Researchers watch virus-sharing talks with trepidation, fearing science may suffer

Published by: cfz 2009-01-08

Researchers watch virus-sharing talks with trepidation, fearing science may suffer (http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=100086&Itemid=162)

(World News) Tuesday, 31 July 2007, 08:43 PST
by Helen Branswell

Budget

SINGAPORE (CP) - With little fanfare or public attention, representatives of 24 countries began Tuesday to try to resolve a virus-sharing impasse that is undermining the world's ability to chart the pandemic threat posed by H5N1 avian flu.

But rather than hailing the meeting as a way to break the troubling logjam, some scientists and public health officials are watching with trepidation, worrying the process may hinder the way research into influenza and other infectious diseases is conducted.

�We're very conscious that this is a precedent-setting meeting, as are most of the delegations,� said Dr. David Heymann, head of communicable diseases for the World Health Organization, under whose auspices the five-day meeting is taking place.

That's because the talks could change the conditions under which biological materials are provided to the WHO for global surveillance of and research on influenza viruses.

Depending on what is decided, the consequences could ripple far beyond the science of flu, experts say, conceivably affecting, for example, the pharmaceutical industry's ability to make and update an eventual HIV vaccine or limiting how quickly the world could respond to the next SARS-like disease outbreak.

�I think there's a heavy responsibility on the meeting, and then on the intergovernmental meeting which will follow (in November), to make sure that above all, considerations are made for public health security,� Heymann admitted.

Four countries from each of the WHO's six regions are at the table, including Britain, Canada, the United States, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Egypt.

The need to update the rules for sharing flu viruses stems from the demand of several developing countries, led by Indonesia, for affordable access to pandemic vaccine when the next global flu outbreak occurs.

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Researchers watch virus-sharing talks with trepidation, fearing science may suffer (World News) Tuesday, 31 July 2007, 08:43 PST by Helen Branswell
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Indonesia, the country which has lost the most lives to the H5N1 virus, has for much of this year refused to provide patient samples (from which viruses can be retrieved) to the WHO laboratory network, using the viruses as leverage in this debate.

Labs at institutes such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control or Britain's Health Protection Agency isolate and study these viruses at the behest of the WHO, looking for changes that might allow H5N1 to more easily infect people or to evade the drugs used to treat flu.

When asked to do so by the WHO, they also make seed strains from important new virus variants, providing them free of charge to pharmaceutical companies for use in the manufacture of vaccine.
That the ensuing vaccine would be beyond the reach of developing countries in a pandemic is the main source of the conflict, though complaints about the sharing of credit on scientific publications have also fuelled the fire.

Many observers fear measures devised to address these concerns could lead to restrictions on how viruses that flow into the WHO system can be used, even by scientists.

Most are not willing to speak on the record about what is at stake in these highly sensitive talks.

�People are concerned,� admitted Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, an influenza researcher at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Some fear a system could evolve where WHO labs could only look for limited information from viruses fed into the network.

Some envisage a scenario where this information could only be fed back to the contributing country, which could choose whether or not it should be shared with the broader scientific community. If some countries agreed to amalgamate findings and others did not, that could lead to huge gaps in understanding about how a virus is evolving.

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Pretty serious stuff all round.

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Just posted comments at my blogsite www.scottmcpherson.net (http://www.scottmcpherson.net)
Pretty serious stuff all round.

Love it! Especially this...

Excuse me, but I thought we were all working on the same team here. It is one thing to have (varying degrees of) legitimate national concern about protecting its citizens. It is another to squabble about credit. We all know the axiom, "Publish or perish," meaning if you don't publish, you won't get coveted government and endowment/foundation grants. But considering the magnitude of the potential pandemic -- and the fact that governments are throwing research grant dollars around like beads at a Mardi Gras parade -- I think everyone can get a slice of the pie, right?From the article, this is quite an understatement.

With little fanfare or public attentionI searched and searched last night for additional information on this meeting and came up empty-handed. I began to wonder if this article was a regurgitation of an old piece, but ruled that out fairly quickly.