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Ten Stanford University faculty members, including a Nobel Prize winner, have signed a letter with 700 other scientists nationally protesting a federal policy that prioritizes bio-terrorism research over public-health issues. The letter was sent to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias Zerhouni on Monday, Feb. 28. “The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance represents a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbial research,” the letter states. Stanford scientists who signed the letter include Arthur Kornberg, a Nobel Prize winner, and Charles Yanofsky, who...

Efforts to defend the US against bioterrorists - by throwing money at research - are backfiring, says a 750-strong group of top scientists The US has poured billions of dollars into biodefence research since its anthrax attacks in 2001. More than half of the US scientists studying bacterial diseases have this week written to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) - their main funding agency - charging that the largess has created "a crisis for microbiological research". "We are staging a no-confidence vote," says Richard Ebright of Rutgers University in New Jersey, who organised the protest. In an open...

How soon we forget !! The Anthrax murders of 2001-believed by many to have been a "second wave" accompaniment to the 9/11 outrages - spurred renewed interest in-and funding for-bioterror detection and prevention. A group of US scientists-apparently miffed because their pet projects have not received as much attention (although funding has not diminished-is pitching a national hissy fit. "How dare the government attempt to protect us against the horrors of biowar when we are working on important stuff -like dandruff,and athlete's foot,and,and...."

LONDON - The threat of a biological terrorist strike by al Qaeda is very real but the world is still not prepared, the head of Interpol said. Ronald Noble said governments, police and security services were more organized than ever before but he warned it would be wrong to assume the threat from Osama bin Laden's group, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, had eased. "The terrorist threat is as real today as in 2001 when September 11 occurred," Noble said in an interview with the BBC late on Tuesday. "The number of terrorist attacks that...

Ok, tonight I was at Barnes&Nobles with a couple of my classmates. We were sitting in the coffee shop reading Unte Reader with all the other Leftists (kidding!) Anyways, this guy walks in, and immediately my spidey sense starts to tingle. He kinda walks around the coffee shop and looks around a bit and then leaves - I was of course eyeing him the whole time. About 5 minutes later him comes in again. This time he draws out of his pants pocket a small white plastic spray bottle and starts spraying it around the room - trying to be...

The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form. "If that were released in a closed [area], such as Madison Square Garden or, even some, some of your smaller closed malls, shopping malls, it would have a devastating effect … killing hundreds or thousands," Spertzel said. But Spertzel believes...

PHILADELPHIA (KYW) Money that has been contaminated with a virus; it’s a whole new possible direction for bioterrorism. It is a case that the FBI terrorism unit has taken over from state police that involves several cities, including Philadelphia. As CBS 3’s Tamsen Fadal reports, the unit is trying to determine whether or not a virus was actually placed over money to protect the interest of the Russian mob. In an exclusive investigation, CBS 3 has obtained documents detailing a bizarre criminal plot involving a virus, suspected drug money, and the Russian mob in Northeast Philadelphia. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania...

Tufts Projects Lack of Community Cooperation Again At the 11 3/4th hour, Tufts officials (Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, Grafton, MA) came to the Grafton Board of Selectmen to ask for unanimous support for a NIAID grant they are seeking which would fund a self-contained building to "To focus attention on the agents that pose great risks in the event of a bioterrorist attack, the NIAID compiled a list of the Category A, B, and C priority pathogens (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/biodefense/bandc_priority.htm). A strategic plan defining short and long-term goals aimed at protecting the United States against attacks using these agents was...

DAVOS, Switzerland - The world needs an effort similar to that behind the creation of the atomic bomb to tackle the multi-faceted threat of biowarfare, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday. "We need to do something that even dwarfs the Manhattan project," Frist told the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Manhattan project was the codename for the United States's World War II effort to devise an atomic weapon. "The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological. Why? Because unlike any other threat it has the power of panic and paralysis to be global."...

<p>BOSTON — The revelation last week that a laboratory slip-up led three Boston University scientists to become infected with tularemia, a flulike disease sometimes referred to as "rabbit fever," has fueled criticism of a plan to build a state-of-the-art research lab to study some of the world's most lethal germs in Boston's South End.</p>

A retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia died of multiple stab wounds before firefighters found in his body in the trunk of a burning car Friday. Im Boone County Medical Examiner Valerie Rao said after an autopsy that Jeong H. Im, 72, of Columbia was stabbed several times, but she declined to elaborate. MU police yesterday named Im as the victim. His body was found in the trunk of his burning white, 1995 Honda inside the Maryland Avenue parking garage, MU police Capt. Brian Weimer said. The case was under investigation by the Mid-Missouri Major Case...

Researchers have made an unexpectedly sudden advance in synthesizing long molecules of DNA, bringing them closer to the goal of redesigning genes and programming cells to make pharmaceuticals. But the success also puts within reach the manufacture of small genomes, such as those of viruses and perhaps certain bacteria. Some biologists fear that the technique might be used to make the genome of the smallpox virus, one of the few pathogens that cannot easily be collected from the wild. The advance, described in the Jan. 6 issue of the journal Nature by Dr. George M. Church of the Harvard Medical...

DoD May Restart Anthrax Shots United Press International December 16, 2004 WASHINGTON - Several months after a federal court ruled against the Department of Defense's mandatory anthrax vaccination program, the DOD has requested an emergency ruling so it can continue to give the controversial vaccine to soldiers. The authorization request was made in a letter from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. "I have determined there is a significant potential for a military emergency involving a heightened risk to the United States military forces of an attack with anthrax," said Wolfowitz...

DENVER - A Japanese cult attacked Tokyo in 1993 with an innocuous, readily available strain of anthrax sold by a Colorado animal vaccine company, an Arizona researcher said. The anthrax was used by the Aum Shinri Kyo doomsday cult that in 1995 used sarin nerve gas to kill 12 people in an attack on a Tokyo subway station. Paul Keim, an anthrax expert at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, told colleagues about the 1993 anthrax attack at Sunday's session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (news - web sites) convention in Denver. Using DNA, researchers at the...

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned Friday, warning of a potential global outbreak of the flu and health-related terror attacks. "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," he said.

The New York Police Department, the F.B.I. and the city's health department have agreed for the first time on a set of rules that will govern investigations of suspected biological attacks in the city, detailing the roles the agencies will play as well as how confidential medical information is to be shared. The "protocol," a six-page document that officials regard as something of a remarkable cooperation agreement, resulted in part from lessons learned in New York during the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which killed five people in Florida and the Northeast and infected more than a dozen others in the...

A study released today shows most Americans would not cooperate with government's attempts to protect them in the aftermath of a domestic terror attack. Conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health at The New York Academy of Medicine, the research suggests government has not adequately addressed Americans' concerns about its ability to deal effectively with homeland terrorism. The study included a survey that questioned U.S. residents on their likely response to both a smallpox incident and a dirty-bomb attack. It found only two-fifths of Americans would follow instructions to go to a public vaccination site...

<p>Amid new warnings about a possible summer of terror, the U.S. government is preparing to spend billons to coax pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs to fend off a biological or chemical attack. But experts say the infusion of cash may be little more than a good start.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO, June 2 (Reuters) - California is not prepared for a major public health crisis such as an attack with biological agents, and in some instances planning for bioterrorism is setting back other public health efforts, according to a report released on Wednesday. California's public health agencies have made progress planning for emergencies such as an outbreak of smallpox, but are poorly coordinated and "not uniformly capable of taking care of infectious disease outbreaks," according to the report by private think-tank, the RAND Corp. The report said that the most populous U.S. state would respond to a serious outbreak...

MEMORANDUMFROM: BC’04 POLICY DEPARTMENTRE: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RECORD ON BIOTERROR INTRODUCTION President George W. Bush has long made bolstering the nation’s defenses against bioterrorism a central focus of his Administration. The President’s National Strategy for Homeland Security, announced in July of 2002, launched two major bioterror initiatives. The first called for the development of systems capable of detecting biological materials and attacks. The second called for the development, purchasing and stockpiling of a variety of vaccines and countermeasures. President Bush has demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to bolstering the nation’s defenses against biological attacks. He has increased the federal bioterrorism budget...