Scientists who created a potentially more deadly bird flu strain to study the virus’s spread halt work amid fears it could be used by terrorists.

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Mutant bird flu research halted

Scientists who created a potentially more deadly bird flu strain to study the virus’s spread halt work amid fears it could be used by terrorists.

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Mutant bird flu research halted

Only slightly more than one-quarter of Americans infected with the AIDS virus are getting the form of medical care that maximizes their life expectancy, according to a new estimate. The goal of AIDS treatment is to suppress growth of HIV until the virus is no longer detectable in the bloodstream. Only 28 percent of the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States have their “viral load” controlled to that optimal degree, epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. Read full article > >

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Only 28 percent of Americans with HIV are getting optimal care

Dreading the onset of flu season? New crowdsourcing software could help you stay one step ahead of the virus, writes Brian Wheeler.

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Can crowdsourcing beat the flu?

A fatal accident inquiry into a Scottish swine flu death hears the victim was relieved when told by doctors he did not have the virus.

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Swine flu bug ‘missed by doctor’

People who carry the genital herpes virus but have no visible symptoms — and may not even be aware they’re infected — are still capable of spreading the virus about 10% of the time, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Symptom-free herpes contagious?

Organs from people infected with the virus that causes AIDS are suitable for transplant to patients who are already infected, doctors say.

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A New Push to Let H.I.V. Patients Accept Organs That Are Infected

A new vaccine that could become available in the United States in the next few years is made by growing the virus in cultures of animal cells rather than in chicken eggs.

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Success in New Method for Flu Vaccine

by Edward Goldstick I often discover things in three’s, whether just things to share or the thoughts that immediately come to mind while considering them… which is a topic for discussion in its own right, so here is an initial example… — a computer virus brings down a province-wide ambulance service in southwest Australia and pen-and-pencil plus telephones take up the banner… — Bruce Schneier has a new book in the works that will attempt to describe the differences between individual and societal security… — …and an observation to tie it together. 1) From Slashdot moments ago: Virus Shuts Down Australian Ambulance Dispatch Service Posted by   timothy   on Sunday February 13, @07:32PM   from the severe-spankings-called-for-in-certain-basements dept. angry tapir writes “Computers which co-ordinate ambulances in NSW, Australia, are back online in three of the state’s regions after a   major virus forced staff to shut them down for more than 24 hours . The virus crept into the Ambulance Service of NSW’s dispatch system, prompting staff to co-ordinate paramedics by telephone and handwritten notes. The cause and source of the virus are not yet known.” …to which I will only add that these sorts of failures amaze me, almost as much as the problems that distributed mission critical systems or sites encounter when nobody seriously considers the necessity to “turn off” all or parts of it occasionally in either a scheduled or spontaneous fashion whether for maintenance that is directly related or, perhaps, for peripheral matters such as cleaning. These folks were lucky because someone still knew the protocols for manual communications from before the computer-based dispatching was deployed. 2) This from Bruce Schneier’s latest Crypto-Gram newsletter in my email moments after: The rationale behind his new book project on “Societal Security” ( here on his website ). This could be a really important contribution, but what I find disconcerting are some of his initial presumptions that instantly seemed misguided to me… but then again, he admits this openly and that might be, in fact, at the core of the conundrum that he’s proposing to illuminate, if not unravel completely (though we can always hope). I completely concur, however, with the choice of the Prisoner’s Dilemma conceptual framework and will be very interested to see how he applies it; however, I do hope that he will also delve into some of the philosophical underpinnings of the great human civilizations that endure in our time; in particular, I hope that he will consider the similarities and differences between the Golden Rule as expressed within the Abrahamic traditions: “Treat your fellow human beings as you would want to be treated by them.” …as compared to its mirror image in the Confucian sense (especially as expressed by Mencius): “Do not treat your fellow human beings in ways that you would not want them to treat you.” P.S.: I considered two “Do [not] unto others…” forms, but my ecclesiastical rhetoric is rusty… and it does sound rather pretentious… A note to adepts of the other great religious traditions — in particular, Hinduism and Buddhism: I mean no disrespect by not integrating your civilizations in this “instant” philosophy… on the contrary, I simply do not know enough or appreciate these worldviews enough for the instinct to be rapid enough for this venue. 3) Why “robust systems” in the title of this post? I firmly believe that security is about more than worrying about the bogeyman at the door or under the bed or in the darkness of the future unseen. Is the failure of the Australian EMS communications network the result of an “insecure” system that was susceptible to a malicious intruder (a virus) or was it a product of a system that could not fail gracefully when facing an unanticipated circumstance? There are many people who have written about this sort of thing, from Stephen Flynn to Bruce Schneier himself. The underlying point, of course, is that we are less fearful of the failure of robust systems if we have a clear notion that they might fail but also of how they might fail gracefully as compared to the fear of insecurity when facing the unknown, whether real, imagined, or “theatrical.” Edward Goldstick is a veteran of the high-tech, software, defense, and energy-technology worlds in the U.S. and France.

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Three Tidbits on ‘Robust Systems’

Boys and young men who receive the human papillomavirus vaccine appear to be at reduced risk of contracting the virus and developing the genital warts associated with the common sexually transmitted disease, according to a large international study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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HPV vaccine effective in men

The family of a man who died from swine flu appeal for the vaccine for the virus to be made more widely available.

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Bereaved family swine flu warning

For months, foreign policy circles in DC have been abuzz with a new acronym for a new supposed threat: a looming VIRUS (Venezuela, Iran, and Russia). According to this theory, Venezuela’s recent cooperation agreements with Iran and Russia signal what is supposed to be our worst nightmare: Venezuela and Russia could be helping Iran develop nuclear weapons. Thankfully, this week’s Wikileaks releases have included two cables from Caracas, which handily refute any such fears. read more

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Venezuela, Iran and Russia: Can We Stop Being Afraid Now?

A quarter of people living with HIV in the UK – over 22,000 – are unaware they have the virus, experts have suggested.

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Quarter ‘unaware of HIV status’

When gay men at high risk of becoming infected with HIV through sex take a daily dose of antiretroviral drugs, their chance of catching the virus drops by at least 40 percent, according to a new study.

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Daily AIDS drug lowers risk of HIV, study finds

A drug used to treat HIV may offer gay and bisexual men some protection against contracting the virus, claim the authors of a new study.

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Drug ‘reduces’ HIV infection risk