Archived News Week ending November 21st, 2004
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New York Times: City and F.B.I. Reach Agreement on Bioterror Investigations
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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 months after the Sept. 11 strikes. The anthrax investigations,
and several subsequent inquiries into suspected germ attacks, were strained by tension between health
and law enforcement officials over turf and procedures.
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NBC: Iran's nukes: The crisis is far from over
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For weeks the rhetoric mounted as diplomats shuttled between Tehran
and Vienna, seeking a solution to the impasse over Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. threatened U.N. sanctions if Iran didn't halt uranium enrichment -- a process that can lead to nuclear weapons. Israel hinted it might strike Iran militarily. Vowing to retaliate if attacked, Iran insisted on its right to "peaceful nuclear technology" as a signatory of the nuclear nonprolifera-tion treaty. Now there's an apparent breakthrough. On Nov. 14, Iranian
and European negotiators agreed that in exchange for European benefits, Iran will suspend all activities that make it possible to build a nuclear bomb. That makes it unlikely that Washington will press the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] to effectively censure Tehran at its Nov. 25 meeting. Hard-liners such as Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton have been demanding that the IAEA refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions. He won't get international backing now. Is the crisis over? Hardly. U.S. officials
and skeptical Iran watchers fear that Tehran is trying to buy time while continuing its nuclear program -- clandestinely if necessary. Iran maintains it is pursuing nuclear technology only for energy purposes. But some experts believe that as early as next year, Iran will have acquired enough knowhow to make weapons. That could spark a regional arms race, perhaps involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Syria. "There is a high probability there would be a nuclear chain reaction that would ripple through the region"... Comment: Iran is also reported to be working on biological
and chemical weapons as well.
Seven Recommendations On Smallpox
When the World Health Organization's (WHO) external advisory committee on smallpox recommended last week that WHO allow the two research teams still possessing the virus to insert a green fluorescent marker gene into it to test the efficacy of potential anti-smallpox drugs, the committee also made at least six other research recommendations, according to a WHO spokesman, including at least two that some researchers find controversial. The additional recommendations, which along with the green-marker proposal have yet to be approved by WHO, would allow labs around the world to work with fragments of the variola virus as large as 20% of the whole genome, according to Daniel Lavanchy, WHO's in-house smallpox expert. The proposals would also permit the two smallpox repository lab - one at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in Atlanta and the other at Novosibirsk in Russia - to insert variola genes one at a time into other viruses in the orthopox family, like monkey pox
and cowpox, Lavanchy wrote in E-mail to The Scientist. Two other recommendations would allow the Russian
and American teams to share their smallpox samples with one another for the first time and to perform experiments on variola
and other orthopox viruses simultaneously.. Comment: You just can't keep a good virus down ...
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BBC World: New low-cost HIV treatment hailed
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The World Health Organization has recommended a new treatment for HIV-positive children which researchers say can dramatically cut death rates. The drug - a common antibiotic called co-trimoxazole - costs less than 10 cents per person a day. A trial on children in Zambia suggests it can nearly halve mortality rates for infections such as pneumonia
and tuberculosis, often caused by HIV. Every day about 1,300 children die from HIV/Aids illnesses across the world. This is a breakthrough in medical research which can help to save children's lives all over the world. The Zambia trial was carried out by doctors from the UK's Medical Research Council. The study ended early when they realised how effective of the treatment was...
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CBS News: Russian HIV Problem Growing
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AIDS and the HIV virus are spreading at an alarming pace in Russia, but the government lacks the political will to combat the epidemic that might claim tens of thousands of lives within the next few years, leading experts warned Wednesday. "Russia remains among countries with the highest rates of the spread of the AIDS epidemic," Natalia Ladnaya, a senior researcher at the Russian Federal AIDS Center, said at a conference of experts from the United States, Europe
and Asia. Russia has officially registered more than 300,000 HIV-positive people, but experts estimate that the real number is closer to 1.5 million â about 2 percent of the adult population, Ladnaya said. Although the virus used to spread in Russia primarily through intravenous drug use, more than 40 percent of new HIV cases reported this year were young women who were infected through heterosexual intercourse ...
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NBC: FDA saw problems at flu vaccine plant in 2003
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WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration uncovered contamination
and unsanitary conditions at a British flu vaccine manufacturing plant in 2003 but failed to re-inspect it until similar problems caused the loss of half the U.S. vaccine supply in October, the top FDA official said Wednesday. FDA inspectors who visited the Chiron Corp. plant in Liverpool in June 2003 found records of bacteria concentrations a thousand times higher than expected, said a report distributed by Democrats at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee. The preliminary inspection report from last month indicates in three places that deficiencies found in 2003 had not been corrected.
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IHT: Idle PCs to run grid for disease research
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Internantional Business Machines announced a project on Tuesday to harness the untapped computing power of millions of personal computers to help unlock the genetic mysteries of diseases like AIDS, Alzheimer's, malaria
and cancer. The project, called the World Community Grid - developed in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the United Nations
and other organizations - represents a significant step forward in the use of the Internet to foster collaborative scientific research. The goal is to combine computing resources
and the shared knowledge of researchers to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery...
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IHT: Globalist: South Africa's ghosts haunt thinking on HIV
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CAPE TOWN Last month, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa was asked by a white member of Parliament if he believed the prevalence of rape played any role in the spread of AIDS
and whether he planned to "play a more active role" in combating HIV, the virus that infects about five million South Africans. Mbeki responded by saying his government would continue to improve access to quality health care. He then embarked on a diatribe against the "disease of racism" lying behind portrayals of South African blacks as "lazy, liars, foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral, sexually depraved, animalistic, savage
and rapist." He would not, Mbeki insisted, indulge...
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Reuters: SARS Seen Re-Emerging in China, But No Epidemic
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SARS is expected to emerge in China again this winter, but an epidemic is unlikely as the world's most populous country is better prepared this time round, health officials say. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome emerged in China in 2002, when the communist country was accused of covering up the extent of the virus, contributing to its eventual spread to 8,000 people around the world, 800 of whom died. "We wouldn't be surprised to see the resurgence of a small number of cases," said Julie Hall, who heads the World Health Organization's SARS team in Beijing...
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MSNBC: Flu pandemic looms as major global crisis
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GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday urged governments to provide funds to drug makers developing vaccines against a feared influenza pandemic, which could kill millions of people. Representatives of 11 drug companies, governments
and vaccine licensing agencies ended a two-day meeting amid fears the lethal bird flu virus endemic could mutate
and infect humans...
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Time: Bordering on Nukes?
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A key al-Qaeda operative seized in Pakistan recently offered an alarming account of the group's potential plans to target the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, senior U.S. security officials tell TIME. Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran
and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.. Comment: a nuclear weapon is probably al-Qaeda's weapon of choice,
and is likeliest the first WMD to be used against the US. However, the eventual biological attack will be even more devastating. Note the theft of the crop duster...
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