Recent News

By Region: North America

Pentagon Funds Work on Faster Disease Countermeasure Development

The U.S. Defense Department has awarded $5.6 million for work toward a capability to develop disease treatments within one week (see GSN, Nov. 3, 2010). The project could ultimately yield countermeasures useful in responding to “known, unknown, naturally occurring or engineered disease-causing pathogens,” according to a press release from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which is Read More »

January 20, 2011
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, and Policy & Initiatives
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$1b Effort Yields No Bioterror Defenses

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is scaling back one of its largest efforts to develop treatments for troops and civilians infected in a germ warfare attack after a $1 billion, five-year program fell short of its primary goal. Instead, the Pentagon’s next $1 billion for the Transformational Medical Technologies program will focus on better ways to Read More »

January 17, 2011
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, and Policy & Initiatives
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U.S. to Buy Japanese-Made Smallpox Vaccine

The United States could spend as much as $34 million for doses of a smallpox vaccine produced in Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported today (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2010). The Chemo-Sero Therapeutic Research Institute said it has a five-year agreement with the U.S. government. The institutes’s vaccine was first created some four decades ago, but Read More »

January 14, 2011
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, North America, Countermeasures, and International
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NYC Theaters’ Emergency Preparedness Seen Lacking

Additional steps are needed to prepare Broadway theaters in New York City for a potential WMD attack or other crisis, a New York state legislature subcommittee said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 23, 2010). The State Assembly’s workplace safety subcommittee in a new report pointed to the unsuccessful Times Square bomb attack last May as evidence Read More »

January 13, 2011
| Filed under North America and Countermeasures
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‘Bacillus anthracis and Anthrax’

(Wiley-Blackwell) Few strands of bacteria have achieved such a central place in public consciousness as Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria which causes Anthrax. While today it is a feared weapon of bioterrorism Bacillus anthracis has played a significant historical role, especially through the research of the celebrated 19th century scientists Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, in Read More »