to the United States. The intruders silently move across the landscape depositing toxic chemicals at a thousand sites around the country. Some of the toxic compounds quickly enter the rivers and underground reservoirs that supply America with drinking water. Other chemicals contaminate our neighborhoods and backyards where our children play. Still others sit like time bombs, destined to contaminate our water supplies after months, years, or even decades. The toxic chemicals carried by these enemies are the products of the most sophisticated laboratories on Earth. They cause birth defects, liver disease, and cancer. Their effects may be felt for generations. 

Acknowledgments This work has been supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique Medicale, Belgium (Grants n 688 and 840). Toads, Bufo marinus, were generously supplied by Mr. D.R. Fischer, Laboratories Warner, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, assisted for shipment of the animals by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium. Recrystallized ox insulin and excipient were gifts from Novo Laboratories. 

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