• Chertoff: biological weapons biggest terrorist threat

    Chertoff: “The natural ingredients of a biological threat are not difficult to come by, and it’s just a question of the know-how in terms of fabricating them to make a weapon”

  • Airport flu scanners as global health alert increases

    Australian government orders all airports to use thermal imaging systems to detect passengers who may be infected with swine flu; the scanners can detect if a passenger has a raised body temperature

  • Aussie company improves food pasteurizing

    Normally processors would have to use preservatives or heat the product and this inevitably changes the taste and destroys some nutrients; new method — called high-pressure processing (HPP) — uses pressure instead

  • Travel ban will not meaningfully slow spread of epidemic

    Computer modelers say that travel restrictions will do more harm (economic damage) than good (slow the spread of the flu); prevention and treatment are better measures

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  • Lancet: Pandemic closer but not inevitable

    Prestigious British health journal said “The world has moved closer towards a pandemic, but it is not yet inevitable”

  • US-CERT warns of swine flu-related phishing scams

    The swine flu outbreak is about two weeks old, but criminals are already e-mailing millions of phishing e-mails which purport to offer the latest information about the disease

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  • Skin-patch deliver flu vaccine

    Researchers at Emory and Georgia Tech develop a microneedle skin patch that delivers flue vaccine; the patches contain an array of stainless-steel microneedles coated with an inactivated influenza virus

  • Current swine flu is the inevitable result of modern farming methods

    The current swine flu outbreak is not yet two weeks old and conspiracy theorists already ascribe it to genetic engineering by clever bioterrorists; the truth is more prosaic: there are more than one billion pigs and more than 70 billion chickens raised every year for human consumption; modern, industrial animal farming methods make the creation of new virus types — what scientists call “reassortment” — inevitable

  • Mexico complains to Israel about new name for swine flu

    Israel’s deputy health minister suggests that, in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, the name “swine flu” should be changed to “Mexican flu”; Mexico launched official protest with Israel, saying the the name Mexican flu was “bothersome and worrying”

  • Virulent H5N1 mistakenly mixed with H3N2

    Austrian branch of vaccine company Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu to Avir lab, also in Austria; a Czech affiliate of Avir conducted tests on ferrets, which died; investigation shows that the H3N2 batch contained live virulent H5N1 virus

  • WHO: Swine flu could become pandemic

    The growing number of swine flu in Mexico, and the spread of the disease in the United States, lead the World Health Organization to declare the virus “a public health emergency of international concern”

  • Swine flu kills 60 in Mexico, spreads to U.S.

    Sixty people in Mexico have so far died of swine flu, and the World Health organization says the disease has spread to the United States; disease regularly hits pigs but rarely affects humans

  • Calls for ranking the riskiest food products

    In the last two years the United States has been rocked by food poisoning and contamination scares; the sheer number of products that need to be inspected, and the relatively small number of inspectors, lead experts to call for ranking products according to the risk they pose

  • New biosensor for most serious form of Listeria food poisoning bacteria

    Biolermakers researchers develop a biosensor using so-called heat shock proteins — which the body produces in response to stress — instead of the antibodies used in other tests

  • Army to complete Fort Detrick Lab probe

    For a year now, U.S. Army investigators have been trying to find out what happened to three vials of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus that were unaccounted for at Fort Derrick bio research lab; as they are about to complete the probe, investigators say that there were no signs of criminal misconduct found yet