Synthetic Influenza and In Silico Collections
This post is really about synthetic biology and influenza; but I want to start by clarifying one thing: If I were free to decide, I'm pretty sure that I would not enshrine into law sovereign rights over creatures great and small.
But I don't get to make the rules, nor do virologists (and not even The Imperial Laurie Garrett, heretofore "TILG", no matter how intolerably super-sized her ego gets). Maybe in another post, on another day, I'll explore how the present legal and treaty situation came to be; but that's not the point now. Instead, let's make the best of the hand we've been dealt. Hint: Folks searching for a gene sovereignty bogeyman can blame, in significant measure, the large mainline environmental organizations.
Today's ugly bellyaching about sovereignty and microbes in the flu science crowd (More)
Extra: WHO and St. Jude Win Award
Except it's not the kind they were hoping for:
Worst Betrayal of Global Public Trust:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, TN)
World Health Organization (WHO)
[Click the image for more information.]
Richard Holbrooke and Laurie Garrett are Full of Sh*t
Update: 6 September 2008
An Important Note About This Blog Entry
The short essay below was originally written as a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, because I believed that it was very important to publicly correct the numerous errors and misperceptions contained in the Holbrooke / Garrett editorial.
When the Washington Post did not publish the letter, I sent it to a number people and urgently asked them if they would be so kind as to put forward the ideas contained in the letter, given the important international humanitarian interest in reforming the GISN.
I was therefore very grateful when Ambassador Wibisono of Indonesia adapted the essay below and was able to have it published in the Jakarta Post on my behalf. An utmost priority in the debate over influenza virus sharing is widely circulating the powerful arguments for changing the current system, therefore, I again thank Ambassador Wibisono for his willingness to carry this message to a broader public.
EH
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... and it's time for America to wake up to that fact.
In their badly informed Washington Post op-ed "'Sovereignty' That Risks Global Health" (10 August), Richard Holbrooke and Laurie Garrett make a number of factual mistakes and misleading statements, some of which I will enumerate here.
CDC lays claim to Indonesian (and other) Flu Genes
It would be hard to be more "in your face" than what the US National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control are doing with patent claims to their new H5N1 DNA vaccine.
But right there on the front page it's laid out in black and white:
VIRUS IS NOW THE PROPERTY OF UNCLE SAM.
Well, it doesn't literally say that; but this graphic appears:
MABs, Piracy, and St. Jude's
While the effort to prevent piracy of WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network materials has (with good reason) so far mainly focused on viruses and their genes, there are other kinds of theft that will need to be confronted.
Antisera are the chemicals produced by the immune system when it tries to fight off an infection. They are highly specific to the particular strain that has infected the body, and sometimes provide cross-protection to other flu strains. Like the old "gamma globulin" shots for Hepatitis A (now largely replaced by a vaccine), shots of H5N1 antibodies may theoretically help fight off a bird flu infection.
About Immunocompetent
I am weary of public health G.I. Joes (and Janes) and other obsessives and their threats that we're all gonna die of bird flu.
I am turned off by the callous and poorly reasoned bashing of foreigners that fills many flu blogs.
I believe that greed and poor governance in the US and EU plays a huge and underexplored role in the sad state of global readiness for a flu pandemic.
I am sure that national security and public health ought not to be mixed up in the way they have become.
Immunocompetent is a place for enlightened talk about Bird Flu, and where xenophobia and fearmongering are banned.
Here you will find fresh perspective about the serious problem of potentially pandemic influenza. You'll get information and analysis that you won't find blogged elsewhere, because this site doesn't just comment on the news, it aims to make it.
From 1999 to 2008 your host, Edward Hammond, directed the Sunshine Project, a nongovernmental organization focusing on biological weapons and biosafety. He first stuck his toe into influenza issues in 2003, when the Sunshine Project issued one of the first public warnings that US scientists were intending to recreate 1918 influenza. Since 2006 he has focused on H5N1 issues, specifically, questions of access and benefit sharing related to influenza viruses.