The US quietly terminates a controversial $125m wildlife virus hunting programme amid safety fears

A flagship project for the controversial practice of hunting viruses among wildlife in South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America to prevent human outbreaks and pandemics is being quietly dropped by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after private and bipartisan criticism over the safety of such research, The BMJ has found.For more than a decade the US government has been funding international projects engaged in identifying exotic wildlife viruses that might someday infect humans. Although critics have raised concerns over the potentially catastrophic risks of such virus hunting activities,1 hundreds of millions of dollars in unabated funding have symbolised a commitment to the effort.The shuttering of the project, as described in a new congressional budget document and during interviews with scientists and federal policy makers, marks an abrupt retreat by the US government from wildlife virus hunting, an activity that has also been funded by the Department…
Read Original Article: The US quietly terminates a controversial $125m wildlife virus hunting programme amid safety fears »