The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is “a threat to international peace and security,” the UN Security Council said on 18 September, in a resolution calling for a massive increase in the resources devoted to stemming the virus’s spread. Read more
The 2014 Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award has been awarded to the geneticist Mary-Claire King. King, of the University of Washington in Seattle, is the leader of the team that discovered the BRCA genes, mutations of which are linked to breast cancer. King’s team found that the 10% of women affected by such mutations have nearly an 80% chance of developing breast cancer. The rush to develop tests for the mutations triggered a legal dispute in the United States that ended with a US Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the patenting of naturally-occurring genes. Read more
A laboratory sweep at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has turned up a forgotten store of the toxin ricin and four other pathogens, according to a 5 September agency memo. Read more
The latest salvo in an ongoing row over the safety of electronic cigarettes has branded a major World Health Organization-commissioned report guilty of misrepresenting and misinterpreting key evidence. Read more
A paper that once promised to help unravel a medical mystery — why some children developed narcolepsy after receiving a flu vaccine — has been retracted. Read more
The US National Institutes of Health would see its budget worries eased if a longtime political champion gets his way. Read more
The run-up to the 20th International AIDS Meeting, scheduled to wrap up on 25 July in Melbourne, was overshadowed by news that a three-year-old child once thought to be cured of HIV still harbors the virus — and by the horrific crash of Malaysian Airlines flight 17, which claimed the lives of six conference delegates. Read more
The United Kingdom’s largest biomedical charity is to shake up the way it forks out its funding, with an increased emphasis on ‘high-risk’ research and stronger support for less-experienced scientists. Read more
The people have spoken. Antibiotic resistance has been voted by the British public as the subject of the UK government’s £10 million ($17 million) Longitude Prize – an initiative aimed at tackling society’s greatest issues. Read more
Patients do not have an automatic right to a compassionate therapy for which there is no scientific evidence of efficacy, according to a landmark ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Read more
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