In addition, the CDC plans to establish an external advisory group for lab safety and has initiated its investigation into the H5N1 incident. It also plans to discipline anyone who knowingly violated protocols or failed to report a lab incident. “We have to work with these flu viruses, that is how we can understand them,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “What’s more important is we have to be able to do this safely. That’s really the key piece. We don’t want to stop this work.” These incidents have “become a very dark cloud on lab science,” he says. But, “what I am really hopeful for is whatever happened with CDC will be viewed as the shot heard round the world and all laboratories will be looking at these issues. This could just as easily have been one of them.”