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T
oday's Headlines: January 17, 2019
Government Affairs & National Security
Death in the Air: Revisiting the 2001 Anthrax Mailings and the Amerithrax Investigation (War on the Rocks) Time may have diminished the memory of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the sense of urgency surrounding the efforts to identify the attacker. The attacks, which involved mailings of five anthrax-laced letters to prominent senators and media outlets, killed five individuals and made 17 others ill. The anthrax mailings played a profound role in raising concerns over possible terrorist use of biological agents in attacks against the homeland. Go to article
National Health Security Strategy 2019-2022 (phe.gov) Our nation faces diverse and evolving health security threats that have the potential to disrupt our public health and health care systems and inflict injury and loss of life on our people. Significant progress has been made in improving capabilities to address the immediate public health and medical consequences of anticipated and actual public health threats, such as extreme weather and infectious disease outbreaks. However, to save lives and protect the nation from other 21st century risks, we-the collective group of stakeholders with responsibilities for national health security-must advance our preparedness and response capabilities to address the realities of our immediate and future threat landscape. Go to article
Global Health Security
Australia Interdicts ASF Positive Food at Their Border (Avian Flu Diary) Without detailing the country (or countries) of origin, Australia's Department of Agriculture & Water Resources released a press statement today on the interdiction of 6 ASF positive food items (out of 152 tested) coming into their international airports or mail processing centers over the past two weeks. Go to article
Inside Efforts to Prevent a Regional Ebola Crisis in Central Africa (IRIN) Since the outbreak erupted in August, a massive response effort has built up around the epicentres in eastern North Kivu and Ituri provinces. It now involves hundreds of Congolese officials and WHO staff, as well as hundreds of local and international aid and health workers. But a lesser-known parallel effort is also underway - within Congo but also in neighbouring countries - to ensure that a regional epidemic like the one that claimed more than 11,000 lives in West Africa in 2013-2016 isn't repeated. Go to article
Medicine & Public Health
Lassa Fever in Travelers from West Africa, 1969-2016 (Emerging Infectious Diseases) Lassa virus is a rodentborne arenavirus responsible for human cases of Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic fever, in West Africa and in travelers arriving to non-Lassa-endemic countries from West Africa. We describe a retrospective review performed through literature search of clinical and epidemiologic characteristics of all imported Lassa fever cases worldwide during 1969-2016. Go to article
Science & Technology
After the Storm - A Responsible Path for Genome Editing (New England Journal of Medicine) The recent announcement of the birth of twins whose genomes were edited during in vitro fertilization has engendered broad condemnation for the premature clinical deployment of a fledgling but powerful biotechnology. The Chinese scientist He Jiankui may claim priority for the first use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in human embryos, but he will forever be remembered for his reckless flouting of widely articulated scientific, clinical, and ethical standards. Go to article
Rogues and Regulation of Germline Editing (New England Journal of Medicine) Type "rogue scientist" into Google, and the first page of results contains nothing but articles about He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who stunned the world in November 2018 by announcing the birth of twin girls whose genomes were edited during in vitro fertilization. Along with the adjective "rogue," those articles frequently feature calls for a global moratorium on germline editing, whether because of principled opposition to human control of the genome, concern about health risks, fear of social disruption, or simply an insistence on continued debate. But though calling for a moratorium may feel satisfying, it does little to stop rogue actors. Nor does it help scientists who, sincerely disagreeing with these objections, wish to pursue the technology cautiously and responsibly. Go to article
The Future of Gene Editing - Toward Scientific and Social Consensus (New England Journal of Medicine) On the day after Thanksgiving 2018, Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research on bacterial immune systems led to the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR (for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), received a startling email from the Chinese scientist He Jiankui. "Babies born," read the subject line. Though Doudna was previously unaware that He had been working to create the world's first "CRISPR babies," she had long worried that CRISPR-related research was leaping ahead of the consensus necessary to support its ethical use. Go to article
Hong Kong Genome Project to Sequence, Analyze 20K Patients (Genome Web: Registration Required) Hong Kong plans to sequence and analyzes the genomes of 20,000 patients and their families as part of the Hong Kong Genome Project, according to a paper submitted by the Hong Kong Food and Health Bureau this week for a discussion by the Legislative Council next Monday. Go to article
See Also: Bangladesh Unveils Whole-Genome Sequencing Program (Genome Web: Registration Required) The government of Bangladesh this week inaugurated its first human whole-genome sequencing program. Within this government-funded project, launched by the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, researchers will identify genetic markers associated with cancer and inherited disease risks specific to the Bangladeshi population. Genomes will be sequenced using Illumina's NovaSeq-6000 platform in a recently minted BCSIR research lab, which has the capacity to sequence 48 genomes in three days. Go to article
Other 21st Century Threats
EU Ambassadors Approve Sanctions Against Novichok Suspects (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty) European Union ambassadors agreed on January 16 to impose sanctions on four Russian military intelligence officers who the EU says are responsible for carrying out chemical attacks, including the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018. Go to article
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