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By Region: North America

Senate Hearing on H5N1 papers exposes political divides

(Nature News Blog) Today in Washington D.C., US Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut revealed that his grandmother was killed by influenza during the 1918 pandemic. This was one reason he has been so interested in a pair of yet-to-be-published papers on laboratory-created H5N1 avian influenza strains that could conceivably prove many times more deadly than  Read More »

Senate committee seeks answers in H5N1 study debate

(CIDRAP) Spurred by events surrounding two controversial H5N1 transmission studies, a US Senate committee today questioned federal officials whose agencies have a stake in dual-use research of concern (DURC) about the procedures they use to spot possible bioterror threats. Today’s Senate committee hearing marked the first time officials have testified before Congress on the issue,  Read More »

Scientific freedom and security

(The Economist) RON FOUCHIER (pictured), of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, is the lead author of a controversial paper which lays out how deadly H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu, can be made deadlier still. He believes this information should be widely disseminated, so that biologists can work on drugs or vaccines to combat  Read More »

For better or worse

(Nature.com) Frank debate is needed about the balance between beneficial and detrimental uses of research. Scientists must be the first to open discussions. Many bench scientists are just too caught up in their research to consider its ethical possibilities, and very few want to take the time to rigorously explore them. However, the controversy over  Read More »

Foot-and-mouth disease vaccine developed in US

(BBC News) With the US livestock industry on alert after a diagnosis of “mad cow” disease in California, the BBC has gained rare access to a high-security compound where a vaccine for another deadly animal virus is close to completion. Hijacked planes, dirty bombs and cyber attacks are all terror threats the US takes very  Read More »

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