1334 21 DECEMBER 2018 • VOL 362 ISSUE 6421 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
PHOTO: MINT IMAGES/AURORA PHOTOSY
ou can give your cat the flu. You can also pass pneu-
monia to a chimpanzee or tuberculosis to a bird.
This kind of human-to-animal disease transmission,
known as reverse zoonosis, has been seen on every
continent except one: Antarctica. Now, human-
linked pathogens in bird poop reveal, for the first
time, that even animals on this isolated, ice-bound land-
mass can pick up a bug from tourists or visiting scientists.
At four Southern Ocean locations—including Livingston
Island off the Antarctic Peninsula—researchers col-
lected fecal samples from 666 adult birds from 24 dif-
ferent species, including rockhopper penguins, Atlanticyellow-nosed albatrosses, giant petrels, and skuas.
Bacterial species in the samples were a close match for
those circulating in humans and domestic animals, based
on their DNA. Among the matches: Campylobacter jejuni,
which causes food poisoning; an antimicrobial-resistant
strain of C. lari; and certain strains of Salmonella. That
suggests humans—including scientists and tourists—may
be passing their bacteria on to local seabirds, either di-
rectly or through migrating birds, the researchers report
online in Science of the Total Environment. This newly
identified infection route could have devastating conse-
quences for some Antarctic bird colonies.Scientists may be making Antarctica’s birds sick
NEWS
IN BRIEF
Paris agreement lives on
CLIMATE | After 2 weeks of all-night bar-
gaining sessions, representatives of nearly
200 countries agreed to the “rules of the
road” that will govern the Paris agreement
on climate change, which seeks to limit the
world’s rise in global temperatures to 2°C
by 2100. The new rules lay out how nations
should track and report their carbon dioxide
emissions—with the same requirements for
both developed and developing countries.
Other contentious issues, including the
role of international carbon markets and
whether long-polluting nations should payothers climate “reparations,” were pushed
off to later meetings of the United Nations
group. But the world will need to take
“unprecedented” action by 2030 in order
to hit the Paris targets, scientists warned in
an October report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.Lawsuit targets trial reporting
CLINICAL TRIALS | The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA), the National
Institutes of Health, and the Department of
Health and Human Services have failed to
ensure that researchers report clinical trialresults as federal law requires, according
to a lawsuit filed this month in a U.S. district
court in New York. The plaintiffs are Peter
Lurie, a physician and former associate FDA
commissioner, and Charles Seife, a journal-
ism professor at New York University in New
York City (who has written for Science). In
a 2007 law, Congress required researchers
conducting clinical trials to report results
both publicly and to the federal government,
but in a 2016 rule, the agencies relieved
some of the reporting obligations for trials
completed before 18 January 2017. Lurie and
Seife say that part of the rule is inconsistent
with the law and should be struck down.Edited by Catherine MatacicPublished by AAASon December 20, 2018^http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from