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Feb 17, 2012
(CIDRAP News) – Some experts involved in the controversy over two H5N1 transmission papers have called the pause in research and discussions over the dual-use nature of the work an "Asilomar moment," referring to a scientific meeting held in the 1970s to discuss the potential dangers of recombinant DNA research.
Feb 16, 2012
Feb 15, 2012
(CIDRAP News) – The acute need for clearer policies concerning the handling of potentially risky life-sciences research was the main theme that came across today in a Harvard forum on the controversy over studies on H5N1 avian influenza viruses with increased transmissibility.
(CIDRAP News) – An Escherichia coli O26 outbreak linked to raw clover sprouts served on Jimmy John's sandwiches has sickened 12 people in five states, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.
Feb 14, 2012
(CIDRAP News) – The goal of an integrated national biosurveillance system to detect threats to human and animal health, called for in a presidential directive in 2004, is still a long way from reality and faces complex obstacles, according to a workshop summary recently published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
Feb 13, 2012
(CIDRAP News) – The Obama administration today proposed a fiscal year 2013 budget that would use prevention funds to cover some preparedness and public health activities and count on user fees to support more of the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) food safety initiatives.
(CIDRAP News) – Seasonal flu activity in the United States last week passed a key threshold, while many European countries reported similar rises in the spread of the disease, according to flu surveillance reports released today.
Feb 10, 2012
(CIDRAP News) – The fatality rate for officially confirmed human cases of H5N1 avian influenza infection is a stunningly high 59% (345 deaths in 584 cases). But the current controversy over publishing data about transmissible H5N1 viruses has revived a debate about whether the virus is as lethal as those numbers say.
(CIDRAP News) – International experts say that, while experiments on H5N1 avian flu transmission in mammals are important, publishing full details of such "dual-use" studies likely will not speed up the vaccine response in a pandemic, according to a news report and editorial in Nature today.
