After public outcry against research into avian flu strains that can be transmitted among mammals, 40 of the top scientists working on the influenza strains signed a voluntary moratorium on research last January. The goal of the pause was to properly—and publically—weigh the potential risks and benefits of such investigations. Critics of the research noted [...]

The emergence of international air travel in the 20th century enabled an unprecedented spread of ideas, cultures and communication. Unfortunately, modern aviation has also proved an effective means of spreading diseases. Air travel didn’t introduce worldwide pandemics, of course, but with tens of millions of scheduled international flights annually and hundreds of millions of passengers [...]

A new strain of H3N2 influenza virus transmitted from pigs to humans has caused U.S. patient cases to spike in the past two weeks. During the same time period, an Ebola virus outbreak in Uganda killed at least 14 people. Both these outbreaks are demanding cooperation among scientists and political leaders. Back in 2009, the [...]

Infection with the H5N1 bird flu is both more prevalent and not as deadly for humans as had been previously thought, according to a paper that has just been published ahead of print by the research journal Science. But before you relax your guard, consider this piece of context: most flu specialists have long assumed [...]

A controversy over whether the U.S. government should allow details of a deadly new flu strain to be published in scientific journals has recently caught fire in the media. But I first heard the news of the mutated virus months ago in Malta at the European Scientific Working group on Influenza (ESWI) meeting. The morning [...]

With millions of birds descending on Delaware Bay during migration, the propensity for bird flu (H5N1) to spread among flocks—and potentially among humans—has been a pressing concern. And as animals, from gray whales to monarch butterflies make epic treks of thousands of kilometers each year, the role of these travelers in spreading highly pathogenic diseases [...]

Many people assume that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic spread rapidly across the globe largely due to the sheer number of people hopping onto planes. But more than 120 years ago, trains and ships alone sped the transmission of the 1889 "Russian" flu so that it reached the U.S. 70 days after the virus’ first peak [...]