By Anna Mehler Paperny – Reuters
A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, sick with Canada’s first presumptive human case of avian influenza.
H5N1
Canada’s pandemic response needs work, federal health agency says
Photo by Henry Romero/Reuters
April 3, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
There are still serious shortcomings in the way public-health bodies communicate with physicians, nurses and pharmacists on the front lines of a pandemic, says the Public Health Agency of Canada.
And almost three years after a flu pandemic put the country on high alert, the federal agency has put out a call for a new strategy to improve communication with clinicians during pandemic response.
Germ warfare: The creation of a lethal virus sparks a debate pitting science against security
Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green) are shown in this 1997 image.
Cynthia Goldsmith/THE CANADIAN PRESS
With a recommendation that scientists be allowed to publish details of how they engineered a highly contagious strain of bird flu, the World Health Organization has come down on the side of those who argue that humanity is best served by the free exchange of knowledge. In doing so, it may have risked letting that knowledge fall into the hands of those who would do humanity harm
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Thursday, February 23, 2012 – Globe and Mail
When two groups of scientists on either side of the Atlantic engineered a highly contagious strain of avian flu, their findings were variously hailed as brilliant, groundbreaking – and reckless.
a business of misfits 