See what we’re reading this week at Global Biodefense on topics including agroterrorism vulnerabilities, biosafety incidents at Winnipeg lab, and the rise and spread of MCR-1.
POLICY, PRACTICES & POLITICS
- The time is ripe to reform the World Health Organization (Nature)
- Reimagining WHO: leadership and action for a new Director-General (The Lancet)
- Defining DURC: When scientific advances can both help and hurt humanity (Sioux City)
- A destructive executive action for global health (Pump Handle)
- CDC rules broaden; debate over public health vs. civil liberties (The Telegraph)
- Africa CDC official launch (African Union)
- Dangerous infectious diseases—good news for Wall Street? (Phys.org)
- Proposed U.S. biotech rules raise industry hopes and anxieties (Science)
BIOPREPAREDNESS
- Bioterrorism preparedness & response position paper (Pandora Report)
- Vulnerability, risk and agroterrorism: an examination of international strategy (Springer)
- Congress needs to act now to prevent another biodisaster (The Hill)
SELECT AGENTS
- Inside America’s secretive biolabs (USA Today)
- Germ warfare: the battle for the key to modern vaccines (The Guardian)
- Workers may have been exposed to Ebola, HIV and TB at Winnipeg lab (CBC)
- Ebola training center led by UNMC doubles grant funding (Lincoln Journal)
- Disinfection of Ebola virus in sterilized municipal wastewater (PLOS NTD)
- Groups detail Madagascar plague outbreak, ciprofloxacin treatment (CIDRAP)
- Febrile illness in HCW caring for Ebola virus disease patients (Eurosurveillance)
- A recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus Ebola vaccine (NEJM)
MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
- The strange mental quirk that’s endangering the public’s health (Forbes)
- Neglected tropical diseases are finally getting the attention they deserve (STAT)
- Most Americans think the benefits of the MMR vaccine outweigh risks (SciAm)
- Vaccine advocates scramble to mobilize against threats to public health (STAT)
OUTBREAK NEWS & THREAT SURVEILLANCE
- The rise and spread of MCR-1 (Contagion Live)
- National Guard team works to make sure air safe at big events (WMUR)
- The Sentinel System as the main influenza surveillance tool (Springer)
- Surge of yellow fever in Brazil raises alarms (CIDRAP)
- Drug-resistant malaria turns up in the U.K. (NPR)
- Chikungunya virus: an update on the biology and pathogenesis (The Lancet)
- Report: Antibiotic resistance rising in Europe (CIDRAP)
RESEARCH & TECH
- DISCONTOOLS – Prioritizing animal diseases (BioMed Central)
- Tuberculosis-resistant cows developed for the first time using CRISPR (Phys.org)
- Experience the Smart Pod deployable healthcare facility in virtual reality (Baylor)
- FDA wants to regulate animals altered using the gene-editing techniques (MIT Tech)
- Kansas State University is the Silicon Valley for biodefense (KTIC)
- Rogue antibody linked to severe second dengue infections (ScienceNews)
- Probabilistic forecasting in infectious disease epidemiology (bioRxiv)
- Material scientist invents breath monitor to detect flu (Phys.org)
SPECIAL INTEREST
- ‘Containment’ author brings chilling tale to Westport (South Coast Today)
- ‘Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America’ by G. Jarrow (Deakin Review)
- Boyd Woodruff, microbiologist who paved way for antibiotics, dies (NY Times)
- Smriti Sharma vs. the sand fly (JHU Global Health Now)
- Typhoid fever and the American Civil War (PBS)
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