Recent News

By Category: Agents & Toxins

U.S. to Finalize Avian Flu Funding Policy in Weeks

(Global Security Newswire) The United States plans “in the next several weeks” to issue its final policy on how it will consider future grant requests for research intended to produce more virulent or communicable versions of avian influenza, National Institutes of Health leaders said on Friday. More than three dozen scientists this week announced they Read More »

January 28, 2013
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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Immune Cell Suicide Alarm Helps Destroy Escaping Bacteria

(Science Daily) Cells in the immune system called macrophages normally engulf and kill intruding bacteria, holding them inside a membrane-bound bag called a vacuole, where they kill and digest them. Some bacteria thwart this effort by ripping the bag open and then escaping into the macrophage’s nutrient-rich cytosol compartment, where they divide and could eventually Read More »

January 25, 2013
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Public Health, and Research
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Cameroon Joins Biological Weapons Convention

(Global Security Newswire) Cameroon as of last week has become the 167th member nation to the Biological Weapons Convention, the United Nations announced. “The United States, as depository government, confirmed the accession of Cameroon to the convention” on Jan. 18, according to a statement from the U.N. Office at Geneva. The Biological Weapons Convention prohibits Read More »

January 25, 2013
| Filed under Europe, North America, Agents & Toxins, Biological Weapons, and International
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Novel approaches needed to end growing scourge of ‘superbugs’

(EurekaAlert) With the rising awareness of the so-called “superbugs,” bacteria that are resistant to most known antibiotics, three infectious disease experts writing in the Jan. 24 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine called for novel approaches based on a “reconceptualization of the nature of resistance, disease and prevention.”

January 24, 2013
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Public Health, and Research
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House Votes Again to Extend Biodefense Measures

(Global Security Newswire) The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to reauthorize several programs designed to bolster U.S. medical capabilities for responding to disease agents and other potential WMD threats. The latest version of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act, endorsed in a 395-29 decision, is “virtually identical” to a version of the text Read More »