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Senate Hearing on H5N1 papers exposes political divisions
Today in Washington D.C., US Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut revealed that his grandmother was killed by influenza during the 1918 pandemic. This was one reason he has been so interested in a pair of yet-to-be-published papers on laboratory-created H5N1 avian influenza strains that could conceivably prove many times more deadly than the 1918 flu. The other reason for his interest is that he chairs the committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which had called a hearing to understand how decisions were made about the research’s potential use as an agent of bioterrorism. At the hearing, officials involved in making the decision to publish the research were queried about a letter that was leaked to the press two weeks ago.
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