Recent News

By Category: Biosafety

Scientists Debate How To Conduct Bird Flu Research

(NPR)(Audio) This time around, fears revolve around experiments on the bird flu virus H5N1. Scientists tweaked its genes and made it more transmissible between ferrets, which are the laboratory stand-in for people. Some experts fear that if this virus ever escaped …

How secure are labs handling world’s deadliest pathogens?

(Reuters) Last year, labs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Erasmus MC in Rotterdam independently created mutant forms of avian influenza, known as H5N1, that can be transmitted directly among mammals. The natural strain can be caught only through …

Engineered Pandemics? A Memo To Bird Flu Virologists

(Science 2.0) As synthetic biology advances ever further, engineering potentially dangerous pathogens will only become easier. The uproar over the two new bird flu viruses must serve as a call to action; we need a new mechanism to ensure the safety of future studies …

Experts: Dual-use H5N1 studies may not hasten pandemic response

(CIDRAP News) International experts say that, while experiments on H5N1 avian flu transmission in mammals are important, publishing full details of such “dual-use” studies likely will not speed up the vaccine response in a pandemic, according to a news report and editorial in Nature today. “I think the research is important, but not for vaccine  Read More »

Lab is one of few that studies deadly agents

(San Antonio Express) Two airlocked steel doors away from Texas Biomedical Research Institute’s biosafety level-4 lab, where only deadly infectious diseases with no treatments or vaccines available are studied, two technicians wiggle into pressurized suits …

« First...102030...6465666768...8090...Last »

Also filed under "Biosafety":