Unanswered Questions About Asian Flu Virus

Well the Meridian Biosicience "mix up" of sending Asian Flu samples to 3700 labs in 18 countries (and an additional 2,750 labs in the US) is all over the news. What is driving me crazy is what is not being explained. I have some questions, and feel free to ask your own.

Questions
1. What is a private company doing with a deadly flu virus from 1958?
1 a How many other deadly viruses from the past are in private hands?

2. Aren't past virus samples that are 1) deadly and 2) no longer present in the population, kept under special conditions - say separate from active viruses and under special security?

3. Since it seems unlikely that there were 6,450 of these samples sitting around, and they went out as part of a standard (apparently) virus comparison kit, does this mean that Meridian put a deadly and extinct virus into their production facilities to produce the samples?
3 a How many sample kits did they produce?
3 b What was the exposure of Meridian workers?
3 c Has Meridian destroyed the virus that must have been present in their production facilities?
3 d What was the possibility of cross contamination of the Asian Flu virus with other products from Meridian?

4. It took months (the samples were shipped last fall) to discover the problem, and it was discovered by one of the labs (National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba). One assumes that in that period of time those samples must have been accessed and used by some of those receiving them. What is being done to track back on possible exposure?

5. What has Meridian done to ensure the security of the virus?

6. What has the FDA and CDC done to secure other samples of deadly agents at other manufacturers and facilities? (If Meridian has such samples you can bet that others do as well, and what happened once can surely happen again.)

Your turn ....