Harvard is also reaping the benefits of increased funding through partnership with other local institutions. Over the course of the past two years, federal funds have spawned a wave of growth throughout greater Boston.

Last fall, funding cleared for the first and only top-security biological laboratory in New England—bringing the vanguard of biological research to Boston with it.

The so-called BioSecurity Level 4 lab (BSL-4) is the crown jewel of biological research facilities, comprised of an array of sealed chambers and locked freezers intended less to keep intruders out than to keep test subjects in.

The new facility will be used as a refining ground for previous research, providing a secure environment in which researchers can test their research on whole pathogens.

When the South End facility, technically under the auspices of Boston University, opens in 2006, it will enable scientists from several local institutions—including Harvard—to carry out research on everything from AIDS vaccines to the Plague.

THE FLIP SIDE OF FUNDING

Not everyone is convinced, though, that the wave of new funding is bringing the benefits it promises.

Kendall Hoyt, a fellow in the International Security Program at the Kennedy School of Government, has been tracking the effects of increased funding for science since Sept. 11.

She says her research indicates that the new rivers of federal money flowing into higher education may actually be working to sink the national-security boat—in part because the NIH, through which most funds are funneled, lacks a system for ensuring that projects are relevant, unique, and ultimately worthwhile.

Mismanagement of projects has already led to a huge waste of resources made worse by flawed threat assessment, she says.

But she cites another danger that has aroused controversy at Harvard and its peers.

More work on biological pathogens means more potentially subversive knowledge about them, Hoyt says.

“As you expand these programs, you’re training more and more people to deal with these pathogens,” she says. Some could eventually use the findings for harm rather than help.

This possibility is the government’s worst fear—and one that has motivated a series of new restrictions on scientific research since Sept. 11.

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