TITLE: Self defence over bird flu is no crime AUTHOR: New Scientist PUBLICATION: New Scientist (editorial) DATE: 17 February 2007 URL: http://www.newscientist.com New Scientist | 17 February 2007 EDITORIAL: SELF DEFENCE OVER BIRD FLU IS NO CRIME Good for Indonesia. There, it's been said. The country at the centre of the H5N1 bird flu storm has stopped sending virus samples to the World Health Organization. Though this means that scientists cannot track H5N1's increasingly worrying evolution, which is bad, Indonesia is doing the only thing it can to protect its people. It has also brought an unpalatable truth out into the open. In a fair world, Indonesia would send its virus to the best labs and share in any vaccine made from it. In our world, Indonesia sends off its virus, companies make vaccine from it and sell it to countries that can pay. Indonesia is not one of them, and neither are the other countries suffering badly from H5N1. Indonesia is treating this as a case of biopiracy. Like other tropical countries, it is a hotspot of biodiversity. For decades foreign companies have helped themselves to its plants, microbes or whatever, and made lucrative products from them. In response, it has passed laws to stop exports of genetic material without agreement. It is invoking such a law to control samples of H5N1 and asking developed countries to respect the sort of intellectual property rules that they themselves have imposed for decades. It is not just looking for money. Everyone in the vaccine business knows that when a pandemic appears, countries with vaccine factories will ensure their own citizens are catered for before any vaccine gets exported. That is what happened in the swine flu scare in the US in 1976. If a pandemic does begin, countries without factories will probably not receive vaccine in time for the first wave. By withholding the virus, Indonesia is leveraging the one resource it has to obtain flu vaccine, possibly even its own factory. As Lily Sulistyowati of Indonesia's health ministry put it: "Indonesia's state-owned drug maker Bio Farma does not have the technology and expertise to create the vaccine. We can only offer foreign pharmaceutical companies our strain of the virus." The country says it is will do this only under material transfer agreements that ban commercial use except by prior agreement. It is a shame things have come to this. Indonesia should be able to share its virus freely without feeling that it is sacrificing the one chance it has to save its people from a pandemic. Perhaps vaccine manufacture should be a global public good, not a national or private one -- something this magazine has noted before. We need a system that works for everyone. In its absence, those material transfer agreements should be signed now. We need to see what H5N1 is up to in Indonesia. From issue 2591 of New Scientist magazine, 17 February 2007, page 3 GOING FURTHER (compiled by GRAIN) Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, "Help needed for bird flu vaccine, says official", Jakarta Post, 13 February 2007. http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20 070213.A05 Fitri Wulandari, "Indonesia says WHO must set rules on H5N1 sharing", Reuters, 12 February 2007. http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId= SP156017 "Government told to sue WHO over virus samples", Jakarta Post, 10 February 2007. http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20 070210.H02 Tan Ee Lyn, "Critics of Indonesia bird flu virus ban accept valid point", Reuters, 9 February 2007. http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news/archives/asiapacific/20072 9/102158.htm Donald G McNeil Jr, "Indonesia may sell, not give, bird flu virus to scientists", The Ledger, 7 February 2007. http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2007020 7/ZNYT03/702070508 "Indonesia stops sharing bird flu samples", Reuters, 6 February 2007. http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worl dNews&storyID=2007-02-06T223655Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-28 6586-1.xml&archived=False