Human Error In High-Biocontainment Labs: A Likely Pandemic Threat
Incidents causing potential exposures to pathogens occur frequently in the high security laboratories often known by their acronyms, BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) and BSL4. Lab incidents that lead to undetected or unreported laboratory-acquired infections can lead to the release of a disease into the community outside the lab; lab workers with such infections will leave […]
How Coronavirus Was Smuggled Out of Saudi Arabia
When microbiologist Ali Mohamed Zaki mailed out a sample of a deadly virus he had found in Saudi Arabia to a leading virologist, he thought he was helping to alert the world to a potential public-health threat. But Saudi authorities are unhappy that, although the virus was first isolated in their country, Zaki’s action has […]
How Ron Fouchier Created A Mutant H5N1 Virus
A study showing that it takes as few as five mutations to turn the H5N1 avian influenza virus into an airborne spreader in mammals—and that launched a historic debate on scientific accountability and transparency—was released today in Science, spilling the full experimental details that many experts had sought to suppress out of concern that publishing them […]