The second of two papers on avian influenza H5N1 virus that caused such a furor in the past year was published today in the journal Science. I have carefully read the paper by Fouchier and colleagues, and I assure you that it does not enable the production of a deadly biological weapon. The results describe …
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, and Alan Dove The complete TWiVome deconstructs the movie Contagion. [powerpress url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV167.mp3″] Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 167 (53 MB .mp3, 88 minutes). Subscribe to TWiV (free) in iTunes , at the Zune Marketplace, by the RSS feed, by email, or listen on your …
Renowned influenza virologist Peter Palese has penned an opinion column for the science journal Nature in which he uses his experience in reconstructing the 1918 pandemic influenza virus strain to question the censoring of H5N1 results by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB): My colleagues and I were at the centre of a similar controversy …
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 »
I will be on NPR’s Science Friday this afternoon (6 January, 2 PM EST) to discuss the H5N1-NSABB story. You can listen live, or download the recording which will be available later. I written three posts (one, two, three) about the ferret H5N1 experiments and why the NSABB should not prevent the publication of these …
Avian H5N1 influenza and biosecurity on Science Friday Read More »
A laboratory in the Netherlands has identified a lethal influenza H5N1 virus strain that is transmitted among ferrets. These findings are under review by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to ensure that they do not constitute a threat to human health. Meanwhile both the popular and scientific press has been calling this …
