Recent News

By Region: North America

GAO Urges Improved DHS Guidelines for Using WMD Threat Analyses

(Global Security Newswire) The U.S. Homeland Security Department should create more detailed recommendations to guide its offices as they consider how to utilize WMD threat analyses in response preparations and resource acquisition and distribution decisions, the Government Accountability Office advised in a report released on Wednesday. The department in the last eight years has provided Read More »

January 27, 2012
| Filed under North America, Biological Weapons, Countermeasures, and Policy & Initiatives
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NEIDL Goes Public

(BU Today) Murphy, a School of Medicine professor of medicine and microbiology, researches the ways that bacterial protein toxins get into cells. Corley, a MED professor and chair of microbiology, investigates immune responses to viruses. But much of their time recently has been spent leading visitors through the many chambers of the National Emerging Infectious Read More »

January 27, 2012
| Filed under North America, Biosafety, Public Health, and Research
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Invitation to a Dialogue: Research and Its Risks

(New York Times) There is great debate in the scientific and public health community about what should be done regarding recent experiments in which scientists mutated H5N1 bird flu strains so that they could spread readily between ferrets.

January 26, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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Pharma’s niche focus spurs US aid for antibiotics

(The Associated Press) BARDA has awarded a series of contracts to encourage development of new antibiotics that can be stockpiled for use in a natural outbreak or during a bioterrorism attack. — The agency has allocated up to $64 million to Achaogen, a San Francisco startup …

January 26, 2012
| Filed under North America and Countermeasures
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A Central Researcher in the H5N1 Flu Debate Breaks His Silence

(AAAS) In the heated debate about two labs that engineered a variant of the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus that for the first time easily transmits between mammals, one critical voice has been missing: Yoshihiro Kawaoka. But today, Kawaoka speaks his mind in a Nature commentary and in a detailed response to questions from ScienceInsider. Read More »