John Aaskov, a microbiologist at the Queensland University of Technology in
Brisbane, has been demoted, suspended without pay for six months and banned from
working in his lab for a year after he admitted experimenting with Japanese
encephalitis in an area not set up to contain the virus. The university says
that anyone entering the lab could have been exposed to the virus, which is
carried by mosquitoes, although it admits this was unlikely. Those who may have
been exposed to it are being tested. The university is carrying out a review of
the incident and will forward its findings to the health minister of Queensland,
Mike Horan.
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