Recent News

By Region: North America

What’s the Future of Synthetic Biology?

(MIT) Last July, scientists created the first “synthetic cell,” an organism that’s controlled by a chemically synthesized genome edited on a computer and stitched together in the lab. One year later, biologists at the Fifth Annual Synthetic Biology conference at Stanford University are still struggling to take the next step in the field. Holding them  Read More »

UGA downplays biolab inspection report

(Online Athens) Inspectors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted about a dozen deficiencies in a surprise inspection of the University of Georgia’s troubled high-security Animal Health Research Center last month. UGA officials characterized what the CDC found as minor. Scientists use the high-security lab on Carlton Street near East Campus Road to  Read More »

CDC director worries about impact of budget cuts

(Washington Post) Thomas R. Frieden took over as the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in June 2009. Before moving to the CDC, Frieden, a physician with extensive experience with both communicable and noncommunicable diseases, served as commissioner of the New York Health Department from 2002 to 2009.

The Tattered Germ Warfare Treaty by David Hoffman

(Foreign Policy) It’s no secret: the international treaty that outlaws germ warfare is not much of a pact. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1975, had good intentions but no teeth. There was no effective enforcement mechanism to keep countries from cheating, and there still isn’t. From December 5-22 in  Read More »

Enhancing Compliance With an Evolving Treaty: A Task for an Improved BWC Intersessional Process

(Arms Control Today) By Kirk C. Bansak. Since 2003, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) regime has featured annual meetings to address specific topics. These meetings, which comprise the treaty’s so-called intersessional process, take place in the years in which review conferences do not. Review conferences are infrequent, occuring about every five years; states-parties are hard-pressed  Read More »

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