As the University of Hawaii medical school was going up in 2002, Dean Ed Cadman recruited Duane Gubler, a world-famous researcher in tropical and infectious diseases, to come and build an infectious disease laboratory in Hawaii.
With the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) threat in 2003, a first-class Level 3 Regional Biosafety Laboratory looked like a no-brainer. The National Institutes of Health had authorized National Biosafety Laboratories at the University of Texas at Galveston and at Tufts, as well as Regional Biosafety Laboratories at 12 other universities.
But Hawaii’s RBL became a $47 million stop-start orphan child. Beside permitting and fundraising issues, UH has been delayed for a decade by NIMBY opposition to the sites proposed: the Waimano Home site in Aiea; the site makai of the John A. Burns School of Medicine in Kakaako; and now again there are neighborhood "misgivings" about the newest site in Kalaeloa.
The project is in a perfect storm. The tourism numbers look great, so "stasis" is the word of the day. Despite the MIT study finding that Honolulu has the airport third-most likely to spread the next great epidemic, we’ve lost interest and talent in biotech research. Gubler himself has moved to Singapore to build his laboratory for Duke Medical School there.
At the same time, Hawaii’s visitors are from everywhere you can think of, including places where infectious diseases are on the rise. Dengue, West Nile virus, malaria, typhoid, Ebola (now on an outbreak in Uganda) and drug-resistant infections like tuberculosis are a growing threat. Deadly zoonoses (diseases that can be spread across species) like SARS could strike at any time. There is no basis for complacency.
Here in the mid-Pacific, are we prepared to deal with such outbreaks? There will be no time to fly samples to the nearest RBL in Colorado when that delay could mean life and death. That we haven’t had an epidemic yet doesn’t mean we won’t have one, but rather that the odds are growing. Time is of the essence; we should have built the RBL a long time ago.
The project, planned for two acres near the National Guard hangar in Kalaeloa, will provide us with a testing and research facility to deal with infectious diseases. At the crossroads of a shrinking world, we can convert our vulnerability into an asset, not unlike Singapore. Hawaii is a great place for an RBL, and the RBL is a huge opportunity for Hawaii.
The RBL will make us an infectious disease center serving Asia-Pacific, with clear economic benefits — high-salary jobs, professional expertise, prestige and diversification — along with biosafety and security for our state, factors that clearly outweigh the neighborhood "misgivings."
Over time we should build our medical and biotech capabilities so we can be an exporter of expertise, diagnostics and data. This could do great things for the medical school and for the university in general. It would be a realization of the dream held by both Cadman and Gubler.
On the other hand, if we fail to establish an RBL after all this time, it will be a monument to Hawaii’s inability to build such projects and step up to the plate. If we lose the RBL after all this, it won’t be so easy getting it back again. Will it be three strikes and you’re out?
It’s more than just finding the causes of these diseases. The RBL could predict and prevent outbreaks, and develop computer models that will map random hot spots as they spread from continent to continent, and from developing countries to the First World. This information technology-biotech research will safeguard Hawaii and limit pandemic mortality and economic disaster.
We had excitement about IT 10 years ago. Then we moved to biotech. Now we’re excited about energy, which some say is the tech that tech was supposed to be. Looking back, we didn’t follow through on either the tech or biotech industries. Gubler’s departure was a big blow to biotech research. The RBL gives us a chance to regain lost ground.
There’s a new wind blowing on tech and entrepreneurism in Hawaii. That was clear at the Startup Hawaii program at the Sheraton and the upbeat visit of Neil Abercrombie and Steve Case to the Manoa Innovation Center late last week.
The New Day should continue to shine its light on biotech and the RBL.
It’s time to finally complete this project. Tomorrow isn’t soon enough.
———
Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.
