News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Stating that US soldiers should not be used as "guinea pigs for experimental drugs," a federal district judge in Washington, DC, yesterday granted a preliminary injunction against the Department of Defense's (DoD's) mandatory anthrax vaccination program.

(CIDRAP News) – Thirty-six states had "widespread" influenza outbreaks by the end of last week, 12 more states than faced that situation a week earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

All western states except South Dakota and Alaska had widespread flu, meaning outbreaks in at least half their regions, the CDC says in the Dec 19 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

(CIDRAP News) – A combination of vaccines that included smallpox and anthrax might have contributed to the death of a young Army reservist last April, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government has moved to allow individuals and groups to continue working with certain hazardous biological agents beyond the Nov 12 deadline for complying with new registration rules while the government completes background checks on those groups.

(CIDRAP News) – Some of the world's leading experts on biological weapons and public health will meet in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct 21 and 22 for an international conference on the threat of a bioterrorist attack involving smallpox.

(CIDRAP News) – Air monitoring devices in Houston recently picked up fragments of the bacteria that cause tularemia, but no human cases of the disease have been found, Houston health officials reported yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced final rules designed to make the nation's food supply more secure by requiring food companies to register with the FDA and to give advance notice of imported food shipments.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government awarded two contracts totaling more than $150 million this week for further testing and initial production of new anthrax vaccines designed to be safer and require fewer doses than the existing vaccine.