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US government lifts ban on risky pathogen research

The National Institutes of Health will again fund research that makes viruses more dangerous.
  1. Sara Reardon
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The US government has lifted its controversial ban on funding experiments that make certain pathogens more deadly or transmissible. On 19 December, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that scientists can once again use federal money to conduct ‘gain-of-function’ research on pathogens such as influenza viruses. But the agency also said that researchers’ grant applications will undergo greater scrutiny than in the past.

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Nature 553, 11 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-017-08837-7

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 19 December 2017: Added comments from Samuel Stanley and Yoshihiro Kawaoka.

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