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By Category: Agents & Toxins

Canada Adopts New Federal Food Safety Law

(Food Safety News) Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has won the unanimous consent of the House of Commons for Canada’s new federal food safety law. With its earlier passage by the Senate, that means the Safe Food for Canadians Act, Bill S-11, now becomes law with the routine “Royal Assent.” Unanimous votes among the 308 Read More »

November 27, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Agriculture, International, and Public Health
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WHO Widens Biosurveillance Advisory for Novel Coronavirus

(Global Biodefense) A man from Qatar has been confirmed as the latest patient sickened by a new strain of coronavirus, causing the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise the alert for increased biosurveillance of the SARS-related virus. Health officials are investigating whether the novel virus may have spread between humans after close contact in Saudi Read More »

November 27, 2012
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, North America, Agents & Toxins, International, and Public Health
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Live pigs ‘blasted with explosives and monkeys infected with anthrax during cruel experiments’

(The Independent) Live pigs were blasted with explosives and forced to inhale mustard gas, and monkeys infected with anthrax during “disturbing and cruel” experiments at Porton Down, it was claimed today. Scientists at the top secret military research establishment in Wiltshire were accused of causing “substantial” suffering to animals in the past two years. The Read More »

November 27, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, Agents & Toxins, International, and Research
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Biodefense Research Guards Against Virus More Deadly, Untreatable Than Ebola

(US News) Deadly, virulent viruses have jumped species from nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees to the human species three times in history: the SIV virus that almost certainly led to the worldwide AIDS pandemic, the SV-40 “cancer” virus that was accidentally included in polio vaccines in the 1950s, and the deadly Ebola virus. Now, in Read More »

November 26, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Public Health, and Research
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West Nile Virus: Are Hemorrhagic-Encephalitis-Mosquito Borne Illnesses Spreading Globally

(The Guardian Express) West Nile Virus is a zoonotic arbovirus that belongs to the flavivirus genus, in the flavivindae family of Mosquito-borne viral infections. Approximately 80% of West Nile virus infections in humans have no symptoms.The cases that are symptomatic are called West Nile Fever, in cases without neurological disease. Symptoms may include fever, headaches, Read More »