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Some 200m birds have been culled during the bird flu outbreak
Two tests to diagnose avian flu in humans have been developed by British scientists.
The Health Protection Agency is unveiling the tests at a conference on Wednesday as part of its preparation plans to guard against a pandemic.
Bird flu has killed at least 25 people in east Asia this year and led to the culling of 200 million birds.
The flu cannot currently pass from person to person but scientists fear it could acquire the capability.
HPA chief executive Professor Pat Troop said the developments would be vital if there was a global outbreak.
Prof Troop said "Following the continued outbreaks among poultry in Asia, the threat of an avian flu pandemic is ever more real and the agency is committed to ensuring it has the capacity to respond should person-to-person transmission occur and if human cases are seen in the UK.
"It is essential our plans are up-to-date, and that we have the ability to diagnose the disease quickly so as to respond as effectively as possible."
The tests developed by the HPA include a rapid test, called a polymerase chain reaction test, which is capable of identifying if a person is infected with avian flu within hours.
The test uses the same method employed to identify Sars.
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RIDGEWATER, N.J., Sept. 14 /PRNewswire/ --
National Starch has expanded its crop identity-preservation program and implemented a broader, documented identity-tracing program to verify the non-genetically modified organism (non-GMO) status of the company's food ingredients.
The program, named TRUETRACE(TM), provides customers with traceability for National's food ingredients at all stages of their development, from seed to crop, to production and distribution. The program covers all the company's food ingredients made from corn grown in the United States.
Protecting corn varieties from adventitious contamination and providing traceability is becoming ever more challenging because farmers in the corn-belt of United States have been greatly increasing their acreage of GM corn crops over the last few years. Currently, between one third and one half of the corn acreage in the corn-belt states is being used to grow GM corn, and that is projected to increase considerably in the next few years.
"The ability to provide fully traceable documentation that grain grown in the US is from non-GM sources is becoming increasingly more important, especially as more regulations are implemented to require this traceability," said Joe Emling, manager, grain quality and traceability, agribusiness, National Starch and Chemical Company.
Currently, European Union regulations require food producers of genetically modified organisms to inform purchasers of all the stages of the GM product's production and distribution. Although EU laws require the traceability of genetically modified products, they do not explicitly require traceability for non-GM products. National Starch's TRUETRACE program will make information available to customers in Europe and elsewhere who request it.
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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch scientists have determined bird flu can spread more easily among humans than was previously thought, researchers said Tuesday.
Albert Osterhaus, a professor at Rotterdam's Erasmus University, said the finding was based on a study into the spread of the potentially fatal disease among humans after an outbreak of the disease in the Netherlands in 2003.
He said researchers who tested medical workers and friends and family of 90 people who contracted the highly infectious avian influenza last year found hundreds of undiagnosed cases.
"We discovered some 500 more people were infected directly from their relatives or colleagues during the outbreak in 2003," Osterhaus said, noting that none of the additional people had shown bird flu symptoms.
The study -- which was carried out with the National Institute of Health -- concluded more vigilance against the disease was needed as both the strain that appeared in the Netherlands and another in Asia were very infectious.
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BERLIN--The German Bioethics Council has recommended that Germany keep its moratorium on all forms of human cloning--for now. On 13 September, the 25-member council unanimously called for a worldwide ban on reproductive cloning. But the council split into three distinct groups on the question of research cloning, in which embryonic stem cells are developed from human embryos created by nuclear transfer.
Cloning conundrum. Members of council are ambivalent about whether cloning human embryos to get stem cells (above) should remain verboten.
The first group, comprised of five members, said that any research with human cloning is morally unjustified and should be prohibited. A second opinion, backed by 12 signatures, argued that research cloning should be allowed under strict rules. Five other members said that research cloning should remain prohibited for now, but if ways are developed to reprogram adult cells into embryonic stem cells without first creating a cloned embryo, they should be supported. Three members declined to sign any of the opinions. Despite the apparent majority for allowing the research (Science, 20 August, p. 1091), the report concludes with a statement that the council agrees that Germany's moratorium on the practice should stay in place.
Ethics Council member and Nobel laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen says she is pleased with the outcome. Although she signed the second opinion, she says, the German moratorium is acceptable at the moment. The process is so inefficient in animal experiments, she says, that "it is premature" to move to human cells. Science minister Edelgard Bulmahn praised the report and said she sees no reason to change the current embryo-protection law. --GRETCHEN VOGELRelated sites
The German National Bioethics Council's stem cell site
Center for Genetics and Society summary of arguments over cloning
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By Erika Jonietz
The author of a new book on the 'Frankenfood Myth' argues that excess regulation of genetically modified food unnecessarily frightens the public and impedes research.
In the late 1990s, political scientist Gregory Conko had been studying food and pharmaceutical regulation as a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and noticed the rising concerns in the European Union over genetically modification of crop plants. “I saw this was an issue that was getting much bigger and that it would likely also become a bigger issue in the United States,” he says. So he began shifting his focus almost exclusively to examining issues of the regulation of genetically engineered foods. Last month, Conko and Henry I. Miller, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, published The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (link to Amazon.) (Praeger Publishers), a book that examines some of what they say are the major misunderstandings about agricultural biotechnology.
TR:
What is the central argument of your new book on these genetically engineered “frankenfoods”?
CONKO:
It’s not a point-by-point refutation of all the misconceptions that are being spread about agricultural biotechnology. The primary mess that we tackle has to do with an attitude that is being spread by both opponents of biotechnology and by a lot of its supporters that it is somehow uniquely risky and therefore should be subject to special caution and special regulatory oversight.
TR:
Aren’t there unique risks to creating new plants using genetic engineering, to introducing traits these plants might not otherwise gain?
CONKO:
After recombinant DNA techniques were first demonstrated in the early 1970s, the scientific community started to take a very close look at the technology. They determined that while it certainly increases the flexibility of the kinds of genetic modifications that one can make in microorganisms, plants, or animals, the techniques don’t inherently increase the risks of engineered organisms.
(Much more by following the link.)
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