Big Dilemma Over Smallpox

Smallpox virus (Variola vera) has been one of the most horrific diseases to afflict humanity.  Fortunately, worldwide vaccination programs appear to have eradicated it among humans.  However, both the United States and Russia maintain carefully-guarded stocks of the virus for research purposes.  Over the years, international pressure to destroy these last laboratory stocks of smallpox virus has been building.  Many assumed that the World Health Assembly, the decision making body of the United Nations World Health Organization, which held its 64th conference from May 16th to 24th, 2011, would vote to do just that, thus consigning Variola vera to the dustbin of disease history.  Instead, the Assembly granted the virus a stay of execution until at least 2014: 

Reaffirmed that the remaining stock of smallpox virus should be destroyed 

The Health Assembly strongly reaffirmed the decision of previous Assemblies that the remaining stock of smallpox (variola) virus should be destroyed when crucial research based on the virus has been completed. The state of variola virus research will be reviewed at the 67th World Health Assembly in 2014 and in light of that, determining a date for destruction of the remaining virus stocks will be discussed.

Bioethicists disagree about whether or not to destroy the virus.  As long as it survives, the risk of its release - either accidental or deliberate - will persist.  If it is destroyed, the best opportunity to derive future insights into its, and other disease organisms', biology may be forgone forever.  In the meantime, the virus that has taken about half a billion lives in recent history will continue to hang, like the Sword of Damocles, over the future health of humanity.


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More on Brazilian Deforestation

The European environmental law group ClientEarth has also done some blogging on the moves to open forest land for agriculture in Brazil (see post here). Their post highlights the reason that REDD, which I've written about here (among other places), seems to generate so much hope where prior international forestry efforts have fallen flat: money. When it comes to legal changes that promote or discourage deforestation, the potential economic impact of REDD could turn the tide. Brazil may be a testing ground . . .

Brazil Debates Easing Curbs on Developing Amazon Forest

NYT reports that the Brazilian Congress is considering legislation to exempt small farms from current requirements to maintain forest on property within the Amazon, which would allow significantly more deforestation than current law. Along with the traditional concerns about deforestation, the effort to relax deforestation restrictions comes at a time when large sections of the Amazon appear to be approaching a tipping point. Recent droughts and predicted climate changes suggest that at least parts of the Amazon are on the edge of flipping to another ecosystem type from forest dieback. Such an event would likely have major biodiversity and climate implications -- reducing or eliminating large swaths of habitat and releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide. (A 2005 Amazon dieback caused by drought, for example, is a suspected cause of a notable spike in global GHG concentrations that year). With the ecosystem already teetering, now is not the time to relax forest protection law.

Tilapia: The flip side of the perfect factory fish

Tilapia is traditionally regarded as the fish in the biblical story of Jesus feeding a multitude of five thousand. The question is the price we pay for farmed tilapia as part of the contemporary food supply. It is fish, to be sure, but it doesn't offer the same nutritional value as species far richer in omega 3 fatty acids. Tilapia is also one of the world's most destructively invasive fish species. What makes tilapia so destructive is its rapid feeding and growth cycle and its adaptability to a wide variety of habitats. Those are also the perfect traits for a factory fish.

As global aquaculture in tilapia booms, the words of Danilo Sosa, a technician with Nicanor Fish Farms in Nicaragua, bear remembering: “Nature is for maintaining species; what we do is make fillets.”

Osama Bin Laden - Pioneer Of Bioterrorism

It appears that Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011.  Among his nefarious "accomplishments", bin Laden was the first internationally prominent proponent of bioterrorism. Worries about the deliberate misuse of biological agents have prompted the United States Federal government to set up new anti-bioterrorism facilities, such as the Center for Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Disease, to be located in Kansas.  Despite the demise of bin Laden, the threat of bioterrorism is likely to remain firmly fixed both in the public consciousness and in the wishlists of terrorists.


More biolaw at LEXVIVO.