After eight years, the Sunshine Project, an influential US biosecurity-monitoring group based in Austin, Texas, has suspended its operations.

The project's director, Edward Hammond, says he made the decision because of a chronic cash shortage. “At some point you come to realize that if you don't have buy-in from the people whose business it is to fund peace and security non-governmental organizations, then you have to recognize reality,” he says.

Hammond built a reputation for being well-informed as he exposed numerous lapses in biosafety at US universities and research institutes while the country's investment in research on dangerous pathogens ballooned. He was a strong critic of what he alleged were lax controls on rules governing research on pathogens.