The body of Dr. Eleanor Finch, the virologist who vanished from a high-security laboratory in Albuquerque three weeks ago, has been discovered in a desert ravine. The New Mexico State Police confirmed the grisly find at dawn, noting ‘no immediate signs of foul play’ – a phrase that will no doubt comfort her grieving family about as much as a soggy digestive biscuit.
Dr. Finch, 34, was last seen leaving the BioSafety Level-4 facility after what colleagues described as a ‘routine Tuesday’. Her car was found abandoned near a petrol station six miles away, keys still in the ignition, phone smashed, and a half-eaten packet of Hobnobs on the passenger seat.
The nation of Britain, ever alert to the scent of moral superiority, has responded with alacrity. The Foreign Secretary, a man whose face appears to have been carved from a lump of self-satisfaction, issued a statement calling for ‘urgent global talks on laboratory safety’. Never mind that the facility in question is in New Mexico, that the UK has had its own fair share of lab leaks, and that the last time Britain insisted on global standards it was for the metric system, which it still refuses to adopt.
Parliament is already burning the midnight oil, which is to say, a select committee has been formed. It will meet twice, produce a 47-page report, and then promptly forget about it when the next crisis – a stray badger or a celebrity divorce – rolls around. Meanwhile, scientists are queuing up to remind us that Biosafety Level-4 labs are ‘inherently dangerous’ and that ‘human error remains the weakest link’.
Also water is wet. Dr. Finch’s mother, interviewed outside the family home in Clapham, described her daughter as ‘a brilliant scientist who always wore two pairs of gloves’.
She blamed ‘corner-cutting’ and ‘profit-driven research’. The government, predictably, blamed inadequate training. The lab itself, in a statement released through a PR firm that specialises in crisis management for pharmaceutical giants, expressed ‘deepest sympathies’ and pledged to ‘cooperate fully with any investigation’.
It also announced a 15% increase in security budgets, which will no doubt be spent on more poster campaigns about hand-washing. But let us not be churlish. This is a tragedy.
A woman is dead. Her family is bereft. And the UK, like a well-meaning uncle who turns up at a funeral with a joke about a horse, has found a way to make it all about itself.
For the next 48 hours, every news bulletin will feature a retired colonel talking about ‘lessons to be learned’. There will be solemn interviews with bereaved families of past lab incidents. The word ‘transparency’ will be used so often it will lose all meaning.
And then, just as reliably as the sunrise, we will move on. The committee will disband. The global standards will be drafted, debated, and diluted.
Dr. Finch’s name will be forgotten, save for a small brass plaque in a corridor that everyone walks past without seeing. And somewhere, in a lab in Wuhan or a basement in the Home Counties, another virologist will snap on two pairs of gloves, take a deep breath, and proceed as if nothing happened.
Because that is the way of things. That is the dance we do with danger. We waltz right up to the edge, peer into the abyss, and then pass a motion suggesting someone put up a handrail.
