News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revised its list of potentially dangerous biological agents and toxins and the regulations covering them, and some of the changes have public health laboratories concerned.

(CIDRAP News) – A federal advisory committee is recommending that 11 bacterial species and viruses on the current "select agent" list, including anthrax and Ebola virus, be singled out for special safeguards and that another 19 agents be dropped from the list entirely.

(CIDRAP News) – Two biotechnology companies—Crucell, based in the Netherlands, and Integrated BioTherapeutics, based in Germantown, Md.—recently announced that they have received $30 million and $22 million contracts, respectively, from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop single vaccines that would protect against both Ebola and Marburg viruses.

(CIDRAP News) – Soon after the terrorist attacks of 2001, Congress approved emergency funds to teach hospital staffs how to recognize and respond to bioterrorism attacks, and today the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its first report on those efforts.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published a guidebook to help medical examiners and coroners detect and respond to bioterrorism.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced the start of the first human trial of a vaccine for Ebola virus infection, a currently untreatable disease that kills most of its victims.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials yesterday released a 37-page report that they say demonstrates "tremendous progress" in developing countermeasures for bioterrorism through federally funded research since early 2002.