Recent News

By Category: Policy & Initiatives

Up to $48M of expired anthrax vaccine thrown out annually, says DHS official

(Fierce Homeland Security) Up to 2 million doses of expired anthrax vaccination worth $48 million gets thrown out annually from the federal stockpile, said a Homeland Security Department official during an April 17 congressional hearing. The Center for Disease Control stores anthrax vaccines as part of the Strategic National Stockpile of emergency medical countermeasures to Read More »

April 20, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
Share

More efficient bioterrorism response plan

(Homeland Security NewsWire) In the event of a bioterror attack on a building (think: the 2011 anthrax attack on the offices of two Democratic Senators, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont), the current approach to decontamination is to clean up the building until no pathogens can be detected; researchers suggest, however, Read More »

April 19, 2012
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
Share

The trouble with American military laboratories

(Democracy & Freedom Watch) TBILISI – A new U.S. financed biological laboratory opened in March 2011 near Tbilisi. It will have American military researchers working there. Is it a problem? According to the website of the Central Public Health Reference Laboratory, it “will belong to an international network of infectious disease surveillance laboratories whose mission Read More »

April 19, 2012
| Filed under Europe, Middle East, North America, Biological Weapons, Biosafety, Countermeasures, International, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
Share

US biosecurity board calls for global research guidelines

(New Scientist) The top US biosecurity committee has called for global guidelines for research on dangerous flu strains. The move comes just weeks after the committee revised earlier advice about which details of two controversial flu studies could be published. But information released this week shows that the committee was divided over the issue, strengthening Read More »

April 19, 2012
| Filed under North America, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
Share

H5N1 Researcher to Defy Dutch Gov’t?

(Scientist) A virologist at the center of the avian flu research controversy says he’ll publish without government permits. Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, who last September announced the creation of a mutant version of the H5N1 avian flu virus transmissible between ferrets, says that he is prepared to defy the Dutch Read More »