The mice will play?

Yesterday's news about the three missing mice -- each infected with the bubonic plague for "research" purposes -- was initially treated as ho-hum by the major press, but it appears the FBI is asking serious questions about the New Jersey lab responsible.

Officials said the animals could have been stolen (Emphasis: DTO) from the center or simply misplaced in a colossal accounting error at one of the top-level bio-containment labs in the state.

The incident occurred more than two weeks ago and was confirmed only yesterday after questions were raised by The Star-Ledger.

The research lab is located on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. It is run by the Public Health Research Institute, a leading center for research on infectious diseases, now participating in a six-year federal bio-defense project to find new vaccinations for the plague -- which federal officials fear could be used as a biological weapon.

What isn't being said, but you should know, is that right now there is no available vaccine for bubonic plague in the United States. (Emergency doses of antibiotics are recommended when people suspect they've been exposed. Most people would never know if they've been exposes or not.)

Here's what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says:

Persons who must be present in an area where a plague outbreak is occurring can protect themselves for 2 to 3 weeks by taking antibiotics. The preferred antibiotics for prophylaxis against plague are the tetracyclines or the sulfonamides.

Vaccines: Plague vaccine is no longer available in the United States

The possibility of theft raises the question of why. One possible answer: to get a sample of the disease to see if it can be made even more deadly.

The Newark lab was working on some sort of federal grant to develop new vaccines, but is not per se a federal institution. Security obviously was not tight enough. How many other public and private labs are working on similar types of research? Are their employees given background checks (including periodic updates)? How many foreign nationals work in these programs, and are their backgrounds, including we are sad to say, religious affiliations, documented?

And why did it take two weeks for someone to notice that three potentially deadly mice were missing?

If this isn't a Homeland Security issue, nothing is.