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) – A new report from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) offers a few predictions on when certain new countermeasures against biological threats will become available, including a forecast for two novel influenza drugs and possibly a next-generation anthrax vaccine within the next 5 years.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials are inviting the public to weigh in on whether research on H5N1 avian influenza viruses, including strains modified in the lab to make them more transmissible, is risky enough to require new safety regulations and precautions.

(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.

Disclosure: The University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, which publishes CIDRAP News, has produced training programs and materials for the BioWatch program. The news team has no involvement in the center's BioWatch work.

In the wake of a newspaper investigation that questioned the value of the federal BioWatch program for detecting dangerous airborne pathogens, some public health officials familiar with the program acknowledge that it's far from perfect, but they say it's not time to scrap it.

(CIDRAP News) – News reports about possible airflow problems at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab in Atlanta are fueling perceptions that the agency isn't following its own rules, but the reported conditions at the lab don't appear to have posed a public health threat, according to some expert observers.