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By Category: Biotechnology

The Risk of Engineering a Highly Transmissible H5N1 Virus

(Editorial by Thomas V. Inglesby, Anita Cicero, and D. A. Henderson) Over the past 8 years, H5N1 avian influenza has sickened 571 people, killing 59% of them. To give some perspective, the fatality rate of the virus that caused the 1918 Great Pandemic was 2%, and that pandemic killed on the order of 50 million Read More »

December 19, 2011
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Biological Weapons, Biosafety, Biotechnology, Public Health, and Research
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Universal Detection Technology Supplies US Army with Bioweapon Detection System – AZoSensors

AZoSensorsUniversal Detection Technology Supplies US Army with Bioweapon Detection SystemAZoSensorsIt also says that a small group of individuals who are trained in specific disciplines are capable of developing similar kind of biological weapons that are created by nation-states during the 1960s. Mr. Jacques Tizabi, Chief Executive Officer and …and more »

December 17, 2011
| Filed under Biotechnology
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Eco-Safe Announces New Bio-Terror Decontamination System …

(MarketWatch) At a Biological Weapons Convention last week in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the threat of biological attacks, saying the warning signs were “too serious to ignore.” She further identified the risk of a bio-weapons attack as …

December 13, 2011
| Filed under North America, Biological Weapons, Biotechnology, and Countermeasures
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Canberra Vaccine Expert Urges Censorship on Bird Flu Strain Mutant Research

(International Business Times AU) A vaccine expert from Canberra’s National Centre for Biosecurity (NCB) wants the formula used by virologists to mutate the bird flu virus into a strain capable of killing humans to be omitted in the published version of their experiment for security reason. The censorship would prevent others from genetically engineering the Read More »

December 6, 2011
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Biotechnology, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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Popular science

(Business Standard) The team, composed of second-year art and design students, won the Best Human Practice prize, for postulating rules by which engineers can achieve maximal output with proper social responsibility. The project was titled “Searching for the Ubiquitous Genetically Engineered Machines”. The team asked this question: a century in the future, today’s synthetic biology Read More »