Essays on Biosafety

The concept of security is ambiguous. Typically, security involves the protection from external military threats or risks to the state from another state, as well as protection against internal military threats from non-state actors. In recent decades the traditional concept of security downlos other concepts that have expanded the nature of possible threats (joined military threats the threat of terrorism, organized crime and diseases, combined with economic, political, social, and environmental risks), respectively, revised the list of threats, in particular for security at the global, national and individual levels. A broader concept of security requires a comprehensive approach to ...

Bioethical Issues behind Gene Therapy Trials

Gene therapy is a prospective therapy for curing many genetic defects by correcting the mistakes happening at gene level. It can be somatic or germline targeting either blood or bone marrow in former and eggs or sperms in latter. Ethical issues prevail with the germline gene therapy and it has not been approved yet. Similarly, the gene therapy trials need to be regulated and is governed by many bioethical issues. In US, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) regulates the gene therapy clinical trials. This organization has further sub-divisions that regulate the human subjects under trials through ...

strains?” Researches on viruses have been carried out since time immemorial. Several vaccines, therapeutics, and targeted drug delivery systems have been developed only through extensive research on virulent strains. However, genetic engineering and molecular biology techniques have enabled scientists to manipulate, and develop new recombinant strains that may not occur in nature spontaneously. Proper containment of these engineered strains is essential as they might have properties that are entirely different from their parent strains. In September 2011 a researcher from Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam revealed how he had engineered avian influenza strain H5N1, and made it “more receptive to ...