CDC, GREG KNOBLOCHThe US government earlier this week (February 21) released two documents outlining new policies for researchers dealing with certain pathogens and toxins, including H5N1 avian influenza, ScienceInsider reported.
The new policies have been released in the wake a controversy over bird flu research that began in 2011 after scientists announced that they had made a virus in the lab that could pass between mammals. Researchers on the bird flu virus, H5N1, voluntarily halted their work until last month to give the community time to come up with rules for conducting the research safely.
One of the documents comes from Health and Human Services (HHS) and deals directly with what types of H5N1 research the agency will fund. Top officials from the HHS and the National Institutes of Health described the new criteria, which are based partly on a meeting held in December by the HHS, yesterday (February 22) in Science.
According to the ...
