Journalist and Author
Workers clearing out an old storage room at the National Institutes of Health have found a forgotten box of vials that contain smallpox.
A few pieces of news relative to antibiotic resistance caught my eye over the past few days. What they all had in common: Highly placed politicians stating unambiguously that antibiotic resistance should be a national and international priority. This is superb, with just one catch: The politicians were in Europe. The politicians speaking out were […]
I want to revisit something I wrote about last month — dual-use or gain-of-function flu research — in order to point you to some important recent writing on the issue. To recap, “gain of function” research involves taking a flu strain that already causes severe disease, but is not currently very infectious, and manipulating it […]
The CDC Foundation, which supports the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has put up a new publication urging business travelers to protect their health when they travel internationally and steering them to resources to help. It’s a smart idea backed by some eye-opening statistics: Cost of a course of malaria prophylaxis drugs: $162. […]
The World Health Organization announced on Monday that a polio sample was collected in March at Viracopos International Airport in Campinas, which is about 60 miles outside Sao Paulo, and is where many of the World Cup teams have been landing. The agency said no cases of polio have been identified and there is no evidence the disease has been transmitted.
A newly formed international organization — more than 700 members in 55 countries — has launched an urgent appeal to governments and healthcare, begging for attention to antibiotic resistance as a grave global threat, and asking that antibiotics be declared a cultural heritage deserving legal protection.
Three states — Rhode Island, North Carolina and Tennessee — all said that they have identified residents who have been diagnosed with the mosquito-borne tropical disease chikungunya. The states said all the victims had recently returned from the Caribbean, where the severe, painful illness has been spreading since late last year.
Breaking news today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of its open-access journal Emerging Infectious Diseases: Researchers in Canada have identified a very highly resistant bacterium in squid imported from South Korea and being sold in a Chinese grocery store.
A new study estimates the likelihood that a flu strain manipulated by researchers to be more transmissible could escape the lab. If it did, the consequences could be dire.
The annual World Health Assembly — the meeting of representatives of the 194 countries that belong to the World Health Organization — ended Saturday. Each year, the Assembly defines policy and sets out goals for the coming 12 months in a series of voted-on resolutions. This year it zeroed in on antibiotic resistance, upping the […]
There’s news out this week that feels almost impossible to deliver without an eyeroll: The CIA has promised that it will “never again” use an international vaccination campaign as a cover for intelligence gathering.
I can’t see why not. I mean, the last attempt ended so well.
(Yes, that was sarcasm.)
A troubling and also kind of odd story came out of Denmark this weekend. In a court proceeding, a microbiologist has disclosed that three residents of the country who had no known connection to farming died of MRSA infections caused by ST398, the livestock-associated strain of drug-resistant staph that first appeared among pig farmers in […]
In a move that is simultaneously discouraging, urgent and deeply unusual, the World Health Organization has declared that the resurgence of polio is a “public health emergency of international concern.” It’s an extraordinary statement, coming less than four months after India — once considered a place where polio might never be vanquished — was declared polio-free after three years without a new case.
A new report from the World Health Organization spells out the incredible danger humanity faces from antibiotic resistant bacteria. But even more troubling is the gaps in our knowledge that could lead to even graver problems.
A paper published this week reminded me to take a fresh look at NDM, the “Indian superbug” — actually a gene and enzyme — that got so much attention, including from me, in 2011. (Most of the posts are here.) Quick reminder: NDM surfaced in 2008 in Sweden, then was found in the United Kingdom, […]
A new report from the CDC and Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network shows that incidents of food-related bacterial illness are increasing in the U.S. Even worse, it’s getting harder to identify exactly which strain is causing more and more of these infections.
A new study just published in EuroSurveillance, the peer-reviewed journal of Europe’s equivalent of the CDC, raises the possibility that even if you are doing the right thing, you could pick up some very nasty stuff while you’re abroad — and that what you bring back could endanger not only you, but others around you as well.
News from the Minnesota Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: A Minnesota traveler returning from Africa has been hospitalized with what the CDC confirms to be Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic fever that is often lumped together with Ebola hemorrhagic fever, though they are caused by different organisms. Given […]
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST for short) is preparing a major report on the problem of antibiotic resistance. The report won’t be published for a few months, but today PCAST held one of its periodic meetings, and aired what it thinks the most important issues are going to be. For […]
Big news in the realm of agricultural antibiotics: For the first time in almost 37 years of trying, the US Food and Drug Administration has achieved some control over the meat-industry practice of routinely giving antibiotics to livestock. The drawback: The control comes in the form of a voluntary commitment by veterinary drug manufacturers — […]