News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A group of scientists acting under the aegis of a vaccine research advocacy organization has asked President Obama's bioethics committee to evaluate the ethics of experiments designed to increase the transmissibility of H5N1 avian influenza viruses.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States still lacks a way to assess the need for high-containment laboratories and national standards for building and maintaining them, despite 2009 recommendations, according to a report yesterday from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

(CIDRAP News) – Top federal health officials who testified on Capitol Hill today said the nation has much better influenza defenses today than it had 10 years ago, but one of them predicted that a "universal" flu vaccine is probably still 5 to 10 years away.

(CIDRAP News) – Massachusetts officials yesterday said New England Compounding Center (NECC), the firm linked to a multistate fungal meningitis outbreak, sent shipments from two of the recalled lots before it received sterility testing results.

(CIDRAP News) – During the 2009 influenza pandemic, clinicians were frustrated by the lack of useful diagnostic tests, the government had no national system for monitoring stress on healthcare facilities, and there was some duplication in federal media campaigns.