Free Republic

On Tuesday, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told the Senate that the US is working with Ukraine to protect biological research labs as Russia continues its attacks on the Eastern European nation. "Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach," Nuland told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing. The...

Excerpted: Scientists from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) have also said the highly lethal bug is a potential bio-weapon. But this March that same lab shipped samples of the henipavirus family and of Ebola to China, which has long been suspected of running a secretive biological warfare (BW) program. China strongly denies it makes germ weapons, and Canadian officials say the shipment was part of its efforts to support public-health research worldwide. Sharing of such samples internationally is relatively standard practice. But some experts are raising questions about the March transfer, which appears to be at the centre of a...

Flu scientists are hoping to vaccinate themselves against another outbreak of a crippling controversy. In a letter published this week by Nature and Science (see p. 612), 22 researchers make their case for launching potentially risky experiments with the H7N9 avian influenza virus, which emerged earlier this year in China and which some scientists fear could spark a deadly human pandemic. The scientists, who mostly work in U.S.-funded labs, also detail the safety and security precautions that they would take to prevent the possibly dangerous viruses they create from escaping from the lab—or falling into the hands of terrorists. In...

"The federal government has underestimated the risks of building a lab for researching dangerous animal diseases in a densely populated area in the heart of cattle country, a report released Monday contends."

1010 WINS has learned that an investigation is underway into what may be the illegal harvesting of human bones from deceased victims whose families never gave consent for the bones to be removed. There are at least 30 cases involved and that number could grow. Sources say long bones from arms and legs were surreptitiously removed and replaced with pipes or broomsticks. The matter came to light after the sale of the Daniel George & Sons Funeral Home in Brooklyn. New owners Deborah Johnson and Robert Nelms found financial fraud and believed bodies were tampered with. "We're aware of the...

The announcement that an American biologist has tried to create more deadly types of pox viruses in order to develop countermeasures against them raises serious concerns about the lack of control over research involving dangerous pathogens. The explosion in this type of research after the terrorist and anthrax attacks of 2001 underscores the importance of developing sound oversight mechanisms to ensure that efforts designed to protect the United States against biological attacks do not themselves create new dangers. The research results announced by Mark Buller of the University of St. Louis at a recent biosecurity conference in Geneva fall squarely...