Monthly Archives: February 2007
On the Global Politics of Avian Influenza
Indonesia has agreed to send samples of avian influenza viral strains to the WHO as soon as it has access to affordable vaccines. It will be interesting to see to what kind of benefit-sharing model this will lead. Anthropologists in … Continue reading
More on DHS ‘risk’ assessment
Homeland Security Watch, a blog run by CSIS-type Washington policy analysts, should be added to our radar. A recent post announced the publication of a Congressional Research Service report on Homeland Security’s application of “risk-based” grant distribution. The author of … Continue reading
Devolution in a new guise
States vulnerable to natural disasters of all sorts are mulling the idea of a multi-state catastrophic insurance fund… since, according to an LA Times article, the feds are loathe to enter such a market. I don’t want to make too … Continue reading
Drug resistant bugs in the military
According to an article in Wired a new massively drug resistant bacteria that has taken hold in many returnees from Iraq. The article suggests unusually rapid rates of genetic modification: “When a team of geneticists unlocked the secret of the … Continue reading
Public Preparedness
The problem of getting “the public” to engage in preparedness for disaster in the absence of the actual event dates from at least Cold War civil defense. It has recently come up in relation to planning for pandemic flu. Here … Continue reading
The Cold War…with a Twist
In case anyone was worried that all of the old-school sovereign state security experts would run out of things to do: In the last weeks a range of news items indicate that Russia, in any case, is still very active … Continue reading
The Politics of VSS and PSS
An article in todays New York Times discusses a proposed DHS system for detecting the movement of nuclear materials into New York. All of the usual issues with surveillance systems of this type, including the tension between sensitivity and specificity. … Continue reading
Preparing businesses for a pandemic
A conference hosted by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) is now underway with the purpose of bringing together business leaders and risk executives from industry to talk about ways to plan for a pandemic flu outbreak. … Continue reading
Avian Influenza H5 Kills Turkeys in Suffolk
This piece by the BBC reports that 1’000 turkeys have been killed by an avian influenza virus in Suffolk. It does only mention that a H5 virus was the cause, so we don’t really know if it was H5N1 or … Continue reading
Transmission of Influenza Viruses
This is an important piece of research, published today in Science: A Two–Amino Acid Change in the Hemagglutinin of the 1918 Influenza Virus Abolishes Transmission. It is a major step forward in the understanding of transmission of influenza viruses among … Continue reading
