Recent News

By Category: Public Health

U.S. to Award Smallpox Treatment Contract

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department is set to award SIGA Technologies a contract worth up to $2.8 billion to prepare at least 1.7 million courses of smallpox treatment for the Strategic National Stockpile of medical countermeasures, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 8). Completion of the deal hinges on a competing Read More »

October 14, 2010
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, and Public Health
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NIH Funds Advanced Development of 3 Biodefense Vaccines

NIH funds advanced development of 3 biodefense vaccinesWebnewswire.com (press release)… says Michael G. Kurilla, MD, Ph.D., director of the Office of Biodefense Research Affairs in NIAIDs Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. …

October 10, 2010
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, Countermeasures, and Public Health
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FDA’s food-safety monitoring in need of overhaul

A new study of the U.S. food safety regime finds gaping holes in the system; the study finds that shifting to a risk-based food safety system, utilizing a research infrastructure and integrated federal, state, and local government food safety program, can go a long way towards achieving the safer food supply we all desire

August 16, 2010
| Filed under Public Health
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130 Human Anthrax Cases Reported in Siberia, Russia

About 130 people have been hospitalized in an apparent anthrax outbreak in Russia’s Siberian city of Omsk, the regional Health Ministry said Tuesday.

August 6, 2010
| Filed under Asia/Pacific and Public Health
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Speeding Up Diagnosis of Infectious Disease

Current methods of diagnosing an infectious disease can take days to weeks. Now a Cambridge, MA-based startup called Pathogenica is developing a way to do it within a day–by reading the DNA sequence of pathogens. Pathogenica is developing diagnostic tests designed to detect harmful microorganisms by zeroing in on the genes responsible for their harmful Read More »