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By Region: Europe

Dutch Government OK’s Publication of H5N1 Study

(Science AAAS) AMSTERDAM—The Dutch government has given virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC an export license for his controversial H5N1 transmissibility study, allowing Fouchier to send a revised manuscript of his paper to Science. The license “is in my inbox,” says Fouchier. “Now we can move on.” The decision by Henk Bleker, minister for agriculture  Read More »

The Netherlands grants export license for mutant flu work

(Nature.com) The Dutch government has agreed to grant an export license to allow Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical University in Rotterdam, to publish his work on H5N1 avian influenza in Science. Fouchier’s paper is one of two reporting the creation of forms of the H5N1 virus capable of spreading between mammals. The  Read More »

Flu Research Moratorium Should Continue, Fauci Says

(Science Now) Although the contention over whether to publish two controversial H5N1 avian influenza studies appears to be waning, researchers should continue to abide by a voluntary moratorium on certain types of studies involving the virus, a senior U.S. science official said today. There should be “an extension on the moratorium,” which was originally supposed  Read More »

Senate Hearing on H5N1 papers exposes political divides

(Nature News Blog) Today in Washington D.C., US Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut revealed that his grandmother was killed by influenza during the 1918 pandemic. This was one reason he has been so interested in a pair of yet-to-be-published papers on laboratory-created H5N1 avian influenza strains that could conceivably prove many times more deadly than  Read More »

Scientific freedom and security

(The Economist) RON FOUCHIER (pictured), of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, is the lead author of a controversial paper which lays out how deadly H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu, can be made deadlier still. He believes this information should be widely disseminated, so that biologists can work on drugs or vaccines to combat  Read More »

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