U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius speaking to the World Health Assembly image courtesy of US Mission Geneva/Eric Bridiers.

“Every pandemic emergence seems to be a law unto itself.” David Morens, Jeffrey Taubenberger, and Anthony Fauci wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine that there’s no evidence viruses that develop one mutation that could lead them to becoming pandemic will necessarily develop any others. In fact, an important open question is whether any bird flu virus that infects humans could viably develop the mutations associated with pandemicity. Considering how often humans are exposed to bird flu, the fact it rarely adapts to humans—and that just a handful of subtype combinations seem to be capable of adaptation—suggests that the barriers to human-to-human transmission of bird flu must be high. In addition, the sporadic appearance of the H5N1 and H7N9 strains in humans suggest that they may both infect only humans with some particular susceptibility. Nevertheless, the article’s authors argue that we need to prepare for the worst, because “we cannot know whether or under what circumstances the highly unusual H7N9 virus might be able to become pandemic.”

The World Health Organization added Middle East Respiratory Syndrome to its list of potentially pandemic viruses that health care workers should look out for. MERS joins the H5N1 and H7N9 bird flu viruses on the WHO’s list of dangerous viruses. WHO officials worry that the disease could spread in July when millions of Muslims go on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, where most cases of the disease so far have been. Lab tests confirmed the two cases of MERS in Italy. The patients, a 42-year-old woman and a 2-year-old girl, are close contacts of someone who had recently returned from Jordan. A report in The Lancet suggests that the incubation period of the disease could be as long as 12 days, indicating that people exposed to the disease may need to be quarantined for longer than had previously been thought. The US Department of Health and Human Services announced that MERS was a potential threat to public health and national security, a move which allows the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track tests and treatments for the disease. So far there have been 77 confirmed cases of MERS and 40 deaths.

An American returning from an overseas trip that included a stop in China tested positive for a previous H7 flu infection, possibly the H7N9 strain. However, the reason for his hospitalization was apparently unrelated to the H7 flu. While the man was no longer contagious, the incident demonstrates the potential for viruses to spread via international travel. The Department of Health and Human Services declared that the H7N9 bird flu was a potential threat to public health and national security at the end of April.

Lawmakers are considering the push for funding of a third generation of sensor technologies for the Biowatch network, which samples the air for deadly disease agents. A report from the House of Representative’s Committee on Energy and Commerce found that the proposed updates to the Biowatch program would cost at least $6 billion over a decade. The new “Biowatch Generation 3” sensor technologies would automatically alert Homeland Security to dangerous airborne organisms, whereas current technologies require manual inspection of the sensors, which could cause a lag in response measures during a biological attack.

President Obama outlined his plan to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions with his executive powers by further limiting power plant emissions, supporting renewable energy technologies, and spending on measures to adapt to climate change. According to an International Energy Agency report, global emissions of carbon dioxide rose 1.4% in 2012 to a record 31.6 gigatons. CO2 emissions fell in the US and Europe, but grew a larger amount in China and India. The report warned that if emissions growth continues at the same pace, the global average temperature could rise more than 5 °C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The IEA said it might still be possible to limit the temperature rise to 2 °C without hurting the global economy by phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies, increasing energy efficiency, reducing the output of inefficient coal plants, and limiting the release of methane in oil and gas operations. But NASA’s Carbon in Arctic Reservoir’s Vulnerability Experiment reported that large concentrations of CO2 and methane are emerging from thawing permafrost. Methane is 22 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. The Arctic permafrost may contain half of all the carbon stored in the Earth’s soils.

The US and China agreed under the Montreal Protocol to cut down on the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons. HFCs have been widely used as refrigerants since the Montreal Protocol limited the use of chlorofluorocarbons to protect the ozone layer in 1987. HFCs do not damage the ozone layer, but they are powerful greenhouse gases. China will also start pilot cap-and-trade programs in 7 major cities. The pilot programs will cover an area that is responsible for around 7% of China’s CO2 emissions, but factories and coal plants in the test regions may be able to move to parts of the country not covered by the programs.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Association for Medical Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. that naturally-occurring DNA is “not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.” The court left open the possibility that synthesized complementary DNA might be patent-eligible. Patient advocates said the decision would lower the cost of genetic screening for diseases. Critics of the decision said that there’s little scientific ground for distinguishing between naturally-occurring DNA and cDNA, which is readily synthesized from the products of natural DNA sequences.

A Kickstarter project raised almost $500,000 to genetically modify plants to make them glow in the dark, with the idea that they might someday replace electric lights. Some environmental organizations have complained that the project would result in the uncontrolled release of genetically modified seeds. Todd Kuiken, a research associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center, told The New York Times that while the project was relatively safe, “A serious look needs to be taken at the regulatory system to see if it can handle the questions synthetic biology is going to raise.”

NASA announced a “Grand Challenge” to locate all asteroid threats and mitigate their risk. NASA hopes that businesses, academics, and the public can expand on NASA’s existing work to mitigate asteroid threats. According to Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, altering the course of an Earth-bound asteroid would be “one of the most important accomplishments in human history.”

Christof Heyns, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, called for a moratorium on the development of “lethal autonomous robots” that make the determination to kill without specific human authorization. Heyns said that while no country has deployed fully autonomous robots, a number of weapons systems can already identify targets automatically. “War without reflection is mechanical slaughter,” Heyns said. “In the same way that the taking of any human life deserves as a minimum some deliberation, a decision to allow machines to be deployed to kill human beings deserves a collective pause worldwide.”

Fifty years ago this month, in a commencement address at American University, US President John F. Kennedy called for “general and complete disarmament”:

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can—if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers—offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

In an earlier speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Kennedy had called nuclear weapons a “sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.” In his American University speech, Kennedy said we had to stop the nuclear arms race because “In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

Since Kennedy’s speech, international agreements like the Partial Test Ban Treaty, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and START have helped to limit the number and type of nuclear weapons. But, according to a new report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, eight countries—the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel—still have around 4,400 operational nuclear weapons. The report finds that the five states that are allowed to have nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty—the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China—are all planning to deploy new weapons systems and appear “determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.” Meanwhile, comments from Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani indicate that he hopes to curb international tensions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program. “Moderation in foreign policy means neither surrender nor confrontation but constructive and efficacious interaction with the world,” said Rouhani. However, Rouhani still contends that Iran has a right to refine uranium.

This news summary was put together by Grant Wilson in collaboration with Robert de Neufville at Anthropocene. Thanks to Seth Baum, Kaitlin Butler, and Micah Telegen for help compiling the news.

For last month’s news summary, please see GCR News Summary May 2013.

You can help us compile future news posts by putting any GCR news you see in the comment thread of this blog post, or send it via email to Grant Wilson (grant [at] gcrinstitute.org).