Recent News

By Category: Policy & Initiatives

DHS Releases Guide on Guarding Emergency Crews From Anthrax

(Global Security Newswire) Ensuring the safety of emergency response personnel in the seven days after a release of anthrax into the air of a major urban area is the focus of a paper published last month by the U.S. Homeland Security Department, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported on Thursday. The document Read More »

October 22, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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HHS seeks comments on risks of H5N1 research

(CIDRAP) Federal health officials are inviting the public to weigh in on whether research on H5N1 avian influenza viruses, including strains modified in the lab to make them more transmissible, is risky enough to require new safety regulations and precautions. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to know if people think H5N1 Read More »

October 19, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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Washington Plans Global Meeting on Weapon-Sensitive Biological Studies

(Global Security Newswire) The United States intends before January to convene a global gathering aimed at addressing questions over biological research with potential for misuse, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases wrote in a commentary published last week by mBio. The planned conference would seek to establish a justification Read More »

October 17, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Biological Weapons, Biotechnology, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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Plum Island lab ‘is here to protect the nation’

(The Day) Just off the southeast shore of Plum Island last week, a dozen or so harbor seals perched in poses mimicking phases of the moon on sea-weathered rocks, while others poked heads out of the dark waters, all turning toward the low, sandy cliff along the beach to a small group gathered on the Read More »

October 16, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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U.S. Security Mandates Seen as Burden to Lab Preparedness

(Global Security Newswire) U.S. medical laboratories might opt out of the nation’s select agents program to avoid the burden of new security mandates, a possibility that could result in a loss of key capacities for handling a deliberate or natural pathogen outbreaks, an organization representing such sites indicated in a report last Wednesday by the Read More »