14 DAY TRIAL // According to Thursday's issue of Newark Star-Ledger, three laboratory mice infected with the bacterium that causes bubonic plague have been discovered missing from the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
The lab is run by the Public Health Research Institute, a leading center for research on infectious diseases, the newspaper said, and it is now participating in a six-year federal project to research new vaccines for plague, which officials fear could be used by terrorists as a biological weapon.
The incident was confirmed two weeks after it actually happened, when the newspaper made inquiries to the facility, one of the state's top bio-containment labs, the Star-Ledger said.
It is still unclear whether the animals were stolen, eaten by other lab animals, or simply misplaced.
State Health Commissioner Fred Jacobs told the newspaper that mice infected with plague typically die very quickly, calling the risk to public safety "slim to none."