Recent News

(CIDRAP News) In a leaked letter, a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) has charged that federal officials planned the board’s meeting in late March in a way designed to lead the board to reverse its earlier recommendation against full publication of two studies describing lab-modified H5N1 viruses with increased transmissibility  Read More »

(Science Now) Now one of the six dissenters, influenza epidemiologist Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, has written a sharp critique of the meeting that led to the decision. In a letter sent yesterday to Amy Patterson, an official at the U.S. National Institutes of Health whose office oversees NSABB, Osterholm charged  Read More »

(Nature.com) A closed meeting, convened last month by the US Government to decide the fate of two controversial unpublished papers on the H5N1 avian influenza virus was stacked in favour of their full publication, a participant now says. Michael Osterholm, who heads the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis,  Read More »

(Global Security Newswire) The Netherlands’ export controls are preventing the international dissemination of a Dutch study that increased transmissibility of the avian flu virus, National Public Radio reported on Monday. Scientists at the Erasmus University Medical Center produced a version of the bird flu that can be more easily passed among mammals.

(Nature.com) The dust is beginning to settle on the months-long controversy over two studies in which the H5N1 avian influenza virus was modified to be transmissible between mammals. But scientists and authorities still need to address the lack of international oversight for studies in which pathogens are deliberately made more dangerous, speakers emphasized at a  Read More »