The prominent lead editorial in the New York Times of Sunday, 8 January 2012 is entitled ‘An Engineered Doomsday’. It concerns recent avian influenza H5N1 research, in which scientists in the Netherlands and at the University of Wisconsin found that by passaging the virus in ferrets it could acquire aerosol transmissibility. Let’s determine if the scientific facts …
N.Y. Times: H5N1 ferret research should not have been done Read More »
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – Franklin D. Roosevelt Why is there such widespread fear of avian H5N1 influenza virus? Why did Paul Keim, chair of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) say “I can’t think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one”. What lead Donald …
For some time I have thought about reviewing this year’s topics on virology blog in 2001, not only to get a sense of what I thought was significant, but more importantly, to highlight areas that need more coverage. I went through all the articles I wrote in 2011, put them in subject categories, and listed …
A paper that reported finding retroviral sequences in blood from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has been retracted by the authors. Just four days ago the 2009 Science report of Lombardi and colleagues was editorially retracted. As 2011 comes to an end, so does the hypothesis that retroviruses are etiologic agents of CFS. Readers …
Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine, writes that the journal is retracting the 2009 paper describing the detection of the retrovirus XMRV in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: Science is fully retracting the Report “Detection of an infectious retrovirus, XMRV, in blood cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome”. He writes that the decision was …
Science retracts paper on detection of XMRV in CFS patients Read More »
The virologists who carried out the contentious experiments on influenza H5N1 transmission in ferrets have agreed to remove certain details from their manuscript, according to ScienceInsider: Two groups of scientists who carried out highly controversial studies with the avian influenza virus H5N1 have reluctantly agreed to strike certain details from manuscripts describing their work after …
