News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The risks in working with potentially dangerous pathogens in US labs are low to the scientists involved as well as to the general public, according to two recent reports on safety incidents.

(CIDRAP News) – Public health leaders, recalling and reflecting on the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 in a lengthy report released today, say the nation is better prepared to respond to such an emergency than it was 10 years ago, but their confidence is tinged with fear of slipping backward in the current era of budget cutting.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Justice (DOJ) yesterday sought to settle confusion over court documents in the civil trial related to an anthrax victim's death, which initially seemed to undercut earlier FBI findings about government microbiologist Bruce Ivins' role in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks.

(CIDRAP News) – A report from the National Research Council (NRC) calls for some changes in a US Army immunization program for lab researchers who work with dangerous pathogens, saying the vaccines need to be made more accessible to civilian scientists.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Research Council (NRC), in a letter report, has advised the US Army to prepare a more comprehensive risk assessment than it initially proposed for a biodefense laboratory to be built at Ft. Detrick in Frederick, Md.

(CIDRAP News) – Scientists who helped the FBI investigate the 2001 anthrax letter attacks today released the details of the genomic analysis that linked the anthrax used in the attacks to a flask in the custody of government scientist Bruce Ivins, who the FBI concluded was the perpetrator.

(CIDRAP News) – After a review of scientific methods that the FBI used in probing the 2001 anthrax mailings, a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) announced today that the available scientific evidence by itself is not adequate to reach a definitive conclusion about the source of the anthrax spores used in the attacks.