Faculty Bibliography

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Soviet smallpox experts found themselves impoverished, leading Western experts to fear they might be tempted to sell the virus or their knowledge of how to weaponize it, or both. In 1994, the Defense Intelligence Agency cited an unidentified source as saying Russia had shared smallpox technology with Iraq and North Korea in the early 1990's. As worries about germ terrorism grew in the late 1990's, Washington began a low-profile program to rebuild national stocks of smallpox vaccine and update vaccination plans. When routine smallpox vaccination ended in the United States in 1972, only 15.4 million doses were left. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contracted with Acambis of Cambridge, Mass., for 40 million more, at a cost of $343 million. Crowds for smallpox vaccinations at the New York City Health Department in 1947. (The New York Times); [Richard O. Spertzel] says Iraq was probably ''messing around with smallpox.'' (Getty Images); [Ken Alibek], a germ warfare expert, says Iraq could turn smallpox into a weapon. (Carol T. Powers for The New York Times); A hospital worker receiving a smallpox vaccination last month in Tel Aviv. In August, Israel became the first nation known to have started vaccinating emergency workers. (Associated Press)

The countries -- China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Russia -- have 40 percent of the world's population and by 2010 will have more H.I.V.-infected people than any other five countries, an agency official said H.I.V., the AIDS virus, could harm the economic, social, political and military structure in each of the five countries, a C.I.A. official said in releasing the declassified parts of the council's report The report is the latest in a series of papers by the National Intelligence Council on AIDS since the late 1980's. It expands on one the group issued in December 1999 on the global threat of infectious diseases, including H.I.V., on the United States. The United States has declared the global epidemic of AIDS a national security threat

'W.H.O. has no knowledge of how these news reports originated,' said the organization, an agency of the United Nations based in Geneva, 'but would like to stress that we have no opinion of the future existence of blonds.' On Good Morning America, Charles Gibson began a conversation with his co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, by saying: 'There's a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blonds are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blonds, they say will vanish from the face of the earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunets.' 'We didn't do that story because we made an inquiry to the World Health Organization first,' she said. 'They told us that report was two years old, and had been covered at the time. They said it had been picked up again that day by a German news agency.'

Mr. [Tommy G. Thompson] oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which has acknowledged its failure to prepare adequately to communicate during the anthrax outbreak. In the first days of the outbreak, C.D.C. did not take the leadership in providing vital medical and epidemiologic facts to state health departments, practicing physicians and the public. Spokesmen for the centers said the information was supposed to come from Mr. Thompson's office. Much of Friday's briefing centered on clarifying the options and what officials had recommended to Mr. Thompson and President Bush. But before reporters could question Dr. [Julie L. Gerberding] about this unexpected news development, she suddenly left the stage, leaving two participants, Jerome M. Hauer, an assistant secretary of health and human services and director of the department's Office of Public Health Preparedness, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to field the questions. Also, reporters entering the auditorium at Mr. Thompson's headquarters on Friday afternoon passed packets about smallpox stacked on a table. The reporters were not allowed to take them until they were distributed after the news briefing began. So reporters were deprived of an opportunity to inform themselves before asking questions. But, as it turned out, the packets contained little new information and no summary of the messages the top officials were trying to make in the briefing

These findings led him to the important discovery that specific cells in the cell lineage always die through programmed cell death and that this process could be monitored in the living organism. Dr. [John E. Sulston] described the visible steps in the cellular death process and demonstrated the first mutations of genes participating in programmed cell death, including a gene known as nuc-1. Dr. Sulston also showed that the protein whose production is governed by the nuc-1 gene is required for degradation of the DNA of the dead cell. In a series of experiments beginning in the 1970's, Dr. [H. Robert Horvitz] used C. elegans to determine the existence of a genetic program controlling cell death. In 1986 he published what the Nobel committee called pioneering research that identified the first two bona fide ''death genes,'' known as ced-3 and ced-4. Dr. Horvitz showed that functional ced-3 and ced-4 genes were essential for cell death. Later, Dr. Horvitz showed that another gene, ced-9, protects against cell death by interacting with ced-4 and ced-3. Dr. Horvitz also identified a number of genes that direct how a dead cell is eliminated. Further, Dr. Horvitz showed that the human genome contains a ced-3-like gene

The body uses cell suicide in immune cell development and function, and in removal of unnecessary or damaged cells. Improper function of the cell death genes is a hallmark of a number of diseases. For example, in AIDS, heart attacks, stroke and degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, cells are lost from excessive apoptosis, the Swedish institute said in its citation

On 'Good Morning America,' Charles Gibson began a conversation with his co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, by saying: 'There's a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blonds are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blonds, they say will vanish from the face of the earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunets.' The British accounts were replete with the views of bleached blonds who said hairdressers would never allow blondness to become extinct, and doctors who said that rare genes would pop up to keep natural blonds from becoming an endangered species

Smallpox vaccine, which is made from a live virus related to the one that causes smallpox, is considered the most dangerous immunization. The government owns all American stocks of smallpox vaccine, and because none are licensed now, all are classified as ''investigational.'' Dr. [Julie L. Gerberding] said, absent a smallpox attack, or the imminent threat of one, she still felt the vaccine's benefits do not outweigh its risks for the general public. But, she said: ''We recognize that individual citizens feel that if they understand the risks and benefits of the vaccine, they may choose to have it.'' Dr. Gerberding, Dr. [Anthony Fauci] and Mr. [Jerome M. Hauer] said they met with Mr. [Tommy G. Thompson] several times over the summer to discuss the various options. But Mr. Hauer declined to discuss what was said

On 'Good Morning America,' Charles Gibson began a conversation with his co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, by saying: 'There's a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blonds are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blonds, they say will vanish from the face of the Earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunets.' In London, The Sun and The Express both reported that unnamed scientists said blonds would survive longest in Scandinavia, where they are most concentrated, and expected the last true blond to hail from Finland. The British accounts were replete with the views of bleached blonds who said hairdressers would never allow blondness to become extinct, and doctors who said that rare genes would pop up to keep natural blonds from becoming an endangered species