See what we’re reading this week at Global Biodefense on topics including a mummy with smallpox, bioscavengers as nerve-agent countermeasures, and upcoming legal fights over vaccine refusal legislation.
POLICY, PRACTICES & POLITICS
- What life scientists should know about security threats (Science)
- Why the FDA wants more control over some lab tests (Scientific American)
- Amid growing vaccine refusals, Texas gears up for legal fight (STAT)
- Stopgap spending bill leaves US scientists in limbo (Nature)
- Winners and losers of the 21st Century Cures Act (STAT)
- Four steps to precision public health (Nature)
BIOPREPAREDNESS
- 2017-2022 Health care preparedness and response capabilities (HSDL)
- Ensuring a coordinated response to Zika and other public health threats (ASPR)
- Continuus Pharmaceuticals partners with FDA and BARDA (PharmaTech)
- Nanotherapeutics opens medical countermeasure plant near Progress Park (Gainsville)
- Infectious disease emergencies: taking the long-term view (The Lancet)
SELECT AGENTS
- Searching for a vaccine for the plague (Newsweek)
- Substrate-selective exosite within the metalloproteinase anthrax lethal factor (JBC)
- Learning from Ebola – Workshop proceedings from NAS & laboratory battles (Pandora Rpt)
- Ebola in Sierra Leone: ‘The scars still show. People are very angry’ (The Guardian)
- The Yersinia pestis effector YopM inhibits pyrin inflammasome activation (PLOS Pathogens)
- A stabbing, a possible Ebola outbreak, and a ‘time bomb’ (NPR)
- NLRP3 restriction of neutrophil response to pulmonary tularemia (PLOS Pathogens)
- Plague: Dozens of cases in Madagascar (Outbreak News Today)
- Vaccinia virus protein C6 inhibits type I IFN signaling (PLOS Pathogens)
MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
- Illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations, and deaths averted by flu vaccination (CDC)
- A Zika vaccine is being developed at warp speed, but will there be a market? (STAT)
- A third of people given antibiotics don’t need them (NatGeo)
- Bioscavengers in the medical management of nerve-agent casualties (Science Direct)
OUTBREAK NEWS & THREAT SURVEILLANCE
- Escalation of antibiotic-resistant infections is a ‘train wreck’ (KUNR)
- Zika is no longer a global health emergency – it’s worse (UN Dispatch)
- Europe weighs H5N8 threat as Russia reports new outbreak (CIDRAP)
- Scottish farmers tell of “nightmare” bird flu lockdown (Herald Scotland)
- Superbug gene found on pig farm (The Scientist)
RESEARCH & TECH
- Do single rooms reduce HCAI? (Reflections on IPC)
- Targeting the virulence factors of MRSA (UPMC CHS)
- Evotec gets hold of CRISPR in a new partnership with Merck (Labiotech)
- How the CRISPR patent dispute became so heated (Atlantic)
SPECIAL INTEREST
- Feedback sought: prioritizing critical infrastructure personnel for influenza response (NACCHO)
- The consequences of a DMV approach to infectious disease (Tracking Zebra)
- 6 public health advocacy wins of 2016 (APHA)
HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS
- Klamath Falls and the Navy’s forgotten filariasis problem (Navy Med)
- Child mummy found with oldest known smallpox virus (NatGeo)
- Million-year-old ‘hero bug’ emerges from cave (NPR)
- Researchers find Plasmodium DNA in ancient Roman teeth (CIDRAP)
- Health & humanity: Q&A with historian Karen Kruse Thomas (Global Health Now)
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