Senator Lugar passes away, lab named after him in Tbilisi still irritates Russia
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Wednesday, May 1
Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze has sent his condolences over the death of US Senator Richard Lugar at the age of 87 on April 28, while the lab named after the senator in Tbilisi has been cited as the “threat to the region due to dangerous experiments” by Russia since its opening in 2013.
“World has lost a great statesman, who has been instrumental in American foreign policy for decades. Senator Richard Lugar was a great friend of and will always stay in our memories as a person who has made a world a better place,” PM Bakhtadze wrote.
Lugar served as the Republican US senator from Indiana from 1977 to 2013.
Much of Lugar's work in the Senate was toward the dismantling of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons worldwide.
He founded a nonprofit organization which specializes in the policy areas he pursued while in office. The Lugar Center focuses on global food security, the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, foreign aid effectiveness, and effective bipartisan governance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated last year that Americans are allegedly conducting genetic researches in the Lugar Lab in Tbilisi and the studies aim to produce substances ‘totally changing the human appearance.”
Before Putin made the comment, dozens of Russian officials have been speculating about “illegal experiments “at the Lugar lab,” which have led to “deaths of people.”
Tbilisi says that such statements are groundless and invited Russian experts and medics in Georgia to personally see the lab and familiarize themselves with the activities of three laboratories of the Lugar Centre, which opened in 2013 and is now fully controlled, owned and financed by the Georgian government.
However, Russian scientists refused to come in Tbilisi.
Experts from the World Health Organisation visited the lab amid the statements by Russian officials last year and stated in their report that the lab is operating “very transparently.”
Georgian health ministry officials say that all clinical-laboratory diagnostic and scientific research requiring the use of a BSL-3 laboratory under international rules are carried out in the Lugar center and “only Georgian researchers have access to the BSL-3 space.”
A biosafety level (BSL) is a set of biocontainment precautions needed to isolate dangerous biological agents in an enclosed laboratory facility. The levels of containment range from the lowest biosafety level 1 (BSL-1) to the highest at level 4 (BSL-4).
“The Lugar Center is a certified Biosafety Level-3 facility that performs a unique role in identifying especially dangerous pathogens, research and public health for the region,” Head of the Georgian Disease Control Centre Amiran Gamkrelidze said.
The Lugar Lab was opened in 2013 in Tbilisi and was initially operating through the US financial support.
