The Dutch government has given virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC an export license for his controversial H5N1 transmissibility study, allowing Fouchier to send a revised manuscript of his paper to Science.
The license “is in my inbox,” says Fouchier. “Now we can move on.”
The decision by Henk Bleker, minister for agriculture and foreign trade, was announced this afternoon in a press release (Dutch) posted on the ministry’s Web site. It comes 4 days after a closed meeting in The Hague, where government officials discussed the risks and benefits of the research with an international group of scientists and security experts.
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