CSIRO Media Release Tells it Like it is. (July 11, 2005)

    The Hendra (HeV) and Nipah (NiV) viruses belong to the paramyxoviruses and have the ability to fatally infect a number of mammalian species including humans. The paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. summarises the viruses and their effects:

HeV appeared first in eastern Australia in 1994 and was transmitted to humans from infected horses; NiV first appeared in 1998–1999 in peninsular Malaysia and was predominantly passed from infected pigs to humans, but several other animal species also became infected. In recent years, both HeV and NiV have continued to reemerge; there were two NiV outbreaks in early 2004 in Bangladesh and another in January of 2005, 74 human cases in all, and HeV reappeared in northern Australia in late 2004 with two cases of fatal infection in horses and one nonfatal human case. The recent NiV outbreaks were characterized by a higher incidence of acute.

The 11 researchers who took part in the work included five from CSIRO's Livestock Industries, Australian Animal Health Laboratory, Geelong, Victoria, four from the US Uniformed Services University, in Bethesda, Maryland, and two from the US National Institutes of Health. They describe finding a cell receptor protein common for both viruses and which is present in many mammalian species. Cells lacking the receptor are resistant to viral infection.

But it's not the research per se that drew our attention but rather CSIRO's July 7 media release about the work and the contrast to the organisation's hyping of work which TFW referred to in its May editorial, Is CSIRO's Hyping of Scientific Effort a Service to the Scientists Really Doing the Work? And Those Flagships?

In the case of the Hendra/Nipah virus work the media release while opening with the attention grabbing headline "Major breakthrough in virus fight" tells it like it is right from the start of the text. It:

1. refers the reader to work published on July 5 in a peer reviewed journal together with the URL,

2. immediately states it was research done by an international team led by a US researcher,

3. succinctly but clearly states the important findings,

4. makes it clear from whom funding was derived and

5. states that another and independent research group lead by a UCLA scientist had "recently published similar findings in the Journal Nature.

Perhaps it's worth noting that this media release was written by the Division of Livestock Industries' own communications group.