In an 8 September press release, the Virginia-based company Bostwick Laboratories announced the opening of the American International Pathology Laboratories (AIPL), a “world-class facility providing positions to more than 40 civilian pathologists and staff formerly of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) laboratories.” It was a slightly revised version of the press release the company had published a month earlier. Originally, Bostwick said they would be forming 'AFIP Laboratories' including staff from the Army AFIP facility, which they implied would soon close.

After a request from the Army, the company agreed to amend their press release and change their laboratory's name, says Evan Farmer, who will serve as director of the new AIPL. The AFIP facility is slated to close, says Paul Stone, a spokesman for the Army institute, but not until September 2011. “That's what it's always been,” he says.

The AFIP is part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which will itself become part of the National Naval Medical Center some time in the next few years. Parts of the AFIP will survive in the form of the Joint Pathology Center in Washington, DC. The AFIP's deputy commander called Bostwick's move to open a new version of the AFIP premature in a recent Washington Post article, saying the AFIP was replacing the 40 researchers who left to join the AIPL. Meanwhile, Farmer maintains that it was AFIP researchers who first approached Bostwick about starting a new pathology center.

The AFIP has been conducting research for nearly 150 years and has provided samples for historic projects, such as the reconstruction of the 1918 Spanish flu virus. The institute claims to have no plans to slow down. “Please rest assured that the AFIP is open and definitely continues to accept military, veterans' affairs and civilian cases in all pathology departments,” reads a September press release.