9200 uncatalogued pathogens found at US lab!

With three days left in spring cleaning season, a US army lab that works on the world's deadliest pathogens has turned up uncatalogued vials of Ebola, anthrax, plague and other pathogens – 9220 of them to be precise.

The laboratory is the same one where anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins worked before he committed suicide last year. The US government suspects Ivins was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, and studies showed that the anthrax used in the attack was "directly related" to the batch stored at the lab.

The discovery of the uncatalogued vials raises questions about whether anyone would notice if some of the lab's pathogens went missing.

"A small number would be a concern; 9200 ... at an institution that has been the focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that's deeply worrisome. Unacceptable," Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, told the Washington Post.

Officials at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, made news of their find in a press conference on Wednesday.

Most research has been on hold at the laboratory after an inspection at the beginning of the year turned up 20 vials of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus in a box that was supposed to contain 16. This prompted the laboratory's most recent fit of spring cleaning, during which officials spent four months scouring freezers to compare their contents with a database of about 66,000 vials documented as of February.