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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday it had uncovered a new safety breach at its bioterror research laboratories involving dangerous avian flu, just as it was investigating the failures behind the potential exposure of researchers to live anthrax bacteria.
In its first findings from an internal probe into the anthrax incident last month, the CDC said multiple failures by individual scientists and a lack of agency-wide safety policies had led to the potential exposure of more than 80 lab workers to the dangerous bacteria at its campus in Atlanta.
During the probe, investigators also discovered a previously unreported incident: Workers at a high-security CDC lab sent samples containing a dangerous strain of bird flu to counterparts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in March. Mishandling of avian flu could have far graver consequences for the public than with anthrax.
"On Wednesday of this week, we
