FDA To Reconsider Once-Rejected Diet Drug
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
ABC News
By: Carrie Gann
In the search for treatments to fight obesity, regulators are turning their attention to a diet drug that has already failed to receive government approval as a weight loss treatment.
Next week, a panel of advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will consider whether or not to recommend the diet drug Qnexa for approval. The move is the latest attempt to give new tools to patients and doctors to fight the obesity that currently plagues one-third of Americans. It also fans a fiery debate about the search for a “magic bullet” alternative to difficult lifestyle changes to help obese people lose weight.
Qnexa was rejected by the FDA in 2010 over concerns about potentially dangerous side effects, such as cardiovascular problems and birth defects. Now, the FDA will consider whether or not the drug’s manufacturer, Vivus, should do a larger clinical trial to investigate the potential for cardiovascular side effects.
But some obesity specialists are, in effect, already giving the drug to their patients by prescribing Qnexa’s two major ingredients, phentermine and topiramate. The practice, called off-label prescribing, is not prohibited by the FDA. Doctors who have prescribed this combination say it has helped patients shed pounds when many other paths to weight loss have failed.
Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Center for Weight Management at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, said he often sees obese patients who have changed their diets, started exercising more and still have not been able to lose more than a few pounds. Though bariatric surgery is a lasting, effective option for long-term weight loss, many patients either aren’t morbidly obese enough to qualify for the surgery or are reluctant to resort to such a drastic measure to lose weight. For about 30 of these patients, Fujioka has prescribed low doses of phentermine and topiramate.
“The weight loss with this combination rivals bariatric surgery and I see using these meds in the seriously obese patient as an alternative,” Fujioka said.
Dr. Jana Klauer, a New York City-based doctor specializing in weight management, said her patients lost an average of 40 pounds when taking the drugs along with improved diet and exercise plans.
“The drug combination gives great results, providing diet and exercise are part of the plan,” she said.
Vivus, the company that developed Qnexa, said in a statement that the drug is a combination of low doses of both drugs and it is intended for use in combination with improvements in diet and exercise. Vivus said it does not support the off-label use of phentermine and topiramate.
The drugs work by suppressing appetite, and both have been approved by the FDA for other uses. Phentermine, a stimulant, is already approved for weight loss, but only for short-term use. Topiramate is an anticonvulsant, for which weight loss is a side effect.
But a laundry list of side effects has many experts concerned about the safety of the drugs, if taken over a long period of time. Topiramate creates feelings of mental fogginess, memory lapses and a lack of concentration.
Phentermine, one of drugs that made up the failed diet drug Fen-Phen, can lead to a range of cardiovascular side effects, such as high blood pressure, heart attacks and heart palpitations. Dr. David Katz, co-founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, noted that these side effects are the very problems caused by obesity.
Dr. Charles Clark, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Indiana University, said the potential side effects are enough to keep him from prescribing phentermine and topiramate to his patients, particularly in light of the failure of Fen-Phen, which was withdrawn from the market in 1997 after causing fatal blood pressure and heart valve problems in patients.
“Given our experience with Fen-Phen, we should be cautious in our use of these agents until larger and longer-term trials are completed,” Clark said.
Others say concerns about side effects of both drugs and their offspring Qnexa are legitimate, but could be managed or avoided if doctors carefully monitor patients while they’re taking the drug. For example, the FDA’s concerns about potential birth defects caused by Qnexa could be resolved by not prescribing the drug to women who could get pregnant. Many doctors say the risks of these drugs may be outweighed by the benefits for some patients with disabling health problems caused by obesity.
In the past 20 years, a parade of diet drugs have come before the FDA, representing an effort by drug companies to give obese patients and their doctors alternatives to difficult, often unsuccessful lifestyle changes. Most of the drugs have failed to meet the agency’s standards for safety and effectiveness. Many come with a list of embarrassing side effects, such as anal leakage, and only one, Alli, is approved for long-term use. A handful of drugs, such as Metabolife and Meridia, were removed from the market because of heart safety concerns.
Some doctors say there is no evidence that Qnexa will perform better than the diet drugs that have already flopped.
“I have made selective use of some weight loss drugs, but have not to date found much reason for enthusiasm for any of them,” Katz said. “I don’t have much for Qnexa.”
Others are more hopeful that Qnexa is different, including Dr. Chip Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehab and prevention at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans. He cites evidence from previous clinical trials that Qnexa helps patients lose a modest amount of weight, which improves their risk factors for diabetes, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems. He said cardiovascular and birth defect risks that the FDA cited in its first look at the drug were very slight and “clinically unimportant.”
“Considering the dismal results that many experience with attempted weight loss with diet and exercise, which is always the first choice, and the explosion in the need and use of bariatric surgery, this combination drug should be a major advance, and I hope that it gets approved this time by the FDA,” Lavie said.
For The Full Report Go To ABC News
Arsenic Found In Infant Formula, Cereal Bars
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
CBS News
By: Monica DyBuncio
Is arsenic in your breakfast? A new study suggests that might just be what you – or your children – are having each morning.
Researchers at Dartmouth College already knew that rice can be a major source of inorganic arsenic. This includes rice products, such as organic brown rice syrup, an alternative sweetener to high fructose corn syrup. Exposure to high levels of inorganic arsenic over time has been tied to increased risk for cancer.
For the study – published in the Feb. 16 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives – the researchers investigated levels of arsenic in commercially available brown rice syrups, and in products containing the syrups, including infant formula, cereal and energy bars, and high energy foods used by endurance athletes.
What did they find? Surprising levels of arsenic in these products containing organic brown rice syrup.
Out of 17 infant formulas tested, 15 did not contain organic brown rice syrups – and had relatively low levels of arsenic. As for the two formulas that listed organic brown rice syrup as the primary ingredient – those contained 20 times as much arsenic as ones without the rice ingredient. One had a total arsenic concentration that was six times the federal limit of 10 parts per billion (ppb) for total arsenic in bottled or public drinking water.
Out of 29 cereal or energy bars tested, 22 contained at least one rice product in the top five ingredients. The seven that didn’t had the lowest levels of arsenic, while those that did contained levels of arsenic ranging from 23 to 128 ppb. The energy shots contained between 84 and 171 ppb arsenic.
Study author Dr. Brian Jackson, an environmental chemistry researcher at Dartmouth’s Superfund Research Program, told Consumer Reports, ” I would certainly advise parents who are concerned about their children’s exposure to arsenic not to feed them formula where brown rice syrup is the main ingredient.”
There are currently no U.S. regulations for arsenic in food. But the new study shows some food products bring significant amounts of arsenic to an individual’s diet, so researchers conclude “there is an urgent need for regulatory limits on [arsenic] in food.”
This study isn’t the first to put arsenic in the spotlight. Levels of arsenic have previously been found in apple and grape juice.
For The Full Report Go To CBS News
Congress Acts To Extend Payroll Tax Cut And Jobless Aid
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
New York Times
By: John H. Cushman Jr. and Robert Pear
With members of both parties expressing distaste at some of the particulars, Congress on Friday voted to extend payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits and sent the legislation to President Obama, ending a contentious political and policy fight.
The vote in the House was 293 to 132 with Democrats, who are in the minority, carrying the proposal over the top with the acquiescence of almost as many Republicans. The Senate followed within minutes and approved the measure on a vote of 60 to 36.
“One hundred sixty million Americans,” said Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who, as chairman of the Finance Committee, led negotiations over the measure with the House. “That’s the number of Americans who are helped by this bill.”
President Obama has said he will sign the bill as soon as Congress passed it, with lawmakers seeking to wrap up the legislation before leaving on the Washington’s Birthday break.
A compromise allowing the extension of the tax holiday for the rest of the year came together quickly this week, as Republicans decided it was not politically viable to resist in an election year. It avoided an abrupt increase in payroll taxes that would have taken effect March 1, returning them to the level of 2010. The taxes are withheld from the paychecks of most wage earners and finance the Social Security system.
The legislation also temporarily avoids cuts in payments to doctors under federal health insurance programs.
In the negotiations, which took place during a two-month temporary extension of a popular tax break that had been in place throughout 2011, Republicans gave up on their demands that the tax cuts be paid for. But they won provisions that would pay for the other spending increases in the bill by making cuts in other federal programs involving health care and government pensions.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the package will increase the budget deficit by $119.5 billion over the next five years, but by a bit less over the longer haul as some of the spending reductions and new revenues are fully realized.
Republicans who said they supported the deal said they had won several important concessions during the talks, like imposing new conditions and limits on unemployment compensation and making a significant cut in the preventive-health spending called for in the health care overhaul that Democrats pushed through Congress in 2010.
Representative Renee Ellmers, Republican of North Carolina, called that cut “the most dramatic blow to Obamacare yet.”
But she said the overall deal was “a very important breakthrough and shows that we can come together and compromise.”
Democrats, some of whom sharply condemned the deal, saw things differently. Even those who voted for the bill, which the White House supported and Democrats considered a major act of economic stimulus to propel the recovery forward, said many of its provisions were misguided.
Two Democratic leaders, Representatives Steny H. Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen, both of whose Maryland districts contain thousands of federal employees, denounced cuts in future pension benefits for government employees, which were used to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits. They would have preferred tax increases on the wealthy, or on corporations, or closing loopholes like the one that lets fund managers treat their income as lightly-taxed “carried interest.”
“Nobody else in this bill, not a millionaire, not a billionaire, not a carried-interest beneficiary, not an oil company, nobody in this bill other than federal employees is asked to pay,” fumed Mr. Hoyer, the Democratic whip, confident that his denunciation of the bill would not endanger its passage.
“It’s time to stop scapegoating federal employees,” Mr. Van Hollen said.
Under the bill, the government would save $15 billion over 10 years by reducing its contribution to federal employee pensions and requiring new workers to contribute more.
But ultimately, the Democrats pronounced themselves satisfied.
“On balance, I come down in favor of supporting what the president asked us to do,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader.
In the Senate, there is considerable support for the bill in both parties, but just enough opposition to stop its passage from being a sure thing until the last moment.
The Congressional Budget Office said the provisions of the bill, taken together, would increase the federal budget deficit by $101 billion this year and by a total of $89 billion from 2012 to 2022. One provision, continuing the payroll tax cut for the next 10 months, will cost $93 billion, the budget office said.
Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the bill “prevents a tax increase for working Americans and makes the most significant reforms to federal unemployment programs since they were created in the 1930s.”
In addition, Mr. Camp said, the bill “ensures that seniors continue to have access to their doctors.”
Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the committee, said the bill “will provide a boost to the economy” and create jobs.
“Unemployment insurance — people spend it,” Mr. Levin said. “That’s good for their subsistence. It’s good for the economy.”
For The Full Report Go To New York Times
Ron Paul: Why Can’t We ‘Put Into Our Body Whatever We Want?’
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
Drudge Report
By: AP News
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul decried the “war on drugs” Thursday night, telling supporters in Washington state that people should be able to make their own decisions on such matters.
Voters in Washington are likely to decide this year whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana
“If we are allowed to deal with our eternity and all that we believe in spiritually, and if we’re allowed to read any book that we want under freedom of speech, why is it we can’t put into our body whatever we want?” Paul told more than 1,000 people at a rally in Vancouver, a suburb of Portland, Ore.
Paul did not mention his rivals for the Republican nomination but criticized President Barack Obama for killing American citizens with suspected terrorist ties and for expanding federal regulations. Paul
The Texas congressman said he wasn’t sure if he’d win the GOP nomination and tries not to predict the future but added that he’s encouraged by the enthusiasm of his supporters.
“People who are strong believers in issues and ideas and principals, they do lead the way,” he said.
Paul is the second Republican to hold a major public event in Washington. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was in Olympia and Tacoma on Monday. Washington’s caucuses are scheduled for March 3.
Some in the Vancouver audience came from neighboring Oregon, which has a primary set for May 15.
Paul was spending Thursday campaigning in Idaho and Washington and has rallies planned Friday in Richland and Spokane. He is expected to hit most of Washington’s media markets before the state’s nonbinding caucuses.
For The Full Report Go To Drudge Report
Implanted Microchip Might Be Future of Drug Delivery
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
Info Wars
By: Maureen Salamon
Remote controls may not be for just appliances anymore. In a new small study, women with severe osteoporosis were implanted with a microchip that releases bone-building drugs at the push of a button, a delivery method that could someday become common for various health conditions.
Roughly 1.5-by-2.5 inches in size, the microchip significantly improved patient compliance with a drug regimen that normally requires painful daily self-injections, study authors said. The clinical trial, conducted on seven osteoporosis patients in Denmark, was the first to test a wirelessly controlled microchip in this capacity.
“It frees patients from the burden of managing their disease on a daily basis,” said Robert Farra, co-author of the study and president and chief operating officer of MicroCHIPS Inc., the Waltham, Mass., company that funded and supervised the trial. “I think there will be a class of drugs [for other conditions] that will be very suitable to use the chip for . . we were very pleased with the results.”
For The Full Report Go To Info Wars
Sell Monsanto! List Of Top Mutual Funds To Ditch Because They Own Monsanto Shares
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
If the natural health community really wants to get serious about hitting evil corporations like Monsanto where it hurts, then it is time to start boycotting the companies that support, invest in, or otherwise have a relationship with Monsanto and its partner companies. And this includes dumping mutual fund and investment companies that hold a significant amount of shares in Monsanto.
Monsanto is a publicly-traded company, which means members of the public, including other large companies and investment firms, can buy shares in said company for investment purposes. This, of course, is one of the primary ways publicly-traded companies are able to raise needed funds and capital to keep on doing business.
While some investors make decisions on which securities to buy purely for financial reasons, others invest more consciously based on respect for a company and its products, for instance, or because they really want to see it succeed in the long-run. In either case, there are a number of investors in Monsanto that you may be interested in knowing about, if for no other reason than to pull your funds out of them because of their partnership with the world’s most evil and sinister corporation.
According toYahoo! Finance, 83 percent of Monsanto’s shares are held by institutional and mutual fund owners. The top ten institutional holders and mutual fund holders in Monsanto as of the writing of this article are as follows:
Top Institutional Holders
•The Vanguard Group, Inc.– 21,361,249 shares
•State Street Corporation– 20, 096, 055 shares
•T. Rowe Price– 17,442,437 shares
•PRIMECAP Management Company– 14,933,282 shares
•Jennison Associates LLC– 14,526,041 shares
•BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A.– 12,775,828 shares
•Davis Selected Advisers, L.P.– 11,426,858 shares
•FMR LLC– 11,118,244 shares
•Marsico Capital Managements, LLC– 11,079,586 shares
•AllianceBernstein, L.P.– 9,876,978 shares
Top Mutual Fund Holders
•Vanguard / Primecap Fund– 6,707,060 shares
•Market Vectors ETF Tr-Agribusiness ETF– 6,624,107 shares
•Davis New York Venture Fund– 6,600,196 shares
•Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund– 6,204,474 shares
•Fidelity Growth Company Fund– 4,789,978 shares
•Vanguard 500 Index Fund– 4,771,300 shares
•Vanguard Institutional Index Fund – Institutional Index FD– 4,378,112 shares
•SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust– 4,182,071 shares
•College Retirement Equities Fund – Stock Account– 4,045,420 shares
•Mainstay Large Cap Growth Fund– 3,857,600 shares
The top fiveMajor Direct Holdersin Monsanto include Hugh Grant, the company’s chairman, president, and CEO; William U. Parfet, chairman and CEO of MPI Research, a pharmaceutical company; Brett D. Begemann, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Monsanto; Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s executive vice president and chief technology officer; and Carl M. Casale, president and CEO of CHS Inc., a cooperative that supplies energy, crop nutrients, grain, livestock feed, food and food ingredients, and business solutions.
If you or any one you know holds investments in any of these companies, be sure to ditch them as soon as possible in protest of their support for Monsanto. Doing so is a practical way to get the ball rolling in bringing about real grassroots change, and ending Monsanto’s reign of agricultural terror.
You can also view a more extensive list of Monsanto’s stockholders here:
http://investors.morningstar.com
For The Full Report Go To Natural News
Many Processed Foods Are Made With A Coal Tar Derivative Chemical That Causes Hyperactivity In Children
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
Natural News
By: Mike Adams
Would you knowingly feed your children an ingredient derived from coal tar? That’s exactly what you may be doing, if you let them eat any orange or yellow artificially-colored products including sodas, cheese-flavored products, flavored chips, pickles or a myriad of other foods and beverages. The industrial waste-derived coloring chemicaltartrazineis a common ingredient in all these foods, underscoring the need to read food labels religiously. (Why would anyone put artificial colors into pickles? Read the labels, and you’ll see!)
Tartrazine, also known as E102 or Yellow #5, was one of the colorings linked to childhood hyperactivity in a landmark 2007 study conducted by the United Kingdom’sFood Standards Agency. As a consequence, products containing it must carry a warning label anywhere in the European Union.
Not surprisingly, the United States has no such law — even though the coloring has been linked to asthma, migraines and cancer. But since when the FDA ever bother warning the public about dangerous chemicals in their food anyway? After all, aspartame, MSG and sodium nitrite are all legal — so why not add a little food coloring poison to the cocktail and call it “nutrition?”
For The Full Report Go To Natural News
Feds Succeed In Destroying Entire Business Of Amish Raw Milk Farmer
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
It is with much sadness that we report the two-year war waged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) against Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Allgyer has been a success.The Washington Timesand others are now reporting that, following a ruling last month by Judge Lawrence F. Stengel that Allgyer could no longer ship raw milk across state lines, he is officially shutting down his entire Rainbow Acres Farm.
Provoking Allgyer to shut down his farm appears to have been the goal of the FDA all along, which back on February 4, 2010, conducted a gestapo-style raid on Allgyer’s Kinzers, Penn., property to search for evidence that he was shipping raw milk across state lines. After illegally trespassing on the man’s property, the agents proceeded to harass Allgyer about his supposed involvement in interstate commerce (http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com).
Just a few months later on April 20, 2010, the FDA again sent its Nazi-sympathizing thugs back to Rainbow Acres Farm, this time at 4:30 a.m. while Allgyer was still asleep, to conduct another raid. Violating the provisions of their so-called warrant, which specified that any inspection must be conducted during “reasonable times during ordinary business hours,” the agents proceeded to once again ransack the farm in search of evidence to back their claims that Allgyer was engaged in illegal interstate commerce (http://www.naturalnews.com/029322_raw_milk_Amish.html).
Following this second sting, the FDA claims to have discovered the evidence it needed, and immediately sent Allgyer a warning letter notifying him that he was in violation of interstate commerce laws, according to their view (http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/aa/aa-26april2010.htm). The agency also filed a civil complaint against Allgyer around the same time.
With hundreds of happy and satisfied out-of-state customers that relied on him for fresh supplies of raw milk, Allgyer attempted to satisfy the FDA’s demands by restructuring his farm’s distribution process into private cow share agreements with customers. Such agreements allow individuals to directly purchase shares in the cows from which they get milk, which means they personally own them, and they are not subject to FDA jurisdiction.
Rogue judge essentially declares FDA has jurisdiction over private property use, in this case cows
But on February 3, 2012, Judge Stengel decided that Allgyer was still in violation of interstate commerce laws,even with the restructured cow sharing arrangements, and ordered him to stop distributing raw milk altogether. Private cow share agreements do not constitute interstate commerce, of course, but Judge Stengel apparently pays no regard to individual liberty, having declared that the FDA basically now has jurisdiction over private property use.
Likely worn down from the perpetual and never-ending harassment, Allgyer appears to have decided to simply give up trying to fight this unprecedented tyranny, and simply shut down his farm. Hundreds of families that relied on Allgyer for fresh milk, butter, cheese, eggs, and other nutritious goods will now have to find a new source for clean food, at least until the FDA shuts them down, too.
“I can’t believe in 2012 the federal government is raiding Amish farmers at gunpoint all over a basic human right to eat natural food,” said one of the farm’s former customers, who wished to remain anonymous, toThe Washington Times. “In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank.”
For The Full Report Go To Natural News
J&J’s McNeil Unit Recalls Infants’ Tylenol
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
CNN
By: Aaron Smith
The healthcare company McNeil is recalling more than half a million bottles of Infants’ Tylenol because of consumer complaints about the difficulties of using the dosing system.
McNeil is recalling about 574,000 bottles after receiving a “small number” of complaints regarding the so-called “dosing syringe” of the orally-administered over-the-counter painkiller. The company said that in some cases the “flow restrictor was pushed into the bottle when inserting the syringe.”
The recall applies to one-ounce bottles of grape-flavored Infants’ Tylenol Oral Suspension.
The company said there have been “no adverse events” from the problem and that “the risk of series adverse medical event is remote.”
The company said that consumers can continue to use the product, despite the voluntary recall, so long as the flow restrictor remains in place at the top of the bottle.
McNeil, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500), has had numerous recalls in the recent past, especially with Tylenol.
The U.S. government took over three Tylenol plants last year for failure to comply with federally-mandated manufacturing procedures.
Click Here For The Full Report From CNN
WHO: Deadly Bird Flu Studies To Stay Secret For Now
February 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
February 17th, 2012
MSNBC
By: Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland
Two studies showing how scientists mutated the H5N1 bird flu virus into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic will be published only after experts fully assess the risks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
An Ohio drugmaker began releasing limited supplies of a crucial medication to treat childhood leukemia Thursday, sending hospital pharmacists facing life-threatening shortages scrambling for their share
Speaking after a high-level meeting of flu experts and U.S. security officials in Geneva, a WHO official said an agreement had been reached in principle to keep details of the controversial work secret until deeper risk analyses have been carried out.
“There is a preference from a public health perspective for full disclosure of the information in these two studies. However there are significant public concerns surrounding this research that should first be addressed,” said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health security and environment.
The WHO called the meeting to break a deadlock between scientists who have studied the mutations needed to make H5N1 bird flu transmit between mammals, and the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which wanted the work censored before it was published in scientific journals.
Biosecurity experts fear mutated forms of the virus that research teams in The Netherlands and the United States independently created could escape or fall into the wrong hands and be used to spark a pandemic worse than the 1918-19 outbreak of Spanish flu that killed up to 40 million people.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said that because of these fears, “there must be a much fuller discussion of risk and benefits of research in this area and risks of virus itself”.
But a scientist close to the NSABB who spoke to Reuters immediately after the decision said the board was deeply “frustrated” by it.
The only NSABB member attending the meeting was infectious disease expert Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University and he “got the hell beat out of him”, the source said.
“It was a closed meeting dominated by flu people who have a vested interest in continuing this kind of work,” he added.
The WHO said experts at the meeting included lead researchers of the two studies, scientific journals interested in publishing the research, funders of the research, countries who provided the viruses, bioethicists and directors from several WHO-linked laboratories specializing in influenza.
The H5N1 virus, first detected in Hong Kong in 1997, is entrenched among poultry in many countries, mainly in Asia, but so far remains in a form that is hard for humans to catch.
It is known to have infected nearly 600 people worldwide since 2003, killing half of them, a far higher death rate than the H1N1 swine flu which caused a flu pandemic in 2009/2010.
Last year two teams of scientists – one led by Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center and another led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin – said they had found that just a handful of mutations would allow H5N1 to spread like ordinary flu between mammals, and remain as deadly as it is now.
This type of research is seen as vital for scientists to be able to develop vaccines, diagnostic tests and anti-viral drugs that could be deployed in the event of an H5N1 pandemic.
In December, the NSABB asked two leading scientific journals, Nature and Science, to withhold details of the research for fear it could be used by bioterrorists.
They said a potentially deadlier form of bird flu poses one of the gravest known threats to humans and justified the unprecedented call to censor the research.
The WHO voiced concern, and flu researchers from around the world declared a 60-day moratorium on Jan. 20 on “any research involving highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 viruses” that produce easily contagious forms.
Fouchier, who took part in the two-day meeting at the WHO which ended on Friday, said the consensus of experts and officials there was “that in the interest of public health, the full paper should be published” at some future date.
“This was based on the high public health impact of this work and the need to share the details of the studies with a very big community in the interest of science, surveillance and public health on the whole,” he told reporters.
Asked about the potential bioterrorism risks of his and the U.S. team’s work, Fouchier said “it was the view of the entire group” at the meeting that the risks that this particular virus or flu viruses in general could be used as bioterrorism agents “would be very, very slim”.
“The risks are not nil, but they are very, very small,” he said.
Click Here For The Full Report From MSNBC
