The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID; ) is the United States Army's main institution and facility for defensive research into countermeasures against biological warfare. It is located on Fort Detrick, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., and is a subordinate lab of the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), headquartered on the same installation. USAMRIID is the only laboratory of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) equipped to study highly hazardous viruses at Biosafety Level 4 within positive pressure personnel suits. USAMRIID employs both military and civilian scientists as well as highly specialized support personnel, totaling around 800 people. In the 1950s and 1960s, USAMRIID and its predecessor unit pioneered unique, state-of-the-art biocontainment facilities which it continues to maintain and upgrade. Investigators at its facilities frequently collaborate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and major biomedical and academic centers worldwide. USAMRIID was the first bio-facility of its type to research the Ames strain of anthrax, determined through genetic analysis to be the bacterium used in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Mission USAMRIID's 1983 mission statement mandated that the Institute:
Develops strategies, products, information, procedures and training for medical defense against biological warfare agents and naturally occurring infectious agents of military importance that require special containment. USAMRIID's current mission statement is:
To protect the Warfighter from biological threats and to be prepared to investigate disease outbreaks or threats to public health.
National and international legal status By U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) directive, as well as additional U.S. Army guidance, USAMRIID performs its "biological agent medical defense" research in support of the needs of the three military services. This mission, and all work done at USAMRIID, must remain within the spirit and letter of both President Richard Nixon's 1969 and 1970 Executive Orders renouncing the use of biological and toxin weapons, and the U.N. Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.
History
Beginnings USAMRIID traces its institutional lineage to the early 1950s, when Lt. Col. Abram S. Benenson was appointed as medical liaison officer to the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (BWL) at Camp (later Fort) Detrick to oversee biomedical defensive problems. Soon thereafter, a joint agreement was signed and studies on medical defense against biological weapons were conducted cooperatively by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and the Army Medical Department. These early days saw the beginnings of the medical volunteer program known as "Project Whitecoat" (1954–1973). USAMRIID's precursor—the Army Medical Unit (AMU)—began operations in 1956 under the command of Col. William D. Tigertt. (One of the AMU's first responsibilities was to oversee all aspects of Project CD-22, the exposure of volunteers to aerosols containing a highly pathogenic strain of Coxiella burnetii, the causal agent of Q fever.) In 1961, Col. Dan Crozier assumed command of the AMU. Modern principles of biosafety and biocontainment were pioneered at Fort Detrick throughout the 1960s by a number of scientists led by Arnold G. Wedum. Crozier oversaw the planning and construction of the present USAMRIID laboratory and office building (Building 1425) and its advanced biocontainment suites, which is formally known as "The Crozier Building". Ground breaking came in 1967 (personnel moved in during 1971 and 1972). In 1969, the BWL were formally disestablished and the Institute underwent a formal name change from the AMU to the "U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases". The institute's mission did not really change and it received additional funding and personnel authorizations to hire biomedical and laboratory scientists who were losing their jobs as a result of the termination of the United States' offensive BW studies.
1970s By the late 1970s, in addition to the work on Coxiella burnetii and other rickettsiae, research priorities had expanded to include the development of vaccines and therapeutics against Argentine, Korean and Bolivian hemorrhagic fevers, Lassa fever and other exotic diseases that could pose potential BW threats. In 1978, the Institute assisted with humanitarian efforts in Egypt when a severe outbreak of Rift Valley fever (RVF) occurred there for the first time. The epidemic caused thousands of human cases and the deaths of large numbers of livestock. Diagnostics, along with much of the institute's stock of RVF vaccine, were sent to help control the outbreak. At this time the Institute acquired both fixed and transportable BSL-4 containment plastic human isolators for the hospital care and safe transport of patients suffering from highly contagious and potentially lethal exotic infections. In 1978, it established an Aeromedical Isolation Team (AIT)—a military rapid response team of doctors, nurses and medics, with worldwide airlift capability, designed to safely evacuate and manage contagious patients under BSL-4 conditions. A formal agreement was signed with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at this time stipulating that USAMRIID would house and treat highly contagious infections in laboratory personnel should any occur. (After deploying on only four "real world" missions in 32 years, the AIT was ultimately decommissioned in 2010.)
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