Biosafety Now has launched a Substack! All of our essays, including the On Reading series by Simon Wain-Hobson, will now live on our Substack. To read his latest installment, “The World We Live In,” please click here.

On reading Virology in Peril and the Greater Risk To Science by Michael J. Imperiale, Arturo Casadevall, Felicia D. Goodrum, Stacey Schultz-Cherry. mSphere, vol 8, #1, December 15, 2022. Sunset near Marseille, oil on canvas, Charles Signoret (1867-1932)   This paper appeals for thought. As the stakes are high for virology, without question the Queen...

I have been studying the origin of epidemics for over a decade, through the perspective of a physician with formal training in outbreak investigation and as a researcher of biowarfare and bioterrorism, long before the COVID-19 pandemic. I wrote a whole book on the topic, Dark Winter, and established a course at UNSW called “Bioterrorism...

On reading More Spin than Science: Risk Communication about the H5N1 Bioengineering Research Controversy by Peter Sandman, a transcript of a Skype presentation to ‘Freedom in biological research: How to consider accidental or intentional risks for populations’, at the Fondation Mérieux near Annecy, France, February 8, 2013. Sparkling Brittany, France, oil on plywood, Thierry Devouassoux...

On reading Virology under the Microscope – a Call for Rational Discourse by Felicia Goodrum and 155 others. Journal of Virology, 92, January 26, 2023. Grenache vines for rosé, southern Var, France. Oil on paper, Julien Wain-Hobson 2022   The straw man is set up in the abstract. A small but vocal group of individuals...