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Comment by fallingknife | Hacker News Reader

> Jaumain’s family has filed both criminal charges and an administrative suit against INRAE, alleging a range of problems at Jaumain’s lab. She had not been trained in handling dangerous prions or responding to accidents and did not wear both metal mesh and surgical gloves, as she was supposed to, says Julien Bensimhon, the family’s lawyer. The thumb should have been soaked in a bleach solution immediately, which did not happen, Bensimhon adds.

Sounds like a bad lab that wasn't following safety procedures. But even that is in question:

> Independent reports by a company specializing in occupational safety and by government inspectors have found no safety violations at the lab; one of them said there was a “strong culture” of risk management. (Bensimhon calls the reports “biased.”)

Why does every lab have to be shut down for 3 months?

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I think the report finding that there were no safety violations is the most damning. You have 100 researchers dealing with a deadly disease, 17 had lab accidents during their work, 5 of them may have suffered fatal exposure with no training how to mitigate this? What are the mandated safety procedures if none where violated? Wear a labcoat and pray that you wont die ten years from now?

Your second quote is the reason why: the administrative controls that are supposed to prevent this sort of incident at any of the labs inarguably failed in this case, and there is no reason to believe they will not fail again.

In addition, these controls may be based on false and overly-optimistic assumptions about the risk these pathogens pose.

For either of these reasons, returning to the status quo ante may not be an adequate response. In general, administrative and procedural controls are inferior to uncircumventable physical barriers.

> Why does every lab have to be shut down for 3 months?

Auditing everyone and their processes takes a while.

Why would you audit processes when the allegation is that someone got infected because she wasn't following the processes?

It's so that they can figure out why the process wasn't being followed and how it can be improved. Nothing is perfect and accidents are a great catalyst for reexamining your procedures.

What could change to make it more likely that the process would be followed? Could we put signs all around places with prion research? Could we implement a buddy system whenever we work with prions? Do metal gloves need to be hung in visible place throughout the lab? Do we keep containers of bleach accessible for when someone pricks their finger? Do we have enough of them and are they visible enough?

The last thing you need is more bureaucracy. If you want the rules to be followed, you punish the people who don't. That's it. It doesn't take 3 months. It doesn't take any audits or committees. If there is a rule following problem, you enforce the rules. People will find a way to comply if they know they will pay the price if they don't.

Part of a process audit is to check compliance, e.g. by counting if there are enough metal gloves per employee - including measuring all hand sizes to check if really every employee even has access to a fitting glove -, by checking if supply orders for PPE match expected consumption, by interviewing current and especially former employees and by checking emails for evidence of staff complaints.

She hadn't been trained in how to handle prions. Doesn't that sound like a process problem to you?

Someone not following a process is a failure of the process. The process should include proper training and regular oversight to ensure that the process is being followed - an audit will reveal if that training and oversight is in place. If you trace any accident back far enough, you'll eventually get to a point where it could've been prevented with better planning.

if we have some dangerous prion, and some person is bypassing procedure, that still is needing some evaluation. prion escape and becoming common in populations would be a large disaster.

> prion escape and becoming common in populations would be a large disaster.

IIRC, all known prion diseases are only transmissible by ingestion of infectious particles - meaning, eating from infected parts of a carcass, urine/feces and blood.

There does not seem to have been any ingestion in these two cases. Still, they do not involve transmission through air or through casual contact, but see the last couple of sentences here with regard to the former: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27984942

Risk management can (and often does) include simply accepting risks and their consequences.

A strong risk management doesn't necessarily mean strong protection of employees, just that lots of risks have been considered, documented and weighed in some form.

Sounds just like many places that handle prions in the US. Bad? Yes. Normal? Yeah, pretty much so.

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