US orders bird flu vaccine before start of clinical trials

Washington

The US Department of Health and Human Services last week ordered 2 million doses of vaccine to fight bird flu — even though the jab has yet to enter clinical trials.

Cause for concern: the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus (gold) sparked fears of a human pandemic. Credit: C. GOLDSMITH/CDC

The prototype vaccine, to be made by Aventis Pasteur, is designed to fight the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has devastated poultry flocks in Asia, killed nearly 30 people and sparked fears of a human pandemic. Small-scale clinical trials of the vaccine are planned for before early 2005 to determine its safety and dose.

Bruce Gellin, director of the department's National Vaccine Program Office in Washington, says the vaccine order is a trial run designed to reveal any obstacles in large-scale manufacture, such as whether there are problems growing the virus in hens' eggs.

Gellin says the vaccine is likely to sit on the shelf until the results of the clinical trials are in. The vaccine may even be thrown away, he acknowledges, if it proves unsafe or if the bird-flu virus mutates, rendering the vaccine ineffective.

Fossils figure in multiple guises, researcher claims

London

Imitation may be a form of flattery, but it tends not to be appreciated when it comes to scientific papers.

Such is the problem faced by Mostafa Imam of the College of Education for Girls in Madinah Al Munawara, Saudi Arabia. Allegations have surfaced that Imam included in his papers photographs of bacterial fossils taken by fellow palaeontologists, with captions indicating that the fossils were found in other sites and showed different species.

Julio Aguirre, a palaeontologist at the University of Granada in Spain, investigated Imam's work after being sent one of his papers to review. He claimed last month that Imam has produced a string of publications by lifting photographs from other papers (J. Aguirre Rev. Esp. Micropaleontol. 36, 349–352; 2004). Aguirre is calling on palaeontology journals to check Imam's publications for plagiarism.

Imam says that many of Aguirre's accusations are “lies”. He says one of his papers was printed without his having seen the proofs, and that some of the text and pictures had somehow been changed in the process.

France gives research a billion-euro boost

Paris

The French government announced an increase in the civil research budget for 2005 of €1 billion (US$1.2 billion) last week — a rise of 10% from 2004.

In so doing it kept the promise it made in March to a research community angered by job cuts and budget freezes (see Nature 428, 105; 200410.1038/428105a). But with no new jobs being created in research-agency labs by the funding, the reaction from many researchers was negative.

A third of the money will be used to create a new national research agency; another third will promote development in industry through tax breaks; and the final third will go to public research laboratories.

Presenting the budget last Wednesday, research minister François d'Aubert said that the budget increase was only one step towards necessary reform. A forthcoming white paper on science, which will be debated later this year, is expected to lead to a long-awaited overhaul of the French research system.

Smithsonian set to launch a whale of an exhibit

Washington

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is planning to embark on a $60-million ocean initiative. It will fund research and a museum exhibit on ocean sciences that is due to open in 2008.

The exhibit will be dominated by a full-size model of a northern right whale, which will hang from the ceiling in the main hall. Multimedia presentations will tackle climate change and other hot topics, and will be updated as the science changes. “If the hall were up right now, the hurricanes Ivan and Jeanne would be being tracked in real time,” says Robert Sullivan, associate director for public programmes at the museum.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has provided $18 million in funding, which the Smithsonian has matched.

Science committee chairman has heart op

Washington

Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (Republican, New York), chairman of the US House science committee, underwent coronary artery bypass surgery on Monday this week.

Abnormalities in the congressman's heart were found during a routine physical earlier this month. He checked into the National Naval Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, where doctors discovered blockages in several arteries.

Boehlert, who was 68 on Tuesday, is up for re-election in November. Joe Pouliot, a spokesman for the science committee, says the surgery will delay some hearings, but expects the committee to pick up where it left off after the election.

Russian Nobel laureate left out in the cold

Moscow

Credit: ZUMA PRESS

A Nobel Prize-winner who had planned to leave his native Russia to deliver a lecture in the United States last week instead stormed out of the US consulate in St Petersburg without a visa.

Zhores Alferov (right), who received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on semiconductors, and now directs the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St Petersburg, had been invited to lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, by the university's regents.

But when trying to get a visa, Alferov reportedly became indignant at being repeatedly asked by a consular official about the nature of his work. When it became clear that the visa would not automatically be granted, Alferov left the building.

A spokesman for the university said it hoped to reschedule the talk for next spring.