ScienceInsider: White House announces review process for risky virus studies
“Federal officials [on Monday] released a plan to help U.S. agencies decide whether to fund controversial studies that make viruses more dangerous. The guidance may finally bring an end to a moratorium that has kept a handful of experiments funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on hold for more than two years. … Concerns about so-called ‘gain-of-function’ (GOF) virus studies — which make viruses more transmissible in humans or able to cause sickness or death — ignited six years ago when two virologists revealed that they had tweaked the deadly H5N1 avian influenza to make it spread more easily in mammals…” (Kaiser, 1/9).