November 19, 2012
CIDRAP
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that the US
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will host a 2-day workshop
Dec 17 and 18 to discuss issues related to dual-use H5N1 avian
influenza research. The event will take place on the NIH campus in
Bethesda, Md., and is open to the public but will not be webcast,
according to the meeting announcement. Anthony Fauci, MD, director of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which
is part of the NIH, hinted about the upcoming meeting in an editorial
on H5N1 research moratorium published last month in mBio, the
journal of the American Society for Microbiology. In a flyer about the
meeting the HHS said the goal of the meeting is to provide a forum for
multidisciplinary and multinational perspectives on experiments that
explore how H5N1 might evolve to become a greater threat to humans. As
part of developing its own funding
policies, the HHS said it is interested in hearing from various
stakeholders and how other governments and funders approach similar H5N1
research issues. Speakers will include experts from around the globe
who have expertise in influenza, other infectious diseases, dual-use
research (which could be used for both good and bad ends), bioethics,
public health, biosecurity, epidemiology, national security, public
health surveillance, agricultural and the World Health Organization,
law, and medical countermeasure development.
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