University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gary Splitter has been suspended from laboratory work for unauthorized and potentially dangerous experiments with highly regulated substances performed in his lab.
The experiments were conducted in 2007 and came to light after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a strain of antibiotic-resistant brucellosis during an inspection. One of Splitter's lab workers also came down with brucellosis, a condition normally limited to livestock that causes fever, muscular pain and sweating.
Officials are not sure if the lab worker developed the condition from the unauthorized experiments. Still, the university was fined $40,000 for work with the strain and breakdown of biological safety. According to the Wisconsin State-Journal, the National Institutes of Health called the Madison experiments a "major action violation."
The university this week released a 500-page report on Splitter, a professor animal health and biomedical sciences. Splitter will be barred from working in his lab for five years in a rare act of discipline.
The State-Journal has Splitter's side of the story:
Splitter said he was not aware of the unauthorized experiments, which he added were conducted by graduate students in his lab, and that the university did not properly educate researchers about guidelines for working with antibiotic-resistant strains.
"The University of Wisconsin failed to provide the right education," Splitter said. "The bottom line is that this wasn't just an investigation of one individual. It was a major meltdown by the university."
Splitter said part of the problem was understaffing in the university's bio-safety program, which is charged with training scientists about regulations. At the time of the experiments, he said, there were only two people employed in the program and neither were trained biologists.
Splitter has dedicated much of his career to studying and potentially finding a vaccine for brucellosis. He will continue to teach at the university.
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