Hello All you residents of Boston and Massachusetts! I'm writing with a request that you spend a moment to go to this site to find Stop The BU-BioTerror Lab. We are on a wonderful new campaign since our devoted group of scientists have come up with an Alternative Use Proposal for the BU Lab site, which currently sits empty on the side of the Southeast Expressway right next to Boston Medical Center. We are also waiting for the Blue Ribbon Panel, appointed by the NIH to finally come up with its fourth!!!! environmental review for the viability of that site for a Level 4 Bio-lab ... the kind that can research the most deadly pathogens we currently know about. They will be coming to Boston in October ... look for an announcement of that meeting which may be held at Roxbury Community College ... to present their most current information. We have launched the proposal and are in the midst of sending it out to the many politicians, agency personnel and others to whom we have been speaking 'lo these eight years of struggle. This is not just a NIMBY move. We are fighting to stop the development of all of the Level 4 labs that have been instituted since 9/11. We are hoping to garner 1,000 signatures to send off to NIH to show that there is still widespread support for Stopping the Lab. Meanwhile, BU has just this week asked for one-to-one conversations with the lawyers who have been working devotedly on this case with us. BU has received a copy of the Alternative Use Plan. This is a very good sign that they are considering a move in the correct direction!!!! If you have interest in reading the new proposal, take a look. It's a bit long but I do have some talking points ... not exactly short, either. Anyway, my ask is that you take a moment and sign the petition ... we may actually have a winner of a struggle this time around! The petition says this: We Challenge The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to change the NEIDL's mission to broad-spectrum countermeasure and vaccine-platform approaches and away from one bug, one drug approaches, given NIAID's own refocus on broad-spectrum approaches. Thanks for any and all time you may have given this struggle already and perhaps we're on the last leg of it! - Sara Driscoll (sdrisc@juno.com)