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By Category: International

Mutant-flu researcher backs down on plan to publish without permission

(Nature.com) Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, whose work on the H5N1 avian flu virus has been embroiled in controversy, told Nature this afternoon that he has now reluctantly agreed to apply for an export permit to submit his work to the journal Science. Fouchier’s paper is one  Read More »

Go Ahead With Bird Flu Studies, HHS and NIH Say

(Global Security Newswire) WASHINGTON – Federal health officials on Friday endorsed a decision by their advisers to let publication of two controversial bird flu studies go ahead, saying the information was  vital to preparing the world against a possible deadly pandemic. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity had asked researchers in December to hold  Read More »

Congress Has More Questions About NSABB’s H5N1 Decision

(Science Now) A senior Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives is asking more questions about how the U.S. government reviewed two controversial H5N1 avian influenza studies, and how it wrote a new policy for reviewing taxpayer-funded studies that might be used for good and evil. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) today sent a letter to  Read More »

Publication ban on virus research: security or censorship?

(Radio Netherlands) Deputy Minister Bleker has announced that he’s imposing a ban on publication – in the journal, Science – of the research which was carried out at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. He cites the rules laid down in the government’s User Guide on Strategic Goods and Services on the export of sensitive  Read More »

The Latest on the Doomsday Virus

(New York Times) We can worry less that a newly created bird flu virus might kill tens or hundreds of millions of people if it escaped from the laboratory. But there is still some residual danger. And we remain appalled at the slipshod way in which this research was authorized despite its potential dangers to  Read More »

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