Science magazine is conducting a live chat about research that produced H5N1 influenza strains that are more easily transmissible between ferrets. Among the topics to be addressed will be the benefits and risks of the H5N1 transmissibility studies and whether they should be published in full; and should experiments that could help ...

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 ...

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, and Alan Dove Vincent, Dickson, Rich, and Alan answer listener questions about XMRV, cytomegalovirus, latency, shingles vaccine, myxomavirus and rabbits, and more. Please help us by taking our listener survey. Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 165 (61 MB .mp3, ...

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 ...

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 ...