In 1969, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) opened its first permanent high-containment laboratory (HCL) to protect scientists while they worked with dangerous infectious pathogens. The original HCL was established in response to an outbreak of a new hemorrhagic fever reported in lab workers in Europe in 1967 – it would come to be called Marburg virus and was eventually traced back to imported African green monkeys.

The opening of CDC’s new lab also coincided with the emergence of another new pathogen in West Africa, Lassa fever, another viral hemorrhagic fever capable of causing severe illness in people. Over the next decade, additional viruses would be identified for work in this special lab, like Ebola.