Immunocompetent

This is a short paper that I wrote late last year on the contradictory and self-destructive US and EU positions on influenza virus sharing and the Revised International Health Regulations. It was originally distributed at a meeting of the Pugwash Study Group on the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions and is thus written from a security perspective, and uses terms like "biosecurity".

I generally think that security language is essentially useless and even counterproductive for talking about flu, particularly the ill-defined term "biosecurity" which is dangerous (I try to always put it in quotes). I use it nonetheless because it is (hopefully temporarily) part of the lingua franca of security types (but never public health, I hope!).  (More)

If secondary sources are to be believed, such as this one, then CDC's PR hacks have sallied forth with a pack of lies about their patent claims on Indonesian, Thai, and other H5N1 genes, which were first brought into the public eye by this blog.

There are two main arguments that CDC has been quoted to me as making with respect to my article and related items that have come out in the press.  I will refute both of CDC's claims. (More)

Unless you're a bean breeder, farmer, or epicure, the little yellow beans at left might not look very interesting. But those humble frijoles are the subject of a lengthy patent dispute that may be headed for the US Supreme Court. And it's story has many important parallels with the current debate about H5N1 patents.

We’ll start with the bottom line lessons: (More)

If you think oil speculators are an ethically-challenged crowd, consider pandemic squatters.  There are many examples. For one of the ugliest and most audacious, we turn to Finland.

Finns are usually an inoffensive lot, but it seems that a few of their number are hoping for the big one to come.  A big pandemic, that is.  And they're putting their money on H5N2. Helsinki-based Remedal, a tiny company with no apparent independent R&D capacity, has filed for patent on basically all injected or intranasal human vaccines containing an H5 and an N2 antigen (i.e. against H5N1 recombined with 'normal' human H3N2).

For good measure, Remedal further specifically claims such a vaccine using three HA genes that are WHO GISN materials: A/Hong Kong/213/2003, A/Vietnam/1194/2004, and A/Vietnam/1203/2004. (More)

A draft text of the WHO Intergovernmental Meeting on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP IGM) has cropped up on Wikileaks, and Geneva, we have got some problems.  The 17 page negotiating document was issued on June 29th. It was written by Jane Halton, the PIP IGM Chair from Australia, in an effort to reconcile differing ideas put forward by countries for reform of the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN).

At least it's supposed to have reconciled ideas.  Sadly, the text looks far more like what certain developed countries the pharmaceutical industry wants than a good faith effort to bridge gaps and present options. I guess some pigs are more equal than others at WHO. Egregiously, the text moves full-bore ahead with the insidious securitization of public health, making multiple references to "public health security", a national security / defense concept, that screws up WHO left and right.

Your bloghost will offer more commentary soon, but in the interim here's a detailed news article about the text written by Sangeeta Shashikant of Third World Network: 

 (More)