President-elect Barack Obama has named Harold Varmus as a co-chair of the Presidents' Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a team that will work with White House science adviser John Holdren. Varmus won a Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work on elucidating how retroviruses cause transformation of cells. ...

The CDC has issued a health advisory which indicates that a high number of currently circulating H1N1 influenza viruses are resistant to the antiviral drug oseltamivir. Fifty H1N1 isolates obtained in the U.S. since October 2008 were examined for drug sensitivity; 98% of these isolates are resistant to oseltamivir. Influenza H3N2 ...

This Week in Virology #12 has been posted at twiv.tv. Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #12 In this episode, Vincent, Alan, and Angela discuss Kuru, prions in milk, ancient lentiviruses found in the chromosomes of lemurs, a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine failure in the 1960s, ...

  Karl Landsteiner, MD (1868-1943) Yesterday, 18 December, marked 100 years since Karl Landsteiner, MD and his assistant E. Popper, identified the viral etiologic agent of poliomyelitis. According to A History of Poliomyelitis by JR Paul:   ...at a medical meeting in Vienna on December 18, 1908, the immunologist Landsteiner ...

We previously discussed infection of zoo elephants with endotheliotropic elephant herpesvirus in This Week in Virology episode #7. A recent report in Emerging Infectious Diseases indicates that another herpesvirus, equine herpesvirus 9, is also infecting zoo animals. In July 2007, a polar bear in the San Diego Zoo developed encephalitis and was ...