The BIO Biosecurity conference is underway, with an opening session featuring a number of senior Obama Administration officials. This event marks perhaps the highest profile Industry-sponsored look at biosecurity issues, and the Administration appears to be committed to making sure that the discussion gets off to a productive start.
A report in PLOS Pathogens last week has produced new details about an unusually virulent fungal infection caused by Cryptococcus gattii, which has emerged recently in the Northwest US and Canada.
A new report by the UPMC Center for Biosecurity suggests that the US remains unprepared for the task of decontaminating the site of a major biological weapon attack. Decontamination after the comparatively small-scale Anthrax attacks of 2001 is estimated to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while shuttering some facilities for as long as two years. By comparison, the costs of a larger scale attack on a major city could be staggering.