Recent News

By Region: North America

Detecting biological terror agents

(Homeland Security NewsWire) PositiveID Corporation is testing its M-BAND bioagent detection system in preparation for DHS’s $3 billion BioWatch procurement; M-BAND can be remotely set to detect for DNA-based pathogens alone, with or without either RNA-based organisms or toxins, or for all three types of pathogens simultaneously at remotely programmable intervals.

May 24, 2012
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, and Policy & Initiatives
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Taking the Pulse of CDC’s PulseNet

(Food Safety News) This week at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Health Laboratories in Seattle, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – which operates PulseNet – explained the crucial role this pathogen database plays in outbreak detection and the challenges that must be met in order for it to Read More »

May 24, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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Darpa, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering

(Danger Room) The military-industrial complex just got a little bit livelier. Quite literally. That’s because Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research arm, has kicked off a program designed to take the conventions of manufacturing and apply them to living cells. Think of it like an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter Read More »

May 24, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Biotechnology, and Research
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Bio terror vaccine stockpile procurement questioned

(Government Security News) A House intelligence committee member and former Bush White House bio-terror official are questioning whether smallpox and anthrax vaccine stockpile efforts are being slowed by the Obama administration because of the costs. A May 10 letter from House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) to Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for preparedness Read More »

May 24, 2012
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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Bird-flu research: The biosecurity oversight

(Nature.com) The packages that started arriving by FedEx on 12 October last year came with strict instructions: protect the information within and destroy it after review. Inside were two manuscripts showing how the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus could be made to transmit between mammals. The recipients of these packages — eight members of the Read More »