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About viruses and viral disease

Events

Live from the Society for General Microbiology Conference in Manchester, UK

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MicrobeWorld and the Society for General Microbiology (UK) to live stream two events from their Spring Conference 2013 in Manchester, England, March 25-28.

Peter Wildy Prize for Microbiology Education
Monday, March 25, 2013 17:20 GMT (1:20 PM EST | 10:20 AM PST)  

David Bhella, Ph.D., will be accepting the Peter Wildy Prize for Microbiology Education, awarded annually by the Society for General Microbiology for an outstanding contribution to microbiology education. Bhella’s acceptance speech will be live streamed at 17:20 GMT (1:20 PM EST | 10:20 AM PST). Vincent Racaniello was awarded the Wildy Prize in 2012.

This Week in Microbiology
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 15:30 GMT (11:30 AM EST | 8:30 AM PST) 

Join Vincent Racaniello and co-host Laura Piddock, Ph.D., with guests Paul Williams, Ph.D., Kalin Vetsigian, Ph.D., and David Harper, Ph.D., for a live-streaming episode of This Week in Microbiology. The live stream starts at 15:30 PM GMT (11:30 AM EST | 8:30 AM PST) and you can watch it below. If you have any questions for Vincent or his guests during the broadcast you can tweet your question using the #sgmman hash tag or type it into the chat function of the video player.

If you live elsewhere in the world, please use www.everytimezone.com, to calculate when the live streams will start in your area.

 

(If you don’t see the video and it is after the official start time please press the play button or refresh the page.)
 

Deans write to Obama about CIA vaccine scheme in Pakistan

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Deans of public health schools in the United States have sent the following letter to President Obama, in which they criticize the use of a vaccination campaign by the Central Intelligence Agency in Pakistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden. I wonder if he will reply.

January 6, 2013

Dear President Obama,

In the first years of the Peace Corps, its director, Sargent Shriver, discovered that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was infiltrating his efforts and programs for covert purposes. Mr. Shriver forcefully expressed the unacceptability of this to the President. His action, and the repeated vigilance and actions of future directors, has preserved the Peace Corps as a vehicle of service for our country’s most idealistic citizens. It also protects our Peace Corps volunteers from unwarranted suspicion, and provides opportunities for the Peace Corps to operate in areas of great need that otherwise would be closed off to them.

In September Save the Children was forced by the Government of Pakistan (GoP) to withdraw all foreign national staff. This action was apparently the result of CIA having used the cover of a fictional vaccination campaign to gather information about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. In fact, Save the Children never employed the Pakistani physician serving the CIA, yet in the eyes of the GoP he was associated with the organization. This past month, eight or more United Nations health workers who were vaccinating Pakistani children against polio were gunned down in unforgivable acts of terrorism. While political and security agendas may by necessity induce collateral damage, we as an open society set boundaries on these damages, and we believe this sham vaccination campaign exceeded those boundaries.

As an example of the gravity of the situation, today we are on the verge of completely eradicating polio. With your leadership, the U.S. is the largest bilateral donor to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and has provided strong direction and technical assistance as well. Polio particularly threatens young children in the most disadvantaged communities and today has been isolated to just three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Now, because of these assassinations of vaccination workers, the UN has been forced to suspend polio eradication efforts in Pakistan. This is only one example, and illustrates why, as a general principle, public health programs should not be used as cover for covert operations.

Independent of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, contaminating humanitarian and public health programs with covert activities threatens the present participants and future potential of much of what we undertake internationally to improve health and provide humanitarian assistance. As public health academic leaders, we hereby urge you to assure the public that this type of practice will not be repeated.

International public health work builds peace and is one of the most constructive means by which our past, present, and future public health students can pursue a life of fulfillment and service. Please do not allow that outlet of common good to be closed to them because of political and/or security interests that ignore the type of unintended negative public health impacts we are witnessing in Pakistan.

Sincerely,

Pierre M. Buekens, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Dean, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine*

James W. Curran, M.D., M.P.H.
Dean, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University*

John R. Finnegan Jr., Ph.D.
Professor and Dean, University of Minnesota School of Public Health*
Chair of the Board, Association of Schools of Public Health*

Julio Frenk, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Dean and T&G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development
Harvard School of Public Health*

Linda P. Fried, M.D., M.P.H.
Dean, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University*

Howard Frumkin, M.D., Dr.P.H.
Dean, School of Public Health, University of Washington*

Lynn R. Goldman, M.D., M.P.H.
Professor and Dean, School of Public Health and Health Services, George Washington University*

Jody Heymann, M.D., M.P.P., Ph.D.
Dean, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health*

Michael J. Klag, M.D., M.P.H.
Dean, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health*

Martin Philbert, Ph.D.
Dean, School of Public Health, University of Michigan*

Barbara K. Rimer, Dr.P.H.
Dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health*

Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D.
Dean, School of Public Health, University of California Berkeley*

*Institutional affiliation is provided for identification only.

cc:
Regina M. Benjamin, United States Surgeon General
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State
Thomas Frieden, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary of Health
Michael J. Morell, Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security
Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

World Polio Day

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Today, 24 October 2012, is World Polio Day:

World Polio Day (October 24) was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis. Use of this inactivated poliovirus vaccine and subsequent widespread use of the oral poliovirus vaccine developed by Albert Sabin led to establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988. Since then, GPEI has reduced polio worldwide by 99%.

The polio eradication effort has made huge inroads towards eliminating polio from the planet. In 1988 it was estimated that there were a total of 350,000 cases of poliomyelitis (probably an underestimate); as of this writing there have been 174 cases in 2012. India has been polio-free for over one year, a remarkable achievement. Only three countries have never seen a break in wild poliovirus transmission: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Continued surveillance and extensive immunization efforts will be needed to remove the last pockets of the disease from these countries.

Because only 1% of poliovirus infections lead to paralytic disease, the 174 polio cases in 2012 translates to 17,400 infections. The virus clearly has the ability to circulate undetected, which can be a problem if surveillance drops. Another thorny issue is how to deal with immunization once the disease has been eradicated. The vaccine strains used for immunization revert to virulence during replication in the human intestine, with the consequence that immunized individuals shed virulent poliovirus into the environment. These viruses will pose a threat to non-immune individuals. How long these vaccine-derived neurovirulent strains will persist in the population is unknown. Therefore we cannot simply stop vaccinating against polio once the disease is eradicated. It will likely be necessary to immunize globally with the non-infectious inactivated poliovirus vaccine until vaccine derived polioviruses are no longer detected.

Related: World Polio Day

Milestones in Microbiology: The video

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Cold Spring Harbor was designated a Milestones in Microbiology site in August, an event I witnessed and documented. Now a video of the ceremony has been released, featuring comments by Stanley Maloy, Bruce Stillman, and James D. Watson.

Behind the scenes: TWiV 202 at the University of Nebraska

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We recorded This Week in Virology #202 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska on 5 October 2012, as part of the 12th Annual Symposium in Virology. Terence Dermody, Shou-Wei Ding, Grant McFadden and I spoke about our research, and then we recorded TWiV with University of Nebraska virologists James Van Etten, T. Jack Morris, and Charles Wood.

I was impressed by the fine virology being done at the Nebraska Center for Virology, as well as the collegiality of the virology community in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Kansas – Symposium attendees were from all of those states! I met many young virologists at the poster session and I was touched by how many of them wanted to say hello and thank us for doing TWiV.

Many thanks to all the virologists who came to the Symposium and stayed to watch TWiV. Special thanks to Charles Wood, the Director of the Nebraska Center for Virology, who participated in TWiV #202 along with T. Jack Morris and James Van Etten.

Here are some behind the scenes photographs of this short but very informative visit.

Behind the scenes: TWiV 200 at the NEIDL

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We celebrated the 200th episode of TWiV by visiting the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University Medical Center, where we met with Elke, Paul, and Ron to talk about building and working in a BSL4 facility. It was an amazing visit that will be fully documented in an upcoming video. Here are some behind-the-scenes photographs of two memorable days.